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A new update for Super Mario Maker 2 has landed with a whole bunch of tweaks and additions to improve your gameplay experience. Prime among them is the ability to play online with (and against) your friends, and here we've collected all the new stuff with information on how to access it.

Nintendo promised the ability to play online with friends would be added following the raising of millions of eyebrows and the resulting hurricane of feedback when it was originally revealed not to feature in the game. It's taken a while, but it's finally arrived along with myriad alterations which sand away some arguably rough edges and make the game just a little smoother.

You can check out the full list of patch notes straight from the horse's mouth, but here we go through the highlights and how to access and enjoy them. So, let's take a look at what's changed...

Online play with friends is now available!

Tapping Network Play in Course World now gives you the option to play with friends. Create or join a room and away you go. Alternatively, if you and your friends are all in the same place and you each have a Switch (and a copy of the game), you can choose Nearby Play. Only the person who created the room needs to be connected to the internet in Nearby Play.

Play locally with friends by selecting 'Play Together' from Course World

Previously, playing locally with friends (on a single Switch) involved downloading the course you wanted from Course World, then going into the Coursebot menu and hitting an icon on the right. Now a nice, clear 'Play Together' button is located at the bottom of the screen directly from Course World. The icon has also moved to the bottom and is accompanied by text in Coursebot, too. Much better.

Send messages in multiplayer

Hitting the '-' button in Multiplayer mode enables you to send pre-approved messages to your friends.

Play using a single horizontal Joy-Con controller

Yep, you can now switch your grip style at will by hitting the little controller icon in the bottom right after pressing '+' to bring up the Main Menu

Controller button

Mix touch and button controls in handheld mode

It's now possible to mix touch and button input while playing in handheld mode, although you can lock out button input via a toggle in the Settings menu.

See a list of your First Clears

Hitting an icon in the top right corner of your Maker profile (shown below) will now give you a list of your First Clears.

First Clears

See a list of official Nintendo course makers

Head into the Leaderboards area of Course World and you'll find a set of official courses from Nintendo - perfect for when the, er, variable quality of user-submitted levels is getting you down. These include the courses played in last summer’s Super Mario Maker 2 Invitational 2019 and will include special event courses in the future.

Official Makers

That's all the main additions to the game at the moment, but there are sure to be more updates in the works. Are you looking forward to new Game Styles? Let us know how you're getting on with these tweaks and what you're hoping for in the future below.