Super Mario Maker pulls the curtain back on game design’s promise and peril

It's easy for a longtime gamer to be a little hipster about Super Mario Maker's existence. Through the magic of emulation tools, hobbyists have been able to craft their own Mario levels on PCs since at least the mid-'90s. The results range from the brutally difficult Kaizo Mario series to the elegant Super Mario Remix. For a dedicated, tech-savvy player, the prospect of creating entirely new Mario games, or playing original, player-created levels, is not new.

Seeing Super Mario Maker as old hat is a bit myopic, though. By marrying an easy to use creation and sharing interface to timeless and familiar platform gameplay, Super Mario Maker is going to open up the basic platformer design process to the masses in a way we haven't seen before. It's a magical, accessible play space that seems primed to create a virtuous loop of gameplay and design collaboration with minimal friction and maximum imagination. It's also one of the best examples yet of the underutilized promise of the Wii U.

A magical, intuitive interface

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Diving in and making your first level in Super Mario Maker is incredibly easy. The drag and drop grid system does have an extremely short tutorial to go over the basics, but anyone who's ever played a 2D Mario game will instantly understand how to place goombas, pipes, and question-blocks. Being able to jump in and playtest a level in progress with the tap of a button (and half-a-second of loading) is a crucial feature that lends some immediacy and tangibility to the process, allowing you to fix as you go quite easily.