Tezuka, holding aloft gridded sheets of paper with the familiar colored contours of several Mario courses, reminded viewers that he and Miyamoto originally conceived levels by hand, which they then passed along to their programming team for translation into code. According to Miyamoto, 'the tool got so good that, the more we worked with it, the more we realized we could also turn it into something everyone could enjoy.' co-designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka explained that Mario Maker's inspiration came from Nintendo's own in-house editing tool. Old-timers and pixel art aficionados likely understood that early platforms like the NES relied on interlocking tiles to build characters and worlds, but newcomers raised in the post-bit era may not realize just how rigid those parameters were.ĭuring Nintendo's E3 event this year, Super Mario Bros. With a clever visual cue, Nintendo exposed the tile-based framework lurking beneath its platformers' exteriors. Mario Maker's 2014 debut made this clear with the first clap of its virtual slate board, halting Mario's progress to overlay a graph paper grid and a menu of familiar structural elements atop the play screen.

And Nintendo's willingness to playfully acknowledge their own legacy - allowing makers to seamlessly hop between four distinct Mario aesthetics or import mechanics from newer games into the old - promises to yield many weird, anachronistic, and surprising levels.īut equally as important as placing an accessible tool into the hands of amateur designers is how Super Mario Maker offers a fascinating glimpse into the formal logic driving its games. Previously the purview of ROM hackers and homebrew editing tools, sculpting the Mushroom Kingdom's athletic playgrounds is now within reach of any Wii U owner. Since the game's unveiling during Nintendo's 2014 E3 Digital Direct, critics and players alike have expressed delight at the potential for amateur designers to take a crack at crafting their own Super Mario levels.

Super Mario Maker's release has brought new attention, especially among non-developers, to the structure and design of several of video game history's most important and enduring platformers.

Original super mario brothers game