Random: This Super Mario Maker 2 Fan Spent Seven Years Crafting 'Super Mario Bros. 5'

I haven't played Super Mario Maker 2 in quite a while but this is so cool! I might open the game again just to try it!

Great idea. I had started a similar project but didn’t want to devote the time to it.

SMM2 is such a great game, especially after the updates. It's kinda sad that it didn't get much attention.

Tried it and it’s definitely not worthy of being called Mario 5. I’ve played better Mario levels that didn’t take 7 years. lol

@FishyS There’s a rumour out there that Nintendo are apparently working on a 2D Mario with a whole new art style which is no longer going to be the “New” type of Mario games. It’s a rumour but then again Nintendo are always working on the next Mario, goes hand in hand really

I will definitely have to try this out. I’ve only played a few hours of SMM2 thanks to the awful multiplayer experience and the fact that I’m not all too interested in making my own levels. But the amount of creativity from some people in incredible.

Mike's a cool guy, I follow him on Twitter.

I also made a 40 level 8 world "claasic" game in Mario Maker 2. I spent months on it rather than years though. I'm proud of it even if it ain't a "Mario Bros 5".

It barely took me a hour to create flappy Mario and PacMario some people have ghosts on a chain I got them firing our of cannons.

Just waiting for the Nintendo C&D

@Jop I wish Nintendo would update SMM2 with the ability to make 2D levels like those found in Super Mario Odyssey. Wrap around corners, hidden walls, reverse gravity sections, etc.

Good thing it won’t be deleted by Nintendo like the last super popular super world…
Glad to see people are still making great levels in Mario Maker! I started playing it again last month.

@BiscuitCrumbsInMyBed don't hold out for anything Zippo says, I enjoy his blog very much and I hate seeing people torment him when a Sonic game doesn't come out but he doesn't have a great record.

Watched Gamexplain's stream of this for a while, and it looks surprisingly good!

I’ll give it a go. Always love stages that are made to feel more like a Nintendo level rather than being super gimmicky or difficult. There are a lot of other people that have made worlds and projects similar to this, though. Still, seems fun.

Incredible! I’ve been looking for another reason to get back in to SMM2. Looks like I’ve found it!

[EDIT] Thought I’d take a 'quick look' at this being streamed on GameXplain’s YouTube channel. Nearly two hours later, I had to force myself to stop watching. I’ve got to leave some of it as a surprise for when I play through this creation myself. The quality is exceptional from what I’ve seen.

@BloodNinja,

You could not devote the time to it, there is just no way I can Ninja approve your actions.

@BloodNinja Same. It's something I'd still like to pick back up someday, though. I had made about 20 of 40 levels for a Super Mario World "sequel" for my brother to play. He's not an avid gamer, but he grew up on Super Mario World and really enjoys that game. I incorporated a lot of nods to the original in the level design, like making a ghost ship level that ends with you falling into a large pit while dodging spike balls. I put probably around 100 hours into it and never finished. I want to do more creative projects, like learn how to make something cool in Dreams, but it's just so time-consuming and I get intimidated thinking about it.

Wow! Interesting.

@Expa0 If Nintendo issues a C&D on their own game, does that mean Nintendo has to recall all physical copies of Super Mario Maker 2 from stores and delist the game from the eShop, or does life go on as if nothing happened?

I WILL check that one out tomorrow immediately.

This effort needs to be lauded.

This is one of those games they could have made a live service game of.

With extra community service such as monthly levels or worlds made by Nintendo. My nintendo gold coins for the person who would clear the game the fastest. Extra characters to earn. Etc.

@Inc That's cool, what's your code?

I had both Mario Makers at various points. I love the depth of the series and appreciate the concept. After a whole, I've come to realize that I prefer to just play Mario games than trying to create them.

@Vortexeo I’m thinking of just buying the game first time to try it out.

I'm always down to try another traditional level Super World. I'm still working on mine. I'm aiming to be done by December 2023.

@Not_Soos That's really great that you did that for your bro!

@johnvboy Huh?

I recreated all of Super Mario Bros 3 in Super Mario Maker 2 ID:H1R-X6F-NRF Block for block except for some elements in Super Mario Bros 3 that were missing and I had to get creative. All of them wouldn't fit in the Super World so I was only able to put the first half there. It is cool that you can use them to play simultaneous multiplayer in Mario Bros 3.

Congratulations on getting me to redownload Super Mario Maker 2.

Couldn’t get into it at first since all I was seeing were Kaizo and Autoscroll but fleshed out stuff like this is what I was looking forward to.

@strollin_stu If you played 10 randomly selected levels in Mario Maker, then thought about what those creators would make in a 3D Mario Maker, you’d probably think differently… I love Mario Maker 2 and think it has a lot better levels than most people think… but it’s very hard to find good level design. I’m sure some people would make amazing levels, but it would be hard to find them among the pile of garbage most of it would be.

@BiscuitCrumbsInMyBed maybe that new game is debuting alongside the movie next year. We can dream

Amazing work. I know what I’ll be playing when I get the chance

Played through the first world, pretty impressive stuff. Definitely will be playing more.

Played the first two worlds. It's definitely above average, though there are a lot of things that keep it from feeling like "classic" Mario. For instance, not all power-ups are progressive. And there's an overuse of 10-coin blocks, which are mostly just time-wasters when placed willy-nilly into courses. Still, good stuff. I'm sure I'll play the rest soon when I get a chance.

I've actually been thinking about getting back into Super Mario Maker 2 for a while now and this might be a good place to start.

Kids who read gaming magazines in 90/91 truly appreciate the history of calling it Super Mario Bros. 5!

I made a 96 stage SMB3 "sequel" in roughly three months back when SMM2 released. Everything I hear says this is not seven years worth of quality.

Oh, interesting. Will try this later

Supe Mario Maker 2 is only like 4 years old...

Already beat the game, it was fun.

Beat the first world. He's done a nice job so far. I'll keep coming back I hope to remember.

@shadownin64 Cool but I also have to be that guy and ask what was the point😅

@Jokerwolf Meaning they likely started working on this back in Super Mario Maker on Wii U, then rebuilt what they had in SMM2, and continued from there.

@Liam_Doolan Umm, cool but... isn't this, like, what Mario Maker is for? I'd imagine a lot of players have made this sort of thing. Why is this guy's so special?

Also I doubt he's been working on this project since 2015. His tweet sounds like he's been playing Mario Maker since the first one on Wii U and learning in the process. He doesn't say that this particular project began in 2015. He probably just meant that he's been working on smaller projects since 2015.

I haven’t made a world, but 15 individual levels that I think are pretty good. Maker ID: LKN-HJG-91G

I’ve made several themed levels:

• Escape Room
• Pinball
• Tetris
• Konami Code
• DK Arcade
• Stealthy Bowser’s Castle

EDIT: Fixed Code

Dusting off my copy this week just to play this! Sounds awesome! As fun as the crazy levels often can be, I had a hankering for some good ol’ fashion Mario platforming fun!

This is dedication. Love to see it.

@chipia That is because SMM 2 was too similar to SMM 1.

A lot of people had hoped it would contain more new features or even secretly hoped for the inclusion of 3D, so you could create Super Mario Land/World type of levels. That would have been totally awesome.

So here is hoping Nintendo might pull it off with a SMM 3.

Been ages since I played Super Mario Maker 2, this might be my way back in.

@Jeronan Hmm... SMM2 was very similiar to SMM1 at launch, but the updates added lots of new content.
Also most Switch owners never had a Wii U, so they wouldn't notice the similarity (just like with Splatoon 2).

Maybe a problem is the mandatory NSO subscription to play other people's levels. Since that's the main appeal of the game, it becomes almost unplayable without NSO, and I guess many people did not want to pay that.

Ah good to read this, just the other day i reortdered my game cupbnoard and found the book for SMM1... SMM2 surely should hyave had a bit more love.. the updaate nr 2 was great with the worlds, but just 1 more update (supermarioland style! more speedrun functions! combi with challenges in NSO! combination with mario 35!) could have made this last forever..

I own SMM2 so will definitely give this one a go.

I've always felt that the biggest letdown with SMM2 is the content discovery. Its too difficult to find "classic Mario" levels of high quality versus all the nonsense levels that are creatively amazing but just the worst to actually play and enjoy.

There's a place for all kinds of projects and level designs - and I enjoy them all at certain times/moods, but I grew tired of trying to find just standard, decent Mario levels.

Mario Maker 2 is my favourite switch game, Will check this out for sure!
My five year old daughter has now got right into Mario and loves the game too!

Amazing courses - cred!

Wait... what's Super Mario Bros. 4?

cool and of course i will be taking a look there

I knew people would be doing this eventually after they gave people the ability to craft entire sets of worlds. Very cool, though. And since this exists within the context of an official Nintendo release, he doesn't need to worry about it being shut down.

@Shmorpmeistercorn I was waiting for someone to mention them. Yeah I also enjoy the blogs, though I had a hunch Nintendo might be making a new 2D Mario anyway given it’s about time and it needs a good shake up.

@pzadvance It wasn’t released as SMB4, but Super Mario World is Super Mario Bros. 4.

Edit: Looks like the Japanese version did include the numbering as a subtitle: Super Mario World: Super Mario Bros. 4

@HeeHo Super Mario Bros 3 was my favorite and I thought it would be interesting to see how many likes Nintendo's own levels in that game would get and how they compared to each other. I don't think there system for promoting levels works or you would think their own levels would get more traffic. The first level got the most plays by far but that didn't seem to transfer at all to any of the other levels.

It is interesting to see which levels get more plays and likes but I am not sure why. Here is my code again ID:H1R-X6F-NRF for people who aren't reading all the comments. I wish I could have taken off with a lot more plays to see which of the Super Mario Bros 3 levels were peoples favorites because it really can't be the first one.

That’s so cool, mad respect! I may have to check it out even though I don’t play the game anymore.

Well, guess I have a reason to play Mario Maker 2 again. I look forward to playing through all of these.

@BloodNinja,

Was a little joke, no harm intended.

@johnvboy Oh, I just didn't understand it, the sentence was a little hard to parse

@Fizza since you are a veteran can I have your thoughts if it is worth it?

@BloodNinja,

No issues.

Cool.

I'll have to check this out, sometime during the week.

Nice work, MetroidMike64!

I just added an Alleyway themed level:

Maker ID: LKN-HJG-91G

I'm on World 4 at the moment. Overall I'd give it a 6/10 or a 7/10 if I'm being generous. It's definitely above average (though that's not saying much given the general quality of levels out there), but so far in ~15- levels there's been nothing that gave me a "wow" moment or made me wonder how on earth he managed to pull that off. Which is something I've experienced fairly regularly from my favorite SMM2 designers. These are not courses that could fool you into thinking they were official Nintendo quality. There are plenty of amateurish choices throughout, an overabundance of randomly placed coins and 1ups (I have something like 70 lives already), no real novel or inventive aspects to make individual levels stand out and be memorable, and most importantly, there's no following of the classic Mario/Nintendo design philosophy of Kishōtenketsu (introduce a topic, develop it, give it an unexpected twist, then bring it to a conclusion). I also appreciate that he's not trying to make levels that punish and torture the player, but so far nothing has challenged me even a little bit. The most compelling designs I've seen from others pull off that elusive balance of "challenging but fair" really well, IMO, and I don't see that attempted here. I guess I shouldn't be so harsh, but the "seven years" claim he throws out is pretty overblown and irks me a bit. That's an average of 2 months spent on each level, or nearly a YEAR per world. You could get a PhD in game design in the time it took him to make these 40 levels. There's no way he was working on it consistently for that long, it's just something he's using (undeservedly, imo) to lend some extra credibility and attention to the project. Phew, all that said - these courses are fun enough, I suppose, and it got me to break out SMM2 for the first time in a couple years. This game REALLY pops on the OLED Switch, it turns out

@shadownin64 was it worth it?

Yay for cluttered courses and messy placements by the professionally unemployed.

Just played through the whole thing in the last couple days. While some of the levels got a bit long in the tooth, it was a lot of fun and a welcome change from the Kaizo Mario levels that too many users make- it was still challenging but not frustratingly so. Nice work all around!

EDIT: And to those saying "It took him seven years to make this??", hey, you never know his situation. Maybe he's employed with a demanding job, or has kids, and could only work on this on his downtime.

I already did the same thing, but a bit of a smaller scale. It plays like a Nintendo release. It's 5 worlds, 25 levels. Each world is a different style starting from Super Mario Bros. all the way to Super Mario 3D World.

I'm on his page and have no idea how to play worlds instead of just courses.