Quick Look: Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS

This opinion should be ruthlessly mocked.

Well this thing is bananas. I'm struggling to justify their choices here but...nothing comes to mind.

Will Giant Bomb's GOTY 2015 win Giant Bomb's Most Disappointing 2016?

I don't get that. What does someone engaging with your levels even matter? I had fun just making the levels and playing others. You don't need some crazy celebrity experience to make the game one of the best games to come out last year.

Seriously. I had a blast making levels and posting them here. I probably have under 50 stars total on all my levels, but it was still fun making the levels and getting a couple people to try them.

Also this game still seems fine to me. I get being disappointed by the crippled sharing and discovery features, but I still love the idea of being able to make levels on the go with my 3ds. Though, I really like Dan's idea of having Mario Brothers 1-3 bundled on this game in this games engine. Playing those games on the 3ds is complete ass.

I have no love for Nintendo franchises but claiming Sonic was better than Mario is kind of out there.

Yeah, sharing user generated content, who would ever find enjoyment in that?!

No one should buy the 3DS version of this game.

I would totally watch another giant bomb makes mario. Especially with the east coast guys there.

The manufactured outrage is tedious.

What is this bullshit that is copying Giant Bomb's 2016 GOTY Box Maker. They should sue Nintendo.

I think whatever Dan doesnt think happen, happens in Japan wheres theres a billion of 3DS.

@bonechompski: Eh wot? There's hardly anything defensible about a game whose marketing angle is "Hey, it's ALMOST like that one amazing game we made a year back! Just with, you know, 1/3 of the features and worse functionality. Also it costs as much as the full game!"

I don't have a Wii U and I was super looking forward to this to play GB levels. Now I'll just hope it'll come to switch.

That's one thing they kind of got wrong in the video. When Vinny asked Jeff if you could exchange levels at "hotspots", that is technically possible as you can StreetPass at StreetPass Relay points in places like McDonald's and BestBuy in the United States.

You can even set up your own StreetPass relay points at home with some technical know-how/homebrew. Now we just need more people carrying their 3DSes around all the time (which I actually do whenever I go out and have been doing so for pretty much the last 4 years).

There's no technical limitation to not find, upload, search and rank levels - it's just a case of interfacing with their servers and databases, and the 3DS is capable of an online connection, therefore it can connect and interface with said servers and databases. These features would be easy to add with the actual complex task of making an editor and player and being able to load online levels already there.

There is zero excuse for this.

Also, it's absolutely insane that for levels with costume mushrooms, they didn't just disable them or make them do nothing - THEYRE JUST COSMETIC! IT WOULD TAKE NOTHING TO DISABLE COSTUME BLOCKS IN CODE! Quite frankly it seems more complicated to have the database manually search for and flag levels that feature the costume block than just turn them into a normal block, or a question block that gives you nothing.

This is really not setting up the Nintendo Switch well for having an online system that actually, properly, truly works the way it should in this day and age. :/

At least now this won't win game of the year 2016.

What a waste, how did Nintendo screw this up. Guess that's typical Nintendo and its weird restrictions. Don't buy this, get the Wii U version.

Well dang...

@xiphos480: This is absolutely spot on. This game is far more reflective of the experience of most users of the Wii U version. I don't begrudge it being given Giant Bomb's GOTY last year because it's supposed to be a reflection of what they enjoyed playing but for the average player the experience was very different.

@steveurkel: Super Mario Mistaker

Honestly, just the ability to play 100 Marios on the go makes this pretty attractive to me. The slowdown is the only thing that gives me pause.

Slowdown is a deal breaker every time.

Even if you already have a 3DS, it really seems like there's no viable reason to get this. It's simply an inferior product.

I'm glad that Jeff finally came to terms with most people not being able to just post a Twitter link for an immediate audience (apparently Dan has not).

One of the frustrating things last year was just hearing "oh, build a level and put it in a forum and you'll be able to watch people play it." Their use case was so, so specific. Just like Brad playing Mass Effect 3 with all the DLC was super specific, or Drew playing MGS V way later.

Fun to think about how different modern games seem to people based on when they play it and in what context. It used to be you play Sonic 2 and that's what everyone plays. Now it changes based on timing and your situation.

Nintendo has been a company that never lets me down in terms of making stupid decisions over and over again. They consistently fuck things up time and time again. That said I will probably get an NX if it runs Breath of the Wild at a higher resolution than the WiiU version. I really only played the VC version of DK64, Mario64, and HD Wind Waker on my WiiU. I barely played any Mario Maker and Mario Kart 8.

Good job Nintendo. At least I had some fun with my 3DS almost exclusively playing Zelda games when I used to work night shifts or was traveling in which I didn't have to drive.

Hi, average person here. People "engage" with my levels. I once got a very nice Miiverse post from someone saying that one of my courses was the kind he was hoping for when he bought the game, and that really made my day because I'm not "some well known gaming personality." I'm just an average person who apparently made a level good enough to impress someone enough to make that post.

And that's good enough for me.

I actually got a lot of feedback on my levels by merely posting it to the course world. I mean it doesn't compare to the likes of the Jeff's popularity by being able to post a link on twitter and get hundreds of responses but my levels got attention. It was more than enough to encourage me to make some more. 3DS version here seems awful.

Yup, this was my experience as well. The community is very engaged with what's created.

fuck nintendo.

I'm willing to buy technical limitations. People always underestimate how hard this stuff is. Somebody at Nintendo decided they would make enough money to justify a chopped version.

YES! I thought about that when Dan was talking (Jeff kind of said it to him), and Dan saying he would go on forums for codes. (yeah average people don't do that). Its why i 100% disagreed with their game of the year decisions on this game -- I did NOT have the experience they did.
Is the Wii U version better? yeah, but this is what it is. (not worth $40).

They have a totally different view on many of these these games having offices full of people and friends list of gamers. Destiny they can play raids - Geometry Wars they go after each others high scores, etc...
I played destiny solo till I got so bored I shelved it, (I beat the main game, but grinding was DUMB). Geometry Wars was fun for a while, (and cheap!), but without high scores (or achievements) of friends, its like 70% as good.

Sharing my levels in Mario Maker that i took a ton of time making, to only get a few people to play them, that I don't know; and some never got played and disappeared... I would be basically be just as happy playing random levels on this version - i never once enter a friend code in the Wii U version. I don't want to make levels in this version. And either way i would be playing random levels (I do on Wii U now!).

This version is not for the giantbomb team, maybe even many of its audience reading this. I agree it loses a lot of what makes the original special for this group, but for average joe, i played the Wii U version for like 10 hours, and didn't have friends challenging me or an internet community egging me on, never entered a "friend code" once, i stopped playing and went to Splatoon. That's just me, but a lot of people will have my experience vs theirs, i think this would be fine for my niece, to get 10 hours of fun on her own.

I am 100% sure this "Most people can't post to twitter" thing came up during GOTY as well. But, anyway.

You may have never punched in codes, but did you ever search for levels in that dumb portal thing? I did. Did you ever click on "Most Popular" and play the top levels there, even though they were always dumb Japanese levels with billions of stars? I did. Did you ever go "Wow, that was a great level, let me click on their profile to see if there was anything else they made!"? I did.

If they had included those features, but stripped out the editor, I would have jumped on this in a Doki-doki heart beat. But, this is just a disappointment.

@pkmnfrk: I want to say that Vinny kind of made the case of not feeling the engagement that Jeff and obviously Dan feel. However, I don't really remember the idea of how being popular affected their experience coming up in the GOTY discussions. I could be wrong, but that is what I remember at least. Which this 3DS version seems closer to my experience with it, but that's not a good thing.

Mario Maker? What is this, YouTube?

@squidracerx: I think it's hard to criticise the choice as GOTY. They have always said the discussions relate purely to their experience of playing the games and aren't intended to be some objective comparison of what the best games of the year are for the average consumer (although in some cases that has come up)

I'm really sick of seeing criticism towards this game. Yeah, congratulations you have a Wii U and you're better than everyone. For the rest of us with only a 3DS, at least they gave us something. I am really enjoying it!

I can speak from experience when I say that in Japan it's not uncommon to see groups of kids gathered in street corners or apartment building entrance ways all playing on their 3DS. The 3DS is almost certainly seen as a children's toy within Nintendo. As such, they build it with the minimum possible level of interaction with the wider Internet, so there are never any stories of "my child saw porn on Mario Maker" or some other such nonsense, perhaps with the assumption that people you pass by (i.e. other Japanese people) would never be so depraved. This mentality exists, albeit in mostly unspoken fashion.

Couple this with the way LINE - the most popular messaging service in Japan, not coincidentally born there - handles searching for other users. In summary, you can't do it, unless you verify your age. You can only verify your age by being signed up to one of the big mobile providers, so if you're saving money and giving them the big middle finger, LINE is mostly useless, and can only be used like (surprise) a 3DS, where adding contacts has to occur in person.

I also want to add that I Jeff was pretty spot on early in this video. Nintendo has a lot of talent working for them, but they don't know why something is successful, really. It's as good as luck, but they probably have a higher chance because of the number of talented people working there.

@tariqari: If you only have a 3DS you should expect more from Nintendo, not reward them for an inferior product.
Save your money and spend it when Nintendo actually does something right.

This was such a sad thing to watch... :(

Does this contest No Man's Sky for Biggest Disappointment or is it less disappointing because we knew beforehand that it was crap?

@tariqari: They're not criticizing the game because they have a Wii U, they're criticizing it because this product is just so much worse. It kinda removes the whole thing that made Mario Maker so cool.

@tariqari: I don't want to dog pile on you, but this isn't really to do with Wii U vs 3DS at all. This is just an objectively worse version of the game, and for no apparent reason other than Nintendo doesn't seem to understand the Internet.

It even has all the online hooks built into it, so as far as I can tell it's not like there was even a technical reason for disallowing uploading and searching...

I agree - its their site. But everyone has an opinion. And to act like this website doesn't have a community would be absurd.
And I mean if i huffed and puffed and said "im done with the website since they picked a game I don't agree with!", then id agree with you that I went to far somehow, (I see people do that to Game Informer every year in their fan mail).
But saying I don't agree with their choice - and here's the reasons why, (just like some of the GB staff did not agree with Jeff and Dan, or Jeff disagrees with people liking Red Dead as GOTY), I think its okay to criticize and in fact let them know why you disagree with them - that they may be out of touch a bit (ivory gaming tower). As a review site they do need empathy towards their fans. We buy what they like. We cant play the games they do. But yes i agree they can vote Mario Party as game of the year, its their site.

I agree - the search functions would have been nice. But they aren't there, it doesn't ruin the game - why?

Well I did click most popular - and as you said many many many of them were very stupid (that's part of the reason the game didn't keep me). But to be mad at that -- ummm I guarantee that most popular search is where they are pulling the levels for in this game. They seem to only pull high scored levels from Wii U version.
So its actually probably not pulling the 1 or 2 star levels. So you cant search for mainly terrible ones. Who cares?
I can counter the loss of that feature with the fact that this is portable! So portable vs. searching for shit levels? Even being able to look at a profile...
Portability will be huge with a big segment, especially in Japan. If its not important to you, then you bought the Wii U version already.
Dan saying for the local level making - "when will this scenario happen?". For him it might not, but for Vinnie's kids on a road trip making a level and passing it to his sister, that will happen for them. There will be friends that do this locally, just like kids used to do local pokemon battles - i never did, but lots of people did.
(I agree with Vinnie though, why call it " Mario Maker" then, call it "Mario Player" and make it free if you own Wii u version).

I think it was known it would be missing features so it wouldn't rank.

Most of those hotspots have been turned off for several months now. I'd go to my Best Buy fairly often and at some point, I never got anything whereas I was guaranteed a few hits before that.

Ahhh, Vinny and Jeff. Makes me feel good.

@mvhvtmv: I don't know what you mean by that. This is definitely to do with 3DS vs Wii U and after you wrote it isn't, then proceed to compare the two versions. Nintendo has long done things differently in terms of user interfaces, hardware, and games. Who knows what exactly they're thinking, maybe they don't want to conform to a perceived normality.

My guess, and it's only that, is that they released this as one last hurrah for the 3DS before the switch comes out which will almost undeniably receive a Mario Maker at some point. 3DS Mario Maker is a fine game and a great alternative for those who do not own a Wii U to be able experience what Mario Maker was about.

@chicken008: I should have expected more from Nintendo for a game I only half expected to ever come out when Mario Maker was released for the Wii U? That's a nice fauxality you live in. I too would like to enjoy Kotor 3, a good Tony Hawk's Pro Skater sequel, and a 3DS Mario Maker with all of the features from the Wii U and then some. Alas, I live in this reality and I'm very thankful and grateful for everything I have. I'm thoroughly enjoying Mario Maker 3DS.

And yeah, Nintendo does a lot of things right, more than any publishers I know put together. Some of the greatest games of all time have come from Nintendo and they've survived. Yet somehow Bioware has managed to destroy their success. Somehow EA has destroyed their success, along with developers they bought (I'm looking at you Pandemic). LucasArts is dead and we have no hope of ever receivig a good Star Wars game ever again. We can probably forget about Splinter Cell, Need for Speed, and Burnout for that matter. The difference between Nintendo and these others is Nintendo takes greater risks, the hallmark of most long lasting business and empires. Nintendo has gotten a lot right. Too bad others have not or we might be enjoying some fantastic sequels and new IPs. We'll never know.