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This week brought one of the quirkier content updates for Super Mario Maker with a Mercedes course and Mystery Mushroom Outfit. A rather peculiar addition, it continued the trend of Event Courses blending Nintendo franchises - often tying into recent releases - with third-party partnerships. There has also been a major update in recent times, of course, that added new features such as checkpoints, which seemed to be a response to player feedback.

According to Producer Takashi Tezuka and Senior Director Yoshikazu Yamashita we can expect new content and updates to keep coming in the future. Speaking to Polygon, both men spoke about some of the criteria for selecting additions to the game, though have stated that we shouldn't expect popular Nintendo figureheads to feature; the goal is to appeal to a wide audience.

Tezuka-san: In the earlier Mario games, we weren't really considering worldwide culture or international culture when we created them. But that has been something that we have had to consider more recently. We want our games to be enjoyed and understood worldwide by as many people as possible.

Yamashita-san: The most important thing we considered in selecting things for this is we want to make sure we're considering what will be popular in America and Europe as well. So while [Arino and Nekki] are more focused on Japan, we're also interested in considering things that will be popular in the West.

In terms of celebrities, it would be great if we could be able to get people to do it for free, but that's often not the case.

People like that [Reggie Fils-Aime and Shigeru Miyamoto] would only be appealing or recognizable either within the game industry or to people who follow games. And we want to make sure the Costume Mario characters we add appeal to a wide audience.

Yamashita-san explained that Super Mario Maker is considered the latest game as a 'service', something Nintendo has been increasingly exploring in games like Splatoon, in particular.

We're rather enjoying the regular additions to Super Mario Maker. Are you playing it regularly to check out new stages or features?

[source polygon.com]