Recent E3 "leak" has me pondering...

With just a day before E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) starting proper, I thought I would have some fun with one of the supposed leaks going around. The craziest leak is a game titled "Mario Maker." As seen above in this suspiciously blurry picture (taken with a 3DS?), there may just come an announcement during Nintendo's digital E3 presentation featuring a game that involves making and/or Mario. But what could a game like this be? We won't know until Tuesday if it even exists, but a game like this could just as easily be a real project. So I decided to make believe that it is real and talk about what I want it to be.

The obvious answer here is that this is a Super Mario Bros. level creator. Using either the 3DS or Wii U stylus, you plop down blocks and create your own levels. We've seen these types of ROM programs on the internet before, which is why I feel that this alone is too much of a low hanging fruit. If that's all "Mario Maker" turns out to be, I think that's cool, and I'd love to see sequels using Super Mario 2, 3, and World assets as well.

Then we can get into some sick shit.

But I do hope there's more to this whole "Mario Maker" than a level creation/sharing tool. What if you could have access to a sprite maker to make your own enemies/stage designs? Heck, they could even go full blown Mario Paint and give you access to the same sound font that Koji Kondo once used to create the famous Mario tune we all know in our heads. This would allow level creators to also create original tunes to add to their unique characters and worlds, all using the Mario Bros. gameplay. Adding this almost Little Big Planet level of customization could really turn a simple ROM stage creator into a full-packaged game maker. Now -that- would be an E3 surprise.

There could also be a chance to add some of that NES Remix magic in here too. Nintendo could include other characters like Kirby or Samus. There was an old flash game, called Super Mario Crossover that allowed you to play through the original Super Mario Bros. as other NES favorites like 8-bit Link, or Mega Man. Tapping into Nintendo's nostalgic collection of characters to play Mario games as could really open the whole "Mario Maker" project.

We'll see if this is even a real thing come Tuesday, but for now it's just fun to pretend what kind of things Nintendo could do, even if it's sometime in the future. What kind of game would you want out of a "Mario Maker?" Drop a comment below and let's speculate together!

If they are doing like a Little Big Planet with Mario, then that sounds kind of cool. For me it all depends on just how crazy can you make things get.

I wanna be able to Make the sickest Mario's!

I want it to just have everything you'd theoretically hold out for DLC or a sequel. Let us choose which game's tilesets to use, and let us mix and match them. Let us choose which game's physics we want. Give us robust sharing tools on par with Little Big Planet or really any non-Nintendo game with user generated content. Make a mobile app that you can import and export levels from just to work on when you have a few minutes to kill, and to theoretically up-sell people who stumble upon the app first into buying the game. I really want this to be way more advanced than I'm expecting it to be.

I want to be able to make a level with Super Mario Bros 1's tileset, filled with vegetables from SMB2, with enemies from SMB3 and Yoshis and Feathers from Mario World spread throughout, and to be able to easily share it with friends and strangers alike, but I'm expecting it to be a very basic SMB1 editor, that only lets you share levels with friends because WHAT IF SOMEONE MADE A DICK OUT OF QUESTION MARK BLOCKS THINK OF THE CHILDREN

I'm hoping for something that lets me get proper creative, create stuff that would never make it into a real Mario game. And with proper sharing, unlike WarioWare D.I.Y.

I'd like to play with the Princess' Peaches, if you know what I mean...

Casual racism.

I want the Japanese version of Stephen Fry as the narrator

It to be based on Mario World not Mario Bros.

For it to be on the Wii U and have multiplayer. Downloading and playing a bunch of crazy Mario levels with friends sounds like a good time to me.

How about Stephen Fry sloppily reading Japanese?

If we're going that route, I'd rather we just get Morgan Freeman doing his best read of a bunch of Japanese he doesn't understand.

Man, what Japanese accent is considered, like, the "classy" accent? Inquiring minds need to know.

Well, as long as we can fulfill Vinny's Law with it.

i want to make meme levels of luigis death stare like a big pixel art which you jump on

Depends on how old-fashioned you want to get, I think.

They should just do a Nintendo maker and support all the 2d assets from previous Mario, Zelda, and Metroid games.

I don't really know. I thought I really wanted Little Big Planet, and then when I got it I realized I really didn't want Little Big Planet at all. If there is one thing that's promising (assuming this is really a thing.) it's that a Mario Maker will probably control like Mario games and not a bunch of awful floatyness.

At the very least it'll probably have more stamps. God damn I love Nintendo stamps.

@hailinel said:

Is there a Japanese equivalent to that old-timey vaudeville radio voice?

What WarioWare D.I.Y. was (so basically, a revival of Mario Paint), so WarioWare can go back to being a minigame collection.

I mean, yeah, I'm aware there's been others, but none were as frenetic and weird as WarioWare. And that's what made it stand out to me.

Something more than a level editor for Super Mario Bros.

I really don't know how they can make a full, compelling game dedicated to just making levels. With LittleBigPlanet/2, I generally had more fun with the developer based content than the user based stuff apart from a couple super creative levels - as every idea I had for an awesome level crumbled apart and became boring. I think it'd be a better idea to make something like a New Super Mario Bros with a level editor. That's assuming that this won't have developed made levels packed in; which would they really make new, sprite based Mario levels?

Maybe all that was holding LBP back for me was its' loose platforming, though. If they can manage to retain the feel of a classic Mario game and the level editing is just as tight and simple, maybe that'll be enough to actually be fun. I would prefer they don't solely use the objects and environments from previous Mario games, so remaking Castlevania levels or Mega Man levels or Lost Vikings levels won't be that farfetched.

Making the romhack concept (or the essence of it) accessible, organized and legally above-board is enough to make it a great product.

The make-or-break factor is how open it will actually be.

What if Mario Maker is actually a game that takes place in an alternate history Japan with you being a Nintendo employee. After US-Super-Mario-Bros-2-made-from-Doki-Doki-Panic is well received, you are tasked with turning more weird Japanese games into Mario games for Western release. As the difficulty ramps up, you will be given weirder games and it will become more and more of a stretch to turn them into Mario. You are... THE MARIO MAKER.

Anybody else remember that Mega Man game that got cancelled that totally had a level editor?

Playable Waluigi.

Predictions: LittleBigPlanet, but in 2D.

If it is simply for building Mario levels, I feel weird saying this, but I hope they have some decent DLC or some profit sharing with popular creators to encourage people to put time and effort into it.

Even more accurate prediction: The first user generated level will probably be a penis.

I know next to nothing about this subject but I seem to recall that Kansai-ben is associated with a kind of old-fashioned Japanese. At least it is a dialect encountered in the Kyoto area (I think) which is itself associated with a kind of stereotypical, old timey Japan. Then again, this is just what somehow stuck around in my mind; hopefully someone with a lot more actual knowledge can enlighten us.

This is probably puzzle game where if I had to widely and wildly speculate it is based upon the classic game where you are placing a limited number of parts to help or hurt an automated Mario run through a level.

Video gaming is folding in on itself like the Ouroboros eating its tail.

This can only be a sign of the end.

KENTIA IS NIGH!!

Kansai-ben is more associated with the Osaka region and Osaka-ben. It's a dialect that the Japanese commonly associate with comics and stand-up comedy, so yeah, it has that similarity to Vaudeville. Kyoto is home to a more classical dialect that, according to Wikipedia at least, is considered more feminine and these days has fallen out of popular usage with the notable exception of geishas.

Nothing. There are tons of mario fangames on the internet already

@medacris: I'm with you. I loved DIY but there hasn't been a proper WarioWare game in far too long.

When I heard Mario Maker for the first time I was hoping for a sequel to Mario Paint....

well, I'd love it if I had setting to change from SMB1 game play to SM World gameplay mechanics. It'd be awesome if it was a collection of every game from world, land to even the New games and Galaxy. Since I know nothing about the game why not dream big? Itcould be the return of Mario Paint.... and that I did enjoy.

This is all accurate.