Play our Mario Maker levels! October 7, 2015 1:11 AM   Subscribe

A few of us (me, naju, Navelgazer, branduno and Elementary Penguin) have been making levels in Super Mario Maker for Wii-U. We've started a blog, mefimariomaker.blogspot.com, to show them off. You don't have to follow or friend us or anything to play 'em, just enter the 16-digit ID codes into Super Mario Maker and play! (This does mean you have to own the game and a Wii-U to play 'em, sadly.) Their difficulty is all over the map. If you have the game and want to post 'em too, just send me a MeMail with your email address and I'll invite you! There is no other requirement, besides being a MeFi member, for posting your levels. It's a Blogger blog, so you'll probably end up needing a Google account.
posted by JHarris to MetaFilter-Related at 1:11 AM (50 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite

Oh, excellent, I'd been hoping for something like this. I've made a few, and a couple are even quite good. For one of them I even got so carried away I made an cassette tape cover and instruction booklet for it - The House of Death! (code: 65B8-0000-0051-60E0).

The two other actual good ones I made are:

Big battles on big battleships - 29BA-0000-0039-E173 (a series of ever escalating boss battles in the sky)

The four doors puzzle - DCB4-0000-0042-4431 (four short block based puzzles in a stripily coloured ghost house)

My email address is dngdng@gmail.com, if I could have an invite. Cheers
posted by dng at 3:05 AM on October 7, 2015 [3 favorites]


Mrs. P and I both appreciate you setting this up, JHarris.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:05 AM on October 7, 2015


Your invite has been sent, dng!

I'd like to remind people that all you have to do to play a person's levels is enter one ID code. From that level's page, you can click on the maker's Mii portrait and get a list of all his levels. Further, from that list you can click on the heart in the upper-right corner of that screen to Follow that person, after which you can see what that guy's made from the Following heading under Makers in Course World. You can follow up to 100 people on that page.
posted by JHarris at 3:53 AM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


Also, those fake instructions are great dng, and the level's pretty good too!
posted by JHarris at 4:45 AM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


OOOOH neato! I am going on vacation for a few days and won't be around my Wii U, but when we get back I'll sign up and post mine.

I've got about 4 levels made and I'd love some real time feedback on them.

Exciting!
posted by Twain Device at 4:52 AM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


There are also a bunch of level codes/discussion from this thread worth checking out. There's a thread on mefightclub as well if that's more your speed.
posted by curious nu at 5:00 AM on October 7, 2015 [3 favorites]


This is great, I'm so glad you guys have been doing this. Yay for creative fun group stuff!
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:09 PM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


The really great thing is that we all make such different types of levels, but they're all pretty good, I'd say!
posted by JHarris at 2:02 PM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


(This does mean you have to own the game and a Wii-U to play 'em, sadly.)

I've already said something similar to on Twitter back when I first learned that this game even existed, but if I end up buying a Wii-U, it is at least partially on your head.

(this is awesome)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:48 PM on October 7, 2015


You can get both a Wii-U and a bundled download code for Mario Maker in one package, and it'll even come with a 30th Anniversary Mario Amiibo, which will let you include entertaining Big Mushrooms in your levels, a powerup that can only be placed if you have the figure. It's one amiibo I wouldn't actually mind getting because of the Big Mushrooms, for I could probably come up with some interesting level ideas with that thing....
posted by JHarris at 4:26 PM on October 7, 2015


It's been a hell of a week,so I've been away from designing, but I'll be back to it soon! You can find a lot of my stuff on the blog already!
posted by Navelgazer at 7:18 PM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


Can you guys all put up some Let's Plays on YouTube so those of us without Mario Maker can have fun too
posted by shakespeherian at 8:13 PM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


I would, absolutely, if I had video capture hardware. Alas the Wii-U doesn't come with that facility built-in, you have to have a capture device plugged into a computer for it.
posted by JHarris at 9:06 PM on October 7, 2015


Re: Let's Plays: OMG there's a level where you're a goomba being helped along by your dad!

(For people with Mario Maker, spoilers start after about the 2:00 mark.)
posted by ignignokt at 6:45 AM on October 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


ugh. This game is so up my alley. I'm going to have to buy a Wii U now aren't I?
posted by Hoopo at 9:10 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yoshi's Wooly World comes out next Friday, too!
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:22 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Thanks for posting this. Seems like people are really starting to hit their stride with level design now, and I'm starting to see entire "games" by designers with multiple levels, bosses and worlds. Very cool.
posted by Otis at 10:59 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Otis: That's kind of what I'm working on. Just... not this past week. And this weekend I'm away. But still!
posted by Navelgazer at 11:51 AM on October 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Re: Let's Plays: OMG there's a level where you're a goomba being helped along by your dad!

Oh my god. I wasn't expecting feels from this game. What
posted by naju at 6:55 PM on October 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


I mean, that's a legitimate cutscene. It's amazing. Too bad the highest rated courses aren't like this and are all auto play kaizo crap.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 7:43 PM on October 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


I finally found time to finish the vertical-ish pipe maze level I was working on.

Pipes Climbers: 55FD-0000-009B-A58B
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:52 AM on October 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


I thought that was a very nice course, HZSF! If you want to post it to the blog too, I'm more than happy to add you. Or if you'd rather not bother I could post it for you?
posted by JHarris at 11:45 PM on October 10, 2015


That (being able to post to the blog) sounds great! Should I memail you my gmail for that?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:34 AM on October 11, 2015


Yes, or any address I can invite to Blogger. I'm not sure if you have to have a specifically Google account, but given the rest of the Google cybersphere, I've assumed you do.
posted by JHarris at 12:45 PM on October 11, 2015


Like Mario Maker and charitable donations? OF COURSE YOU DO.

Since the game's been out, Kotaku writer Patrick Klepek has been streaming a bit of Mario Maker on weekday mornings most days. He's played levels people give him on twitter and such and others he's chosen himself. Sometimes they're easy/normal, sometimes they're brutally hard. He spent a couple days wandering around a bafflingly non-linear level that speedrunner Cosmo Wright put together.

Over the last few weeks, a little bit of a feud's grown between Patrick and Dan Ryckert, who currently works for Giant Bomb. After some trash talk, Dan issued a challenge to Patrick.

Patrick has 72 hours from when he first starts it to beat Dan's most hellish creation yet, The Ryckoning: 861E-0000-009C-8913. Loser pays $100 to the charity of the winner's choice. They set up a gofundme page where people can place donations/bets of their own that's already as of this writing raised nearly $5000.

The first of Patrick's streams was this morning, and as I write this he's playing more of it on his twitch stream. He's quick about uploading the recordings to youtube, so just following him there is plenty if you don't want to watch it live.

Naju played the level for a bit this weekend and said it completely broke his brain. People have beaten it, but the clear rate is currently comically low. I've not watched a completed run of the level, though I'm not sure how long my willingness to keep from knowing the solution might break in a few days. Dan's said, "no hidden mechanics, no glitches, not much in the way of leaps of faith. It’s just a big puzzle.” He's also been clear that there's no secret short cut to the end so he could upload something impossible for him to complete fairly himself.

I donated and am personally rooting for Patrick... But man do a lot of people seem truly freaked out by whatever the hell it is Dan put into this thing.
posted by sparkletone at 4:24 PM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


Heh. While there many ways to enjoy Mario Maker, I'm a little taken aback at the reputation it's garnered for hosting treacherous hell levels.

I like it when people finish my levels. I'm not going to make it easy for them usually (at least two of my levels currently have clear rates in the 2.5% range) but if someone finishes it they have not somehow defeated me. Instead, I cheer. It is not hard at all to make a level no one can finish, because the state of what we might call a natural course is infinite difficulty.

I like making general levels where the player has to make use of his own ingenuity to finish it. Mario Maker's toolset is deep enough that these kinds of things are just barely possible; I still have to put a lot of effort into them to make sure that it's not too hard, that there is at least one (and sometimes more) explicit solutions.

Anyway, on Dan Ryckert's level.... people do know they can download his course themselves and look at how it works, right?
posted by JHarris at 4:41 PM on October 12, 2015


Anyway, on Dan Ryckert's level.... people do know they can download his course themselves and look at how it works, right?

A lot of people have said that they couldn't figure it out even after doing that, including naju. Patrick's said he's going to consider opening it in the editor as a last resort Wednesday evening if it comes to that, but he'd like to do it "cleanly" if he can.
posted by sparkletone at 4:50 PM on October 12, 2015


For my part, I've downloaded his level and tried to deconstruct it. I still have less than 10% of an idea on how to clear it.

The best part is that on the surface, it's doesn't appear to be unfair or malicious. It's hard but doable. I spent an hour feeling pretty upbeat about the progress I was making in it. Then, slowly, I realized that there were layers upon layers of mental games being played.

It really is one of the finest levels I've come across. I'm looking forward to watching Patrick try (and most likely fail) to parse it.
posted by naju at 4:51 PM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've been looking at it for a bit, and I've made some headway towards understanding it, but haven't completely yet. I have some suspicions though.
posted by JHarris at 11:59 PM on October 12, 2015


I think, from my examination last night, that the core of the level is building a platform out of stacked POW blocks to reach a door. Doors can only be entered if Mario is standing on a platform, so it's not enough just to reach a door, you have to have solid footing to enter it. There's some misdirection in the level itself: a couple of chambers that cannot be entered, despite appearing like there are pipes that lead in. I probably won't have time to look at it more today unfortunately. (I did make and post a new level, though!)
posted by JHarris at 1:21 PM on October 13, 2015


(Mario mechanics nerdery ahead) From my own experimenting with POW blocks and doors, I've found that POW blocks don't "persist" in the world after you've gone through doors or pipes. So whatever POW blocks would be stacked to reach the door would have to be accessible and found in the main area, not the sub area. I don't think there are enough POW blocks to do that. Those doors are pretty high up.

Towards the end of that main area there's a cannon you can free that shoots out trampolines. My current theory is that you have to stack a POW block (gotten from the beginning of the level - Patrick had those details mostly figured out by the end of Day 1) on a trampoline underneath the door. The POW block will then bounce up and down on the trampoline. So you then jump on top of the POW block, then press up when you're in front of the door. (I don't know if this is actually possible, but it's the best theory I've got)
posted by naju at 2:49 PM on October 13, 2015


I only caught about two minutes of the morning stream today, but it happened to be the two minutes where he was explaining his current theory about what to do before he started playing properly. Patrick's theory then currently lines up with what naju just said. You go through quite a bit of effort to get a pow block and a spring under one of the two doors on the far right and then go through it.

Whether Patrick was able to manage that or not, I can't say. My gut says that getting through one of those doors isn't enough to complete the level and there's some other crazy-ass second half facing him next, but I don't know for sure since I didn't see everything this morning. All I do know is that he hasn't yet finished the level, as if he did my twitter feed would be yelling about it a lot.

He is streaming more tonight but it's going to be later than he did yesterday evening. His current estimate is roughly 9 Central but that's subject to change obviously.
posted by sparkletone at 2:53 PM on October 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


The POW block on springboard theory is a good one. I hadn't done a count of main-area POW blocks, but knew there were more than one. Anyway, getting multiple POW blocks through the one-way passages without triggering one or more would be difficult. With a trampoline, you could just throw that in, then gingerly carry in the POW.

BTW, when you go through that pair of doors? Take the one on the LEFT (Spades, I think). The RIGHT one (Clubs) leads to a death trap. Which strikes me as disingenuous of when Rykert said there were no leaps of faith -- maybe not literally, but that's pretty much a leap of faith in the figurative and traditional senses.

Once you get through the left door, it's home stretch territory. There are certainly traps and tricks to follow (including a place where you're stuck if you don't avoid spikes when falling AND don't make it through with at least a Mushroom), but the gate is not far after that. (Tip for figuring out the flow of levels like this: start from the goal and work backwards.)
posted by JHarris at 3:27 PM on October 13, 2015


Yeah, and damage-boosting seems like a necessity for this level. There's a raccoon leaf and two mushrooms, and I think all of them are necessary to progress and then damage yourself to make it through.
posted by naju at 3:33 PM on October 13, 2015


#TEAMPATRICK IS VICTORIOUS. It took him like four hours of streaming tonight to do it, but he did it. There were close calls. There was heartbreak. But shortly after the fund-raising hit $10k (!!!), he pulled it off! WOOOOOO.

They're gonna leave the gofundme open for the remainder of the 72 hours I think and put half to each charity because of how much money it made. Also, Patrick threw down his own challenge. They're going to do a stream in a few weeks when Patrick's in San Francisco for a wedding where someone else picks the levels and they play them at the same time and see who does better.

Patrick did not star Dan's level.
posted by sparkletone at 11:50 PM on October 13, 2015 [4 favorites]


They're going to do a stream in a few weeks when Patrick's in San Francisco for a wedding where someone else picks the levels and they play them at the same time and see who does better.

They ended up tossing out a few options regarding this but it's clear that something is going to happen in a few weeks when Patrick's in town on Dan's home turf.
posted by sparkletone at 12:07 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


If they're looking for interesting, difficult and fair levels to compete at, I have a few....
posted by JHarris at 1:31 AM on October 14, 2015


Patrick did not star Dan's level.

I think that's my favorite part of this entire thing.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:52 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


So I skimmed through the streams there. There was a question mark box that he never hit, all the way to the right and above the dry bones/cannon/trampoline nonsense, behind a lot of blocks. I'm sure it's nothing helpful and probably it's an enemy, but I'm curious as to what was in that box. Can anyone tell me?
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:46 PM on October 15, 2015


I was able to get to that by duck-cape-spinning with the raccoon suit on. (This level seriously taught me about 5 or 6 different Mario mechanics I was unaware of.) For all your effort, that question mark block just has a spiny enemy in it.
posted by naju at 2:56 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


*WRONG DOOR NOISE*
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:19 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


Zero Punctuation's review of Mario Maker is about the most I've ever disagreed with Yahtzee. He claims the editor isn't flexible enough, when I think it's actually rather more flexible than I would have expected from Nintendo. I mean, it can do autoscroll levels. You can make giant enemies like those in Mario 3, and can apply that to nearly any enemy in the game. And the object limits are much much higher than any preceding Mario game. He comes across as just cranky, when he isn't trying to be "out there" by being ostentatiously obscene of course.
posted by JHarris at 4:04 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


I stopped paying any attention to Yahtzee a couple years ago when he wrote a really wrong-headed editorial about representation in video games. The way Escapist handled Gamergate and some things hat happened as a result have only made me feel better about staying away from Yahtzee and the site he calls home.
posted by sparkletone at 5:45 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've not seen a lot of the Escapist or Yahtzee lately, so I missed the stuff about him being on the Gamergate side. Yikes. Will keep that in mind, and pray for his soul. (Pray to Nyarlathotep, but still.)
posted by JHarris at 8:00 PM on October 15, 2015


Oh, just discovered: James Kochalka (of American Elf and the sublimely silly Glorkian Warrior) appears to play Mario Maker, and has made a few stages. Many of them are quite good! Try: 287C-0000-007A-E3E3, then click on the Mii (GLORKBOT) to see more.
posted by JHarris at 11:19 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


This is awesome. I'm totally buying this game for myself in December.
posted by Brian Puccio at 9:22 AM on October 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


Hey all! There's a Mario Maker update coming! With checkpoints, and sensible power-up progression! And not much else that we're looking for, but they're making moves to update things now!
posted by Navelgazer at 2:13 PM on October 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Checkpoints are going to make things sooo much better.
posted by naju at 2:21 PM on October 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yessssssssssssss
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:01 PM on October 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Super Mario Maker got me to finally beat SM 3D World AND New SMB U, so I'm glad I'll have something to look forward to after I finish beating SM Galaxy 2 again.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 5:02 PM on October 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


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