An update for Super Mario Maker 2 means that you can now play online with friends - we're here to show you how to get it set up as painlessly as possible. There have also been tweaks to streamline how local multiplayer is accessed, and you'll find all the details below.
Super Mario Maker 2 is a wonderful and incredibly versatile 2D Mario sandbox, but it sometimes has a strange way of doing the simplest things. Some power-ups or options are playfully hidden in the editor, but it can be frustrating when other more fundamental modes aren't immediately or obviously accessible. They're not 'hidden', per se, but you may well spend a few minutes hunting around menus to find what you're looking for, especially if you didn't play the original Super Mario Maker.
After testing the new update, connection issues and lag seem to have been addressed to a certain extent, too. Check out the video below by our resident video guru and all-round lovely chap Alex to get a better idea.
How do you play online with friends in Super Mario Maker 2?
If you wish to play online against friends in Super Mario Maker 2, go to Course World (this can be accessed at any time by hitting the '+' button and (predictably) tapping on 'Course World'. From here select 'Network Play' and you'll see new options to 'Play with friends' by creating or joining a room.
The person who created the room will be in charge of selecting the rules and options, but from there on it's as simple as playing Mario! Hitting the '-' button also enables you to send pre-approved messages to your friends as you play.
'Nearby Play' enables you to play with friends in the same room who have their own Switches (and copies of the game). Only the person who creates the room needs an internet connection to access the courses. Neat!
How do you play local multiplayer with friends in Super Mario Maker 2?
Previously, playing local multiplayer with friends involved downloading the course from Course World and then going to the Coursebot menu and tapping an obscure icon. The new update not only makes the 'Play Together' option available from the Course world screen, but also adds text and makes the icon much more prominent:
Just tap the button, sync the requisite Joy-Con and you're hot to trot. Enjoy!
Simple! Again, once you know where it is you'll never forget, but if this is your first time playing Super Mario Maker, finding the right menu is not necessarily the most obvious process.
Let us know how you're getting on with the multiplayer options in Super Mario Maker 2 below. Also, feel free to share your finest creations with the Nintendo Life community.
Comments 30
I want a "Show Friend's Levels" option in course select
There needs to be a way to play together from Course World and a "Play Together" tag for levels designed for that.
I'm finding the interface in SMM2 quite unintuitive. I couldn't work out how to play local multiplayer for ages, had to look up a guide online to find it was only available for downloaded courses. Likewise it took me quite a while to find my maker ID, I couldn't find how to edit the description of a previously uploaded course, and the choices of what you find in each menu seem arbitrary.
Wrong.
You'll need multiple Switches + game though.
Go to Course World, Network Play and select "Make a room" (Player 1) or "Find a Room" (Players 2-4). Only Player 1 needs to have an active subscription.
All players need to be in the same local network.
@sanderev You need to be on the same network, so that's not playing online.
@chardir True, but this method wasn't mentioned in the article. Which makes the article really a nitpick article. Sadly, the state of Nintendolife these days.
@Bunkerneath There is. Add their Maker-id and look at the favorites tab
No online play with friends? Dafuq?
Well this is a start, now online play
We have 3 people with accounts in my house playing the game. Is there any way to see each other's levels? That seems like the easiest and most obvious thing since they are all on the same Switch. Maybe a tab called "Local levels" that I'm missing?
Considering how I personally think they've completely botched AC:NH by making everyone play on the same island - basically everyone on a system will all be sharing one island, nobody will have their own - the least they can do is let us share levels.
https://animalcrossingworld.com/2019/06/you-can-only-have-one-animal-crossing-new-horizons-island-per-nintendo-switch-system/
I'm seriously beginning to lose any faith I had in Nitneod, they screw so much of the easy basic stuff up. They need some independent focus groups pronto. OR at least hire 1 person with a functioning brain who can do more than make videogames, they can also give people the basic things that they want. Like, if you are paying for cloud saves, let all games cloud save. Or stop charging for it.
I finally checked out online play last night. Did 4 cooperative levels and 4 competitive levels.
...holy crap, that was fun. This game just has layers upon layers of fun things to do. I’m loving it.
@dartmonkey
Thank you. Was really looking for this and was baffled
@chardir I hope you realize that first problem wasn’t a result of it being unintuitive, but rather a result of you searching for a feature that doesn’t exist
@sanderev After spending some time with the game over the weekend, we're putting up a handful of mini guides (a couple more will go up soon) for things that we think might benefit from clarification. The intent is not to nitpick, but rather help players who are starting out with the game over the coming days and weeks that might have trouble finding certain features.
@1UP_MARIO No problem
@ALinkttPresent I guess that's true. But arguably the feature does exist. What I want to do is browse courses in course world then play them multiplayer. I can do that, but it requires jumping through several more menus than is intuitive.
onlin play for me was slow, anyone else?
Joycon only? 🤦♂ I read somewhere that it's not possible to play with Pro Controllers.
@LordVal you can
I managed to figure this out on my own a couple of days ago, but it really is un-intuitive. The "Play with Friends" option should be available directly on Course World.
@sanderev What is the point of a friends list if the game doesnt just pick it up automatically, thats just silly.
@LordVal That is incorrect. In local multiplayer, you can use any controller you want. I have been playing it with daughter. She's using the Pro Controller and I use my 8bitdo SN30 Pro.
This is not very good for parties, because you need to predownload a bunch of levels. Why can't this be used in online mode? It could be so easy, but Nintendo has to make it complicated...
It's clear that local multiplayer was an afterthought.
That's my one BIG disappointment with this game.
And what about story mode?
Story Mode is single player only.
Hi, i haven’t picked up the game yet, but this is what i expected from the game, pls let me know if i’m correct:
*100 nintendo-made levels are available and can be played with multiplayer locally
Or is it only the downloaded courses you can play with local multiplayer?
Is there no way to play a specific stage in competitive multiplayer? Downloading a stage and playing it locally automatically puts you in co-op mode, and creating a room for multiple players automatically picks random online stages to play.
@AlphaElite @sanderev great! Thank you! I should not believe every YouTuber out there!
This is stupidly complicated. I've yet to play this game on couch multiplayer but if I were to, I would expect the process to be sit down, search some stupid term, hand joy con and play. Downloading the courses one by one just seems silly, especially given how many crap ones there are to skip.
Does anybody have some good local co op levels?
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