We are now in the final run of Wii U and 3DS online play. Nintendo has confirmed that the consoles' online features and functionality will no longer work from 8th April 2024, and with that will come the end of a lot of game modes.
One title that will see some pretty heavy cuts is Super Mario Maker. The end of online play means that all community-built levels will soon be unplayable and the chance of 100% completion will be gone. It's a heart-breaking thought, but one that the community — specifically, a trained task force dubbed 'Team 0%' — has quickly rallied towards to make sure that no level is left unbeaten.
We first caught wind of this brave mission back in October of last year. At the time, a whopping 25,000 unbeaten levels were remaining. Now, with a little over 21 days to go before the servers shut down (at the time of writing), there is only one level left. One. Level.
The stage in question is titled 'Trimming the Herbs' and, on an initial glance, it doesn't look all that hard (in a we'd-stand-no-chance-but-a-pro-could-probably-do-it sort of way). Yet, as it turns out, this level is very difficult indeed.
A mainstay of the Team 0% community, ThaBeast721, made a video breakdown of the level's requirements and it's intense. We're talking 18 back-to-back frame-perfect jumps, all while avoiding spikes, Piranha Plants and Boos and while catching and dropping a series of bombs to progress. You can find the video breakdown at the bottom of this article, but trust us, it's no picnic.
The question is, will Team 0% be able to complete it? The mission has been documented on the team's website and seeing the phrase "there is only 1 level remaining" fills us with hope. But what a level it is. And there's the ticking clock of the ending online functionality to take into account too. If it's not beaten in the next 21 days, it never will be. The drama!
We'll be keeping an eye out over the coming weeks to see if Team 0% can wrap up Mario Maker for good, but our fingers are crossed like never before.