Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 236: Super Mario Maker

Episode Date: July 29, 2019

We're living in the era of the gig economy, and now our apartments are hotels, our cars are taxis, and we even have to make Marios ourselves. But that's okay, because Nintendo's Super Mario Maker series has thrived over the past half-decade as not only a celebration of Mario's 2D legacy, but an amazing toolset that lets budding creators put together levels that aren't even in the wildest dreams of Nintendo's top craftsmen. On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Chris Kohler, and Ray Barnholt as the crew explores the finer points of Mario do-it-yourself-ery.

This week on Retronauts, we omit Super Mario Bros. 2. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mack. in today's topic is Super Mario Maker. That's right, the economy is so bad. We are forced to make our own Mario's to make ends meet. Before I go on, though, let me see who else is here with me today in the San Francisco recording studio here.

Who is here across from me? Jeremy Parrish. And who do we have over there? It's Ray Barnhol. Well, no one's saying anything funny. Come on, guys. Sunday morning. I know it's the Lord's Day.

Let's snap it up. You have to make your own jokes. Oh, come on. I can't carry this myself. Chris, it's on you. Funny, Funny Town. I can't be funny because you got me thinking about Super Mario Bros. 2 and how depressed I am. I guess now we're all in morning.

Chris Kohler. Thanks, Bob. Thank you. For Mario 2 not being in Mario Maker. I want you to go make yourself off a cliff. Oh, wow. I can make a long, like a short bridge off a long pier. Is that how it works?

I don't know how it works. But yes, we're talking about Mario Maker. The great Mario building, Mario Love Building game by Nintendo. Of course, Mario Maker 2 is a new game now. And we've all made her own Mario's. And you may be saying this is not nearly old enough. Bob, you're breaking all the rules. You're a real troublemaker, Bob Mackey.

But I have to say Mario Maker is a collection of all the best parts of Mario that you can rearrange it will. And that's why I think it's perfect for this episode of Retronauts. And I hope no one argues with me because I can't be wrong on this. Well, to be fair, 51% of the levels currently online and Super Mario Maker 2 are recreations of World 1-1. That's right. Or they're just a bunch of one-ups on the screen that put there by a 4-year-old.

And those always come up when I'm playing the multiplayer section. But, so yeah, I wanted to reflect upon Mario Maker 2, how it collects and builds upon all the Mario parts it contains. I also want to talk about our experiences with making Mario levels and our experience with Super Mario Maker in general. It's a series that is now only four years old, but I still think has a lot left to go, and we still don't know what the mystery, what sixth style is going to be? Is that still up in the air? It's still up in the air. Yeah, so this is being recorded before that announcement will happen, but I guarantee you it won't be Mario. too because Nintendo wants to break our hearts.

But I want to talk to everybody about the series. Let's go around the table. What is your experience with the series? Chris, you are very prolific online as a Mario Maker. I played a lot of your levels. They're very fun. Thank you. Can you talk about your experience with the series so far

and what you're thinking about this newer game? Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, as soon as I saw Mario Maker won, you know, on the Wii U at E3, I knew I had to have it. I was very excited about making Mario levels and dove into it on the Wii. and, I mean, Mario Maker was this, like, really great Wii U game because I think it made good use of the fact you had a touchscreen on your controller

and the TV screen running in tandem because I think, you know, well, like a lot of people, I would sit there, make a level, and then glance up to the television and play my level and then glance back down and edit my level. On the switch, you can't do that, but, you know, it doesn't... The game suffers a tiny bit for the lack of that experience, but not that much. But, yeah, I just, I really, I'm less of a Mario Maker player and more of a Mario Maker maker as far as how I approach the game.

Yeah, I did play this when it was a new thing they were showing off at one of the E3s. Was it 2013 maybe or 2014? Let's say 14. 14 probably. When I played it, I was like, well, this is cool, but how are you going to make this into something you can sell? So I was skeptical. But I am very happy with the series to date, except for the 3DS game, which I didn't play

because it felt like kind of redundant and also it cut out the core element of Mario Maker, which is sharing your levels. Right. And I know there's a single player component to that. We can talk more about that later. But Ray, how about you? Have you, how long have you dabbled

in the Mario Maker franchise? Well, I'm the complete opposite of Chris, well, in many ways, but in this way especially because I... What are the other ways? Well, I'll run down a list off the line. So this is the first time I played Marius. Mario Maker 2, and I got it like a week late, and I've made like one level kind of

working on some others, so this appearance today will basically amount to a cameo, I think. Are you like the red toad of this four-player posse here? Yeah. Is it blue toad? I can't, I forget what color the toads are in this game. Well, it's tootette now. Oh, they made Toadette, yeah. Blue toad and Toadette, yeah.

So they kind of made a new sprint. Yeah, and lagging behind as well. Yeah, because of latency. It takes a long time to make a level. I'll say that much. Yeah, that's true. Even a bad level. So also the thing I want to say is that, you know, I joked about this on Twitter, which is not a joke.

But, you know, as someone who started making a game myself before, it's like I feel immense guilt just thinking about Mario Maker because it's like I could be working on my real game. Yeah. And it's also a twofold thing of like I never had an inclination to make a platformer before. So I'm not really platformer minded despite the fact I've played every Mario game. But, you know, so it's just like this weird hump that I finally sort of got over just recently. I don't have the problem of making my own game, but I feel like the tool set they give you gives you a lot of options as to what kind of levels you want to make.

So it's not just like a very little of the Mario Maker I played has actually just been a straight-up left-to-right platforming stage. Sure. Even the Nintendo levels, but we'll talk more about those in a bit. Jeremy, how about you? The Mario Historian. Are we talking about Mario Maker 2 or just the series? The series, Maker of Mario Videos, Jeremy Parrish.

Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much the extent of my Mario Maker experience. was putting together some very public displays of my level designing competence back before the first game launched and basically saying, hey, everyone, watch me learn how to do things and make bad levels. And since then, I played through the single player campaign of Mario Maker for 3DS, and I've dabbled a little bit in Mario Maker too. But I don't know, I love the idea of Mario Maker, and I'm really happy it exists, but I wish it had existed maybe like 10 or 15 years. years ago when I would have had time and energy to actually dive into it and create stuff. As it is now, I just, I lack the time, the imagination, the skill to actually do anything worthwhile in Mario Maker.

So the dream of Jetpack Goonies will remain a dream. Yeah, probably. We need to fund this somehow. Someone fun Jeremy free time to make it. But yes, so Mario Maker 2, I want to talk a little bit about what the game is and who makes it because I was just looking into who made it. I didn't really look into this for the first game. So the director of Mario Maker 2 is basically the series director.

So his name is Yosuke Osino. Like I said, he directed Mario Maker 1 and the 3DS port of Mario Maker for the Wii U. So he joined Nintendo in 2005 as a tech support guy, but then joined game development in 2007. And he is a project leader at Nintendo EAD number 4, which essentially just makes Mario games with Tezuka and Miyamoto, the creators of Mario and Zelda and occasionally they will make a Pickman game every 5 to 10 years. So they also do that.

And now it's 10 years. So hey, what's it? Hey, Pickman or Hey, you, Pickman? It's just Hey, Pickman. That doesn't count. I know, but... We don't talk about that one. I heard it's not bad, but I never played it.

It's there, but it's not what anyone wanted from Picman. No, no. We didn't want a 2D puzzle platform. So prior to this whole series, he was not a director. He was mainly a programmer, which makes sense because, like, Mario Maker is a very user-friendly programming suites.

So I think he was trying to basically use his programming know-how to say, like, how can I give, you know, platform players enough of a tool set for them to do what we do behind the scenes of Nintendo? So his role makes sense as to what he does with Mario Maker. And I didn't want to talk a little bit about the designers of the game. So the designers of this game also did a lot of the level designed for the single-player content, which we'll talk about. So we talked a bit about these guys in the past.

I'm sure we talked about them several times, actually. But two of the designers for this game are Shigafume Hino, who is the character designer for Yoshi. He did a lot of character design for Nintendo games before moving on to more of a developer role. And he is one of the four directors of Yoshi's Island and also is a co-director of the Pickman series. And if you go back to our Yoshi episode,

I'm pretty sure we talked about him in a great amount of detail in his entire career. But that's Hino. And has anyone in this room interviewed him? I have a Pikmin 2 thing that he signed. That's it. I don't know if he gets around or anything. No, everybody's shaking their head.

So we also have Yasuhisa Yamamura. So he started in the Zelda Mines. He's a director of Zelda 2. And he co-directed Zelda Link of the Past, and he did dungeon design for Link's Awakening. So he is basically a level design guy. He designed levels for DokeyDoki Panic, which is conspicuously missing from this collection.

Also, Yoshis Island, Mario 64, Super Mario 64, and most of this new Super Mario Brothers series, though we'll forgive him for that because he did so many good things in the past. I don't know if everyone has heard our new Super Mario Brothers podcast by now, but... They haven't. Okay, so the verdict is out as of now for our listeners, but I know what we thought about those games.

But yes, two Nintendo lifers who've been there for a long, long time, are on this project just making Mario levels, which is awesome, in my opinion. I just feel like it's why these levels are so good. I do think, though, how many of us in here I've actually played the single player stuff in the game? I do, yeah. I played some of it. So this is a Mario game made by the people who make Mario games,

but I feel like it is very much in line with the SPD or R&D1 philosophy in that the levels that they make in this game, the levels that they're encouraging you to make, are not the standard run left to right to the goal Mario levels. I'm sure there are a few of those, but I was amazed by just how quickly the single player content deviates from that. And even the tutorial stuff is like, no, make

different stuff. Here's how to connect different rooms. Here's how to tell stories through putting different parts down. So I feel like the levels here have a lot more to do with WarioLand than you do with any existing Mario game. I think that Nintendo has, with Mario Maker 2, so with

Mario Maker 1, Nintendo is all about like, oh, just, you know, make a regular Mario level. And then they realized that what people wanted to make, I mean, you know, it's a tough thing to make a regular Mario level. What a lot of people really wanted to make was, A, I think, like, story levels in my case, right? Like, levels that seem

to have, like, a narrative. People wanted to make Kaiser levels. People wanted to make you know, really, really difficult, super challenging levels that had to be either conquered with, you know, incredible skills or, like, special tricks or even, like, bugs that people don't know about. People kind of wanted to create,

I think, Mario levels that were outside of what a typical Mario level would be, because that's what they want to see in Mario games, so they kind of bring themselves to it. With the story mode in Mario Maker 2, I think that Nintendo has accepted this in large part and embraced it because the story mode levels, like, none of them approach actual like Kaiser level difficulty, but they touch on it. Like there are like troll levels in the story mode.

Yeah, yeah. There are these like weird, tricky kind of levels. One of the more popular types of levels that you'll see now is this is the 20-second speed run where you just use the on-off switches, which are a new thing in Mario Maker 2, and you just have to run as fast as you can, and you'll hit on-off switches at certain points to open up the pathway for yourself. Well, there's one of those in the story mode in this game. I mean, that's what these are all kind of based around.

So, yeah, when you play the story mode levels, they are atypical Mario levels because I think Nintendo has realized what people want to. to do with Mario Maker is to make atypical Mario level. So they're sort of leaning into that, which I think is pretty cool. I love it. So, Jeremy, I saw some head wagging during my description of this game feeling a lot more like a Wario Land game. I wouldn't say headwagging, but I have...

I just wanted to know what that reaction was. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time recently with Wario Land games, Wario Land for Virgil Boy and Wario Land 2. And what I really took away from those games is that Wario Game Design, Wario Land Design is built around the idea of really taking an idea, like one concept, and just creating a massive level to really

let players chew on it for a while. I mean, some of those virtual boy Wario land levels, you have a 20 minute time limit and you would think, oh, yeah, whatever, 20 minutes, come on. But some at, like, the haunted house level, they take a long time to finish. And I think it's just a limitation

of the Mario Maker, like the level container. It's just not big enough to really, like, you go full Wario Land. I mean, I agree that, you know, it is pushing away from the standard Mario concept and it does push more toward like the Wario Land. Here's an idea, you know, figure it out. Yeah, I feel like it's more like one and two.

It's not like a Wario Land 4 kind of thing. There's only so many things the parts can do within the context of you building them. Nintendo wants, Nintendo wants you to upload your levels and Nintendo wants to be able to take all those levels that players upload and remix them into content because Nintendo wants to take those levels and put them into the endless mode of the game, which will throw the levels at you. It wants to take all those levels and put them into Versus Multiplayer, which strings levels one after the other.

So Nintendo can't let people create a 20-minute stage. They can't let people create an overly large stage. Even though the software could support it if they wanted to, they need everything to be. I mean, you could have a max of 500 game seconds, game ticks on the timer, and the geometry of the levels. You have an area and a sub-area. and that's it. And they restrict you to that because they need all these levels to be usable for

these sort of algorithmically generated games that they generate. Yeah, I mean, it's like I said, it's a limitation of the container. It's an arbitrary boundary that they put on the games. And, you know, that's fine. They also don't let you stream together multiple levels to create your own world, which is something I really wanted in the first game and they still haven't added. And I realize they're not going to. But like to me, that would be kind of the thing that would really pull me in is letting me create a cohesive, you know, interconnected journey through more than one stage. Yeah. That's not really possible.

Where you could keep your coins, keep your one-ups, you know, have save points. Yeah, like some permanence and persistence. That would be really cool. And they, yeah, they don't seem to want to do that. And people want to, there's some people who are creating, like you can upload a maximum 32 levels for a user. So there's people who are like, oh, I made my own Mario game. And it's meant to be played from this level to the final showdown with Bowser.

And it's like, that's, I think they're, it's cool if that's what you want to do, but I don't think they're going to get a whole lot of traction doing that because I really think Mario Maker is about that. Give me a full experience in this three-minute level, you know? Like, it's about building it all into one level. That's how Nintendo has made it. I think it could be the other thing, but they decided to go in the direction that they did and go almost with like the NES remix style where it's just like quick hits, quick hits.

quick hit. So that's fine. I mean, they're pulling from like contemporary, almost like mobile game design where it's really about like instant gratification and even the single player mode you take on individual levels in the order in which you choose. I mean, some unlock as you progress, but you're given like five levels at once and you can choose which ones you want to play. So it doesn't have that, you know, sense of a journey of, you know, that's been there since

the original Samaria Brothers where you're like going over land and then you go to the castle and you go out of the castle and down the pipe and then you're underground and then you go across the bridge and you're at the next castle. Like that was, you know, that's baked into the Mario concept I think became really explicit

with Super Mario World and it's overworld map. And that's not what this is and that's fine. But, you know, for me, like that's, I like game worlds. I mean, that's my thing, I guess. And so I wish Mario Maker had some of that. But so it goes.

Yeah, I just, uh, I do. Yeah, I just, I do feel like they were kind of getting bored with the new Mario. series, and that's why New Super Mario Brothers 2 was a little weirder, and this feels like them fully just being able to be free of designing levels around that whole four-player concept and being able to make more puzzly

levels and things like that, where that was really not the case with Mario the New Super Mario Bros. Games, because even with that series, I think you couldn't have a very long level you need to explore. It had to be built around multiplayer in general. And I guess... I don't know, New Super Mario Brothers,

we, you, New Super Mario Bros. there's you. That's the one. Yes. The one that I like. It did have a lot of levels that, you know, you could see them pushing more towards some of the exploratory and innovative level concepts that you see in Mario Maker 2. Like they were really starting to push away from that quick, satisfying hit and more toward, you know, back toward the Super Mario World style, like grab a Yoshi, poke around in every corner, see what secrets you can find. And yeah, I think this really kind of pushes back in that direction with Mario Maker 2, but at the same time, you still lose that, that binding element that pulls everything together into a cohesive journey.

So, yeah, it is, for me, it is spiritually Wariolandish in that, or R&D1-ish in that it is also features a lot of callbacks to Mario Paint. Like, of course, the Undo Dog is a major part of the story mode and also, of course, an icon on the screen. And I believe these things were present in the first game as well. I didn't have time to jump back and pop a disc into my Wii U to, to, to, you remember. They just weren't made into characters, basically, in the same way.

Yeah. Yeah. The core spot, which was the thing you basically save your game with in Mario Paint, which would take a, like, a minute and a half to save your shitty animation. The rocket ship that erases the progress, and, of course, like, sound effects and icons from Mario Paint, it's all in there. And basically, just like, a real focus on subverting concepts you're familiar with and kind of trolling you, as Chris was saying. There's a lot of trolley levels that were made by the design team and the, the

trollishness is accentuated by them adding sound effects and very, very fun effects to the screen to show like, yes, we're fucking with you. Like, this is not a normal Mario level. We want you to make up, make weird levels for us because we love these weird levels that we made. I'll tell you what, there is a retro

version of the Mario Maker Story mode, and that is World E in Super Mario Advanced 4. Yeah. Yeah, because they basically gave you a bunch of weird levels that get kind of trolley, and they give you a menu of them and you just go through all of them. Is that the e-card levels? That's basically what I'm saying.

And are those, like, available through a virtual console version? Yeah, on the Wii. I'm glad they finally... It's weird that's the home to a lot of good virtual console games that have no other release anywhere else. We're talking about this yesterday. All the Castlevania GBA games are on the Wii U and they're nowhere else. And they'll be in a collection for $30 one day, so check that out. But anyway, I'm just saying the seeds were planted.

Right. Yeah, that's cool. And importantly, I think you mentioned the sound effects. I think it's important to mention it. talking about Mario Maker. Like, I think the sound effect is, like, the thing that really separates Mario Maker from the aesthetic and the look of the older Mario games. Like, that's the one element that they've put in here that's really, like, outside of

what you would typically find in a Mario game that allows you to create things that don't feel like, you know, the real thing in a good way. And our really good storytelling tools, if you know how to use them. Yeah, and they remind me of things from, I'm going to keep going back to Wario. I'm sorry. me of things, uh, from Mario land, uh, like in Mario where like the weird sound effects that you would not normally hear in the context of Mario, like, uh, the horrible screams you can give, uh, enemies as you kill them. They're, they're horrifying screams. Uh, and like a lot

of weird sound effects and effects and just a lot of just like bizarre, uh, things that you would not associate with, uh, the kind of friendly and cuddly and weird in a cute way, Mario stuff. It's like kind of weird in an off-putting way, which yeah, is not what I associate with EAD's games or is this EAD or whatever they're called now. They're all one big group at this point, unfortunately. It's like R&D, it's like something, something foreign. But yes, you're right. The aesthetic is, it seems more R&D1 than R&D3.

How about that? Yes, I will take you there. Yes, I do want to talk a bit about the single player stuff because it's really good. Like, I was not expecting to play any of this, but I was on a trip and I thought, well, I don't have time to make any more. Mario levels, so it might be fun to see what they did. And I expected this just to be, like, very of the new Super Mario Brothers type, where they're just like, well, here's what a level looks like, you know, figure it out. But these, from the very beginning, they're designed to teach you, like, here is what this

whole engine is capable of without, like, pointing at things and saying, no, no, you can do this. You can do this. It's like, like, gradually and very smartly, they sort of unroll, like, all the possibilities or just, like, a hint of the possibilities of just how things interact with each other, because it is not essentially like a physics-based world, but like the effects that things have on each other are consistent throughout all the levels.

I guess depending on the style too. So they're just like setting up what these chain reactions can do throughout these many levels that they've created for you. And of course, it's all done through a very typically cutesy Mario thing in which they have just rebuilt Peaches Castle. I don't know what happened. I don't think that's explained. But Undo Dog basically deletes it

and you have to basically rebuild the levels from scratch by earning coins from every level, and it does feel like a mobile game sort of interface where you're just like building parts of something, except you're not spending your own money this time. And Jeremy, you did review Mario Maker 3DS, and apparently they had 100 exclusive levels for that that are different than these inclusive levels.

And a lot of people did not like the fact that you could not share levels in Mario Maker 3DS, but they've said this like, oh, there's a very good single-player game. Can you comment on that? I know it's been a while, but did you play those levels? I did. I played through the single-player campaign. I feel like there are certain Mario games that just, for whatever reason, the public collectively decides,

eh, we're not going to pay attention to this or we don't care about this. And, you know, they, despite the fact that this is a, you know, million-selling series, tend to get overlooked or dismissed. And I think that's really a shame because, yeah, like the 3DS Mario Maker definitely missed out on some of the core appeal. but the 100 levels were in there to kind of balance that out. And it's a really great single-player Mario campaign with a lot of really weird levels, a lot of inventive level types and approaches and concepts that you'd never really seen in another single-player Nintendo Design Mario game.

I cannot give you examples of them because it's been years and, you know, I'm senile. But, yeah, I do remember being really impressed by a lot of the stages. is that they start very kind of basic and simple and small. And the longer you play, the more they ramp up in size, in complexity, and surprise. And, you know, really twist around some of the concepts of the Mario platforming, first-party design universe, I guess you want to say, or milieu, I don't know. So, yeah, I was really impressed with Mario Maker 3DS, and I gave it a pretty good score, and that made people angry because, you know, the one element that it was missing,

for them negated all the other high-quality elements that were added. And, you know, as a maker game, it was still very good. Like the sharing, lack of sharing really sucked. But it was still a great way to make single-player levels. It had all the tools and abilities of the Wii U game. And then it also had this additional campaign on top of it that really kind of, you know, pushed it in a different direction. So it was more like, you know, play these levels, draw inspiration,

create your own takes on these ideas. It was a different experience than the console Mario Maker 2s, or console Mario Makers, but still a worthwhile game. And I really strongly recommend people track down the 3DS version before it goes out of print and give it a try. Like now it's probably super cheap or as cheap as any first-party Nintendo Mario game gets. $30. Yeah, but I think it's in the $20 select.

That's good. Yeah, but I think, you know, So eventually it'll go out of print and people will be like, oh, I missed out of that Mario game. And it'll open a price. Probably not because they sold like, they sold a lot of it. I mean, that was why they made it because, I mean, the 3DS, they could sell millions and millions. Did it? Did it so well? I actually don't know.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I was, I think it was multiple millions of copies. Yeah. Okay. Oh, nice. Of course. Yep. Okay.

Well, then don't bother playing it. It's just wait 20 years and then go back and, you know, play out of retro. It's not for me, the 36-year-old extremely online man, so it must be bad. Mm-hmm. Well, I ended up buying one for my nephew, and he loved it. Yeah, he's very excited about Mario Maker 2, Mario Maker 2. But, you know, the 3DS version appealed to him, and I've met other friends whose kids play Mario Maker 3DS all the time even now.

So it definitely was fine for people who just want to be creative. You know, like kids who play Minecraft and build stuff in Minecraft, it's the same sort of appeal. There's a lot of young kids who like playing Mario Maker. They don't upload levels. They don't, you know, they don't, they're not really worried about being super creative with it. They just love the idea of going in, drawing a level, playing it, making their mom and dad play it, killing their mom and dad, whatever. It's almost as though Nintendo isn't really that interested in core video game or internet discourse.

I don't know. It's weird. I think, you know, I mean. Keep kids offline. If they want to be creative, keep it themselves. So I'm saying, I don't want to see that shit. Get those levels off of my Mario Maker. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Whenever I see a level, I was like, this was made by a child. It's terrible. It was probably actually mine. Or Jeremy, a child or Jeremy. But, yeah, like, I was surprised from the very beginning how difficult these levels were. And I think, like, I can't, like, guess what the people making these levels are thinking. But I think there is enough established knowledge about platforming where things like Celeste exist and Super Meat Boy have existed.

We'll talk a bit about Kaiser Mario World and the ROM hacks, stuff like that in a bit. But I feel like Nintendo has the knowledge that these much harder sort of, like, Massokore or whatever versions of Mario exist. And so like Chris was saying earlier, it's not nearly as tough as Kaiser, but there are little Kaiser touches in these levels that I thought were really interesting and something I did not expect from a core Mario game from Nintendo for sure. Any other thoughts about the single player stuff? I thought a lot of levels stood out.

I just like how each one like dials down to one idea. And some are just like maybe 30 seconds long. And one of them is just like, okay, if you wear the beetle hat, you can destroy the certain type of enemy who's coming at you. So destroy 15 of these. And that's just the level. So that's not the most interesting level, but it's just like, oh, I guess I can do this with this part. It's not, it wouldn't be written down anywhere. But it's like the proof of it exists within the single player campaign.

Sorry, Chris. Well, no, no, no, it's okay. It's like two things on that. One is that, like, yes, it's supposed to be there to get you thinking about your Mario Maker level does not have to be, especially anymore. now that Mario Maker 2 has clear conditions like Kill 15 of this enemy. Also that Mario Maker 2 lets you divide up the area into rooms now and stops the scrolling.

It's meant to get you to think about, hey, a Mario level, a Mario Maker level, a Mario level might just be, here you are, run to the flagpole, et cetera, but a Mario Maker level can be more than that. They want to show you different things. They also want to tutorialize you about different elements in the level. The thing is, it's the only way the game teaches. you about some of these different elements and

I really, really wish that Mario Maker 2 would maybe explain to you, I think, like had a glossary or some kind of reference material because they've got the single player mode which you can play through and by the time you get to level 100 you probably forgot what you saw on level 2

and then they have a series of game design almost like a basic game design courses where they talk to you about certain like philosophies of game design which is super cool and you get to learn about how Nintendo actually makes these games, but there's

nothing, I mean, like, I wanted, you know, I could really use a rundown of what the on-off switch does, because it turns on and off these blocks, but did you know that it also affects certain conveyor belts? Did you know that it also affects when you're in a ghost house and there's a little circle of light around you? It affects the size of the light?

Well, I didn't know that until I was 90% of the way done making a level in the dark with on-off switches. I think part of it is like they want the joy of discovery, but also that does conflict with, like, no, I just want know if this thing does. Yeah. And the tutorial is cool. Like, so the tutorial is they got rid of Mario, which was the lady from the first game. And I believe the, probably the 3DS game. And there's a woman named Nina and the pigeon Yamamura is back and they have conversations with

each other. They're very cute. Unfortunately, like all the tutorializing takes place outside of the context of play you're making. So it's, it's you having to internalize this information and then, you know, internalize it, but choose to, you know, go through it and pay attention to it. And engage with it, it will. but I do think it's cool that it's not super literal at first where I didn't go through all the tutorial stuff but I like how it's not like

well here's Mario and if Mario gets hit this happens and you gotta make it to the goal it's like well here is Nintendo's designers thinking like what is the player thinking what if you put an enemy here oh you're not giving them enough time like it's more like philosophical or conceptual at first than saying like

oh Mario can only jump this many blocks or like you know the fireflower does this like it's very interesting from the start I think it's like they trust the audience to have established Mario knowledge, or at least gain that knowledge by playing a few levels. Yeah, that's the kind of stuff you can find that out on your own. You can drop some blocks in the game and just start playing around

and start understanding, well, how high does Mario jump? But then the stuff that they really hammer on in the tutorials, but like, treat the player fairly. Like, don't, you know, like, you should understand, like, if you're going to troll the player, fine, but you should know when you're doing it. And just trying to get people to understand, like, you need to test your levels.

You personally can't just play them. I mean, you can, but like there's going to be a lot of stuff you're going to miss. You can't control people. People aren't going to do what you think they're going to do. So I want to talk about Mario Maker before Mario Maker and that I had no idea this went back this far, but are we all aware of Lunar Magic? Yes.

I heard of it. The spells you cast in Lunar. Not so much, but... Lunar Magic. Check this out. Oh, God. Released in September of 2000, it was the first program of this variety. Of course, Nintendo didn't make this.

They didn't license. it, they didn't cotton to it, but it was made to hack the Mario World ROM to build levels. And we can do an entire episode on this kind of thing alone because out of this scene came like randomizers and things like that. And you can watch great speed runs of that at Summer Game Stunk Quick. I was just there. I saw The Legend of Zelda one speed run with a randomizer. Very cool and very fun.

But around the time, the emulation boom was happening, programs like this were being created. And Lunar Magic spawned a very prolific community who would create Mario World, you know, extra, extra hard versions of Mario World. And the most famous one is, it's a trilogy, actually, but it came out in 2007. It was unofficially released because, again, it's a ROM hack. But Kyzo Mario World is super popular. I'm sure many people have seen videos of it online without realizing, like, oh, this was made by ROMHackers or this is a fan project.

But it is Speed Run a lot, and there were two in like the mid-aughts or late-a-auts and one in around 2012. So this, I have to tell you guys, like, the hardest levels in Mario Maker that you see online are directly inspired by Keizzo. Like, I don't think they would exist without Kaiser as a bad influence. I don't know. Do you guys have any experience with Kaiser?

Like, playing it or watching it? No. I remember watching it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I remember watching. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, when it was called Asshole Mario. And the guy would kind of get it together

into, like, you know, watching somebody play through it and, you know, like dying on this trollish thing. And then the funny thing was just watching that it was just, okay, you finally got past this thing. Oh, and something else killed him now and, you know, watching that sort of devious creation. Yeah, it was sort of around the same time as things like I want to be the guy and the early flash games that eventually would become things like Super Meat Boy and a lot of the early, really, really hard platformers. But even the Kaiser levels that are a Mario Maker now, I mean, I don't see a lot of levels with that level of, I mean, there was humor built in to these, to these, that. The one that I'm thinking of, the one that was called like Asshole Mario or whatever. There was a lot of humor built into them because, you know, the level would start out normally

and then, you know, he tried to jump over a pit, but there would be an invisible block there and it would knock him in. You know, okay, well, now I know to avoid the invisible block. And then he jumps over the invisible block and a piranha plan hits him. You know, okay, well, now I know to avoid those things. And there's a good sense of, like, funny comedy timing versus, I think, what a lot of, you see. It's like, oh, check out this crazy Kaiser level. And it's just like, okay, fine. And it's just like a massive, gigantic pit with one cupa-trupa shell.

And you have to jump over it, kick the shell up, jump off the shell. The maze is made out of phara plants. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The creativity is not there always where it's just like, it's all just like a wall of death instead of just like very kind of outsmarting you at every step. Like, oh, you thought you could jump here, but then this is going to happen. But oh, you thought you could avoid this, but then this will happen to you. So, yeah, some of the levels I see.

That almost comes from Sororio Brothers, too, the Japanese version. where that whole thing, not the whole thing, but a lot of what went into Mario 2 for Famicom Disc System was subverting people's expectations. Like you learn to play Mario, now you're going to play it and we're going to do things

that pull the rug out from under your feet. Well, people become absolute experts at this game, but the Mario games that Nintendo makes, they are consciously not making them for experts. You can't make it for experts because it's not a game that's for expert level players. So it falls to, I mean, players, you know, again, players want to make these really hard levels for themselves.

And, like, that's what a, you know, sizable subset of people want to do with Mario Maker is they want to make the, you know, ridiculous expert courses that Nintendo, you know, can't put into a regular game. Yeah, we mentioned the Japanese Mario, too, which we're all familiar with. I totally forgot about that. I feel stupid. But, yeah, I feel like that game was directly made, like,

yes, you played Mario before. in the same way this one is, of course, it's not as hard as that. Right. It's four super players. Four super players. I consider myself super. Yes, it's for super makers. But yeah, like from the beginning, there's no like gently easing you into like, okay, now you jump in this day.

Oh, now you're running this stage. It's just like you're Mario. Mario does these things. We don't have to explain what power ups do. We could just have fun with levels. You get what Mario is if you're buying this game and playing this game. And I like that. I like that level of trust that it took Nintendo a while to give the players.

Right. And, you know, Mario 2 is really about. violating that trust like here's a mushroom oh and it killed you oh and the the poison mushrooms in this game are sons of bitches this is where I think that uh Nintendo had to be inspired by online videos or something because have you guys seen that Mario 64 video where a guy is running from a one-up mushroom I feel like somebody at Nintendo saw that and said okay the poison mushrooms have to do this they have to follow Mario because the levels with those mushrooms remind me of those videos of the guys running from the one-up

mushrooms. I didn't think about that, but you're absolutely right. I'm just wondering, like, how much Nintendo, they have a lot of younger designers, of course, even though these games are run by a 50-plus-year-old men. They have to be at least online enough to know about Kaiso, to know about these videos, to know how people are already

playing with Mario. I think what, I think the reaction to Mario Maker won, as far as, like, what people made in it was probably the big eye-opening moment for them, because you know, you don't really know how your... It's like, you know how people online do things. And it's like, oh, this video has a million views, but people really do that. And when

they put it out to their players and their players, when you load up, when you load up Mario Maker 1 and you look at the popular courses, and it's literally a super expert courses with 0.01% completion rates, automatic courses, there you just run to the right and it plays music on musical note blocks. Like, they saw what people were doing. And it was all kinds of really weird stuff. And it was like, oh, yeah, I guess this is our audience. Yeah, and now you can see that they know what the audience will make because there's even like a tag, like this stage is a music box stage. So we understand people will do this with these tools now,

just to make a stage that plays music. Although I think behind the scenes, I would not be surprised if, because you can tag your thing, but then other users can add a tag to your course if they think it's more appropriate. But it's like, so Nintendo now knows via a tag because there's only like nine tags and two of them are auto Mario and music, right? I think they're looking at those tags. and then keeping those out of the popular courses.

Because when you load up Mario Maker, when you load on Mario Maker 1, it was kind of like, when you looked at the popular courses, it was all either automatic, super difficult, music, just like either unplayable or whatever. But now you actually don't see very many of those in the popular, and they actually, I think they're elevating levels that are like actual playable levels

versus like automatic or music kind of stuff. Yeah, I will talk a bit more about like just the online system, but I do feel like the curation is a lot. better where it's not just all the gimmicky bullshit up front when it's like, no, I just want to play a level instead of, you know, being, like you said, a lot of the Auto Mario stuff, a lot of the music which are fun to watch and they're fun

to appreciate, but it's like, no, I also want to play a level too. I also want to like be playing a Mario game. But yeah, so whether or not they knew about this, the people that, you know, grew up with Kaiser Mario and grew up playing Lunar Magic hacks, there was 15 years of time between

Lunar Magic's release and the first Mario maker. So a lot of the audience was ready for that tool set Nintendo was giving them, and they definitely influenced Mario Maker 2, both in terms of what Nintendo would let you do and also the single-player contents. Bob, I do want to take a moment. I apologize for kind of about to tut-tut you a bit. Oh, no.

But I think you might be aware that Lunar Magic was not like the originator of this whole thing. No, no, but it was the most popular utility. There were predecessors, right? Right. I just want to make a note, at least for the listeners, who might be going, well, you forgot this, which is Mario Improvement, which came out. It was a DOS app that came out of like 1997 and was a way to hack the Mario 1 ROM. Yeah, yeah. For that. And so that was, yeah, that was pretty popular. I remember playing Mario Hacks way before Lunar Magic, like Mario 3 hacks and Mario 1 hacks. But I feel like it was that most approachable, would you say it's most approachable through Lunar Magic? Yeah, because that was a real like Windows app with a real thing and everything, as opposed to like just somebody building something. DOS and having to... It has like a user interface and stuff.

And obviously, the possibilities are even more limitless with Lunar Magic than with Mario Maker because you can do things that will just like soft lock your emulator, which Mario Maker they had to patch it a few times so you couldn't do that, but they want to avoid locking up the game. But yeah, I just want to let people know about

Lunar Magic. Like check out Kaiser Mario World videos and things like that because they're very fun to watch. Of course, the speed runs are fun to watch and they might influence you to make some extremely hard levels, but we're going to take a brief break and we'll come back to talk about the actual level making process and our experience with it. Thank you. I'm sorry.

Thank you. And so. I'm going to be able to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. Thank you. I'm going to do. Goose.

I'm going to go. So we're back. And I want to talk about making Mario's. So the main difference between this Mario Maker and the past two is that it is made for a system that does not have two screens or a stylus. And whenever I bring my, I love the Switch, and I like to switch a lot.

I mainly play on the TV, though. Whenever I bring my 3DS somewhere with me or play 3DS, it makes me miss two screens. And playing Mario Maker 2 made me miss a second screen for this because it was designed for the Wii. it was designed as a Wii U application because in case you don't remember how Mario Maker 1 worked

is that you would design the level on the game pad and then you would kind of send it to the TV to play it or you will just look up at the TV and play it so I feel like it works very well they're fixed they did but it does not feel quite as natural to the

hardware as Mario Maker 1 did and I think we all have some except for Ray maybe we all have some Mario Maker 1 experience here in the room? Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Everyone's just reluctance. No. It's not, it is not a perfect, perfect replacement for Mario Maker 1 because of the fact that it all has to be done on the touchscreen and the fact that because it is the Nintendo Switch, which means in part that you can switch between, you know, playing it on the TV and playing it on the portable and using a controller or using the touchscreen, they had to build in a controller-based making mode as well, which. because it's all sort of integrated

to the same thing, it kind of gets in the way of my touchscreen making because I'm not going to... I don't use a controller to make levels because I am not crazy. Do you use a stylus?

I have a stylus. I bought a stylus. I did. Yep. I bought it before the game came out because I'm like, I am going to need a stylus for this. I think they made a huge tactical error

by making Link's Awakening remake the basically day of launch title for Switch Light as opposed to this because this seems like a game made for Switch Light. Light. It is a game that really only is best in handheld mode. So, launch that with

a system that works with only handheld mode. Oh, well. I can, yeah. I mean, okay. I could totally see that too. I just don't know why they didn't go full Mario Pane and include a mouse. Oh, yes. We need, I mean, if you can make a GameCube controller work on a Switch

now, you can do that, right? Or is that just Wii U? No. What? Did they make it so the GameCube controller can work on the Switch? Yes, yes. Yes. We can make the Nintendo Mouse work. It has to happen. Exactly. Yeah. But, yeah, the original interface, it was a lot more playful, a lot more toy-like in that.

A lot of it was built around, like, shaking things with the stylus and poking things. And that is, it's more directly menu-based in this game. I'm so happy that all of that is done. Yes, yes. It's like, oh, okay. Oh, I want to create a winged red cupa paratroopa. Well, I guess, okay. All right, well, I got to take it, and then I got to shake them, and then it'll turn them red.

And then I got to take the wings, and then I got to pluck them off something else. and then I got to drag them over to the kupa-trupa. And then if I want to make them big, I got to go to the menu. I've got to get out of a mushroom and I got to drag it on him. And it's like, that is cute and funny the first fucking time. Yeah, I forgot. Every time you have to do it afterwards, it is ridiculous. Now that you're talking about it, I forgot how much extra work you had to do to sort of like,

use the game mechanics within the builder, like, feed a thing a mushroom in order to make it big. Instead of just selecting the big version of it from a menu. Right. And now you just hold, you just long press on anything. And then you just, you can set all the parameters for it. Wing it, not wing it. it big, not big, et cetera. That was, to me, that kind of speaks to the fundamental philosophical differences between

Wii U 3DS and Switch. They were like, here's cute, fun, playful, gamified things, isn't it great? And Switch is just like, here's your stuff. You look at the Switch menu, you don't have street pass, you don't have the, you know, the Me menu and plaza and things like that. It's just, here's a bunch of games. Yeah. I do like how efficient that kind of philosophy is, but also I do, when I open my 3DS, I do miss like, oh, all my friends are here and all my sticker book is here and my coloring book is here. And, oh, the wallpaper I bought is here. Like, I miss being able to dress up, like, you know, like personalize your UI. But Switch is just like, oh, the system is barely ready. Just buy it, please.

Well, I mean, the switch UI, and the fact that they haven't done anything to it, and we're getting a little bit of field here. But, you know, what they really wanted to do with the switch was make it really efficient because, like, the Wii U, you turn on the Wii U, you have enough time to go make yourself a sandwich and come back, and the Wii U has booted up because it has slowed up the music and the this and that, the me verse, and the this and whatever. Right, and then you have like a screen focus where it's like, oh, I want to play games, oh, but for some reason it's like the plaza, and there's little people going,

Hello. Right, right, right. But they're all my friends. The Switch, they were like, okay, we need to be able to take this thing out, hit a button, boom, menus open, hit a button, boom in the game. And so no menu music, no cutesy little things, nothing like that. Yeah, I mean, no themes, no anything. So I kind of, I get it.

And like, honestly, as a person who thinks that stuff is cool, but really just wants to get into playing the actual video game that I bought for my video game system, I kind of appreciate it. I mean, I do miss it when I play 3DS, but I bet if it was on Switch. it would annoy me if it had all the the Wii U bloated menu stuff. Right. I do miss like, oh, there's a different song in the shop today or whatever.

I do like those little touches, but I just kind of just want to buy something and leave now. Yeah, and people don't like, and people miss, I think, again, a lot of the accoutrements of Mario Maker 1 were the things that are missing in Mario Maker 2 from, and it's the weird stuff. So, I mean, just the fact that, like, you know, Mario Maker 2 had like seven different title screens

for days of the week, like that kind of stuff is gone. Yeah, I mean, because of the way Switch works, I just turn my switch on and Mario Maker 2 is asleep. I don't ever see the opening screen. I kind of like seeing the opening screen. It was a fun little touch. It's not necessary, but it was pretty charming. And then so the big one, the big thing that is that it's gone was the mystery mushrooms.

Yes, I want to talk about that. Biggest letdown of this game. We all forgot about Amibo. We bought them and then we just forgot we had them and so to Nintendo because so is there a bunch coming out in a few weeks. But they're no longer functioning. There's no point to own them. Yeah, I mean, like, there was like a Dark Souls of me, but I was like, cool, but it was like, oh, it doesn't do anything. So now they're just pieces of plastic, right?

Well, I mean, everybody just leaves them in the box. So, I mean, so they're, again, Nintendo is leaning into what its players are actually doing with these things. What is the use of these, but. Which are just by, well, no, I mean, the use of them is the person who collects the most of them before they die wins. Yeah, that's true. Like Funko pops. Yeah. Who's the ultimate human?

But, yeah, I do miss those because in case you don't. don't know. The mystery mushroom is, if you would, you know, scan your amoebo, you could turn into that character or put the mushroom in a level to turn into that character in just the Mario 1 version. Yeah. You know, so unfortunately, I mean, I could see them taking this out because, I mean, of course, the switch, you know, they could do this on the switch.

For, I could see A, saying there's too many gosh darn amoebos now. Like, you know, at the time, there were only like 50 or something and it was sort of manageable. Now there's way too many amoeboes. Yeah. And people would be like, well, why doesn't this character were. with this. Aren't they all supposed to work with this? The other thing is, honestly, I think the ability to, like, have all of those different characters be the quote-unquote avatar that you're playing as. Well, first of all, the game has multiplayer now. So if everybody

was picking up a mystery mushroom and turning into Princess Peach, it would be very, it would be a little more confusing. Secondly, it made us create a lot of our levels in Mario One mode. That's true, yeah. Because, like, you could have extra characters. So it was inspiring people like, oh, I'm going to create a level about Princess Peach. I'm going to create a level about the squid amoebo. I'm going to create a level of Marth. And then everybody just used Mario 1 and didn't use the rest of them.

I could see that tying people down. I did kind of like to see like, oh, this level is about Isabel from Animal Crossing, just like a level design around a character. I think it opened up more storytelling possibilities within the tool set. But you're right, Chris, it did tie people down to just using one style within the game. But of those, I was just looking at the different mystery mushroom options from the first game in a YouTube video. they existed beyond the realm of Amibo. So there were things like Arino from Game Center CX

and like baby metal, a car, the Wii Fit balance board. It was the very specific manga version of Mario. Yeah, Mario Koon. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I miss being able to play as Japanese things I barely know in this game. That's the one thing I do miss. I get it. But so, yeah, a lot of this has to deal with the series in general,

but there are five styles in this game. Mario Brothers, Mario Brothers 3, Mario 1. world, new Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario 3D world, and the cool thing is, and this applies to the whole series of that this is not just an aesthetic choice, and that the style you choose determines what options are available in terms of, you know, both

items in the world and Mario's abilities. But I do like how they sort of, they apply things retroactively to previous games. That's sort of the fun thing. Like, oh, what does Aboo look like in Mario 1? Or, in, and I believe in like Mario 3, they give him things he

couldn't do before. No. No, you were completing that sentence. No, no, no. But I think that in Mario 3 or Mario World, they make the power up and power downs consistent. In either Mario 3 or Mario World, when you get hit no matter if you're, what power up you have, you don't go back to big, you go back to small. But in all the versions of this game across the board, any power up you have, that just

brings you back down to big instead of small. Yes. Is that true? If you get hit with your fiery Mario and Mario 1, do you go back? to being small? I want to say it's consistent across the board in this game. Oh, we're so old. Yeah, yeah. But it's like little tiny tweaks

like that, like so in Mario 1, Mario can't slide. Yeah, I get you saying. In Mario 3, so like Mario 1, you can kick a shell. Mario 3, you can carry a shell and kick it. Mario World and other Mario games, he can throw the shell above him and catch it. So like, little things like that all lead up to different

possibilities within the level style you're using. It's not just an aesthetic choice. And do you guys have a style preference? visual, Mario World for sure. And is it based on nostalgia or just like the possibilities? I like the art style itself. It's not nostalgia. It's just that particular style.

I like the visual design of it. Yeah. I would say Mario 3, more probably nostalgia leaning, but yeah, for the same sort of reasons. Yeah, probably. I think I actually like Mario 3 visually more than I like the Mario World style. But, I mean, those, that's, I would create all my levels in Mario 3 in Mario World, except for the fact that I just keep having ideas that I'm, I kind of like start messing with them. I'm like, oh, actually, I need Mario 1 for this.

Yeah. If I tried to, like, formalize it, I'd say, I like how the blocks look in Mario 3. So that's probably what draws me to. I'm a Mario 3 guy. I don't know why, because I like Mario's moveset and world. I like how the world looks better, but I don't know. But it is cool to see, like, so within these styles, you also get different level themes like ice and nights and cave. And a lot of the things you've seen in games before,

but what I like about this is that they have to write new music, too, for older games in the style of that game. Some of it works pretty well. Other times you'd be like, well, a Koji Kondo wouldn't write this. But I do like that they have to go as far as saying, okay, what would desert music sound like in Mario 1 if he could write more than five songs for this game? What would it sound like?

Because I don't think, I don't think Koji Kondo is coming back to write new music for Mario Maker. He didn't see him in the credits. Oh, he did? No, he did? No, he did. This is him? Yes. Oh, wow.

Yeah, I don't know if all of it is him, but he definitely wrote some of the new, the tunes that had to be like newly composed for this. I think like the snow and the desert tunes in Mario 1 were him. I saw some of the other Nintendo composers listed, but not him. That's cool though. Yeah, like I think some of them do work really well and it is neat to see not only things like, you know, what is a desert level Mario 1, but like, what is Bowser Jr. in Mario 1? Yeah, yeah.

And, I mean, of course we've seen Bowser, but they do clean up the sprites a lot. The Princess Sprites much better to the Bowser Sprites are much better. these games do feel like almost like kind of 2D HD remakes of those assets in that of course nothing is flickering everything is very crisp and things just like move a lot better

I do like that just like they're kind of refurbishing all of the existing sprite work and the levels and things like that for Mario Maker mm. So let me put a question out there. or the two of you specifically.

Who's me and Chris? The two that I pointed at. I couldn't tell you're pointing at it. Could the people not listening at home? Could they not hear? Jeremy was not pointing at you if you're listening. I was talking to people in the room, sorry. No, you both said that you've picked up styluses, a stylus with which to play this.

Do you have recommendations on what stylus people should pick up? Because in my experience, using styluses on capacitative screens like this is always really hit or miss. It's been a while since I've tried, but like I used to try to use iPhones with capacitive styluses and they really sucked. Well, the important thing about Mario Maker is that it's all designed so you can use your finger. So, I mean, you're not actually doing really fine detail work on the screen with the stylus. So that does make it a little bit better. I

literally bought Amazon's choice. It's like the brand is diger root. That's what I got to. Yeah. I typed a Nintendo Switch stylist and got the Amazon's choice. And it has two ends. It has one end that's the sort of big round mesh nub and the other end that's really small. It's one of those things where it's like it's got that really fine point that's surrounded by plastic. So you can do detailed stuff. Not really necessary for me with Mario Maker. So yeah, I just bought Amazon's choice and it's fine. There might be a better one out there, but I mean, I have no issue with it. I guess my question is, how's the dragging action on the screen? Because that's what always was a pain in the ass with the old stylists is. It can be,

a little bit like that's that is kind of the hardest thing to do like when you're trying to resize something and like stick on something and then resize it but again that that it might take two or three tries sometimes to do it um but again because it's all designed for a person to be sticking their finger on the screen it the stylist just helps infinitely okay yeah i feel like uh like chris was saying it's designed around you're using your finger which is going to be more stubby than any stylist would be so uh they're not demanding too much precision from you And I find that I rarely have to put down my stylus because the L and ZL buttons or whatever they are, the ones on the shoulder, or the L and ZL or whatever, or R and ZR, depending on which hand you use to write. Like, you're doing a lot of functionality without, like, copying and things like that. And so you never have to put down your stylus and then touch buttons or anything like that. So it is designed to, I think, with the idea, like, you might buy a stylus for this. And did any version of this game come with a stylus? I think the UK did.

The UK and Japan pre-orders got a stylist, which was literally just like, as far as I could tell, a generic stylist with Mario Maker branding on it, so you aren't really missing out on that much. But, like, I would definitely say buy one. It's way more comfortable. And also note that you can only, if you're building in handheld mode,

you have to use touch. Even though it has controller-based, you know, making, that's only if you're in kickstand mode and holding a controller separately. Oh, I didn't know that. As soon as you snap the joycons on and go into handheld mode, you must use touch. So just bear that in mind. Yeah, but I would not.

People have used the controller to build levels. And, I mean, Godspeed, it just feels like a lot of extra work. But it's possible, I guess. I can do it. I've done a mix. Yeah. I mean, the controller. I'm kind of a savant as well.

So I'll deal with it. The controller, the controller-based making is, like, better than I thought it would be. I mean, but I only used it to find. out how it worked. And then I was like, okay, well, I'm done doing that. Right. It's also built to work as well as it can with a controller. It's not like an overly difficult solution, but obviously because the game was originally built with a stylus in mind, you kind of want to do that. You kind of want to get one. And they're all like 10 bucks if you want. If you want the full experience, it's out there. So I don't really know

like how much of this was patched into the original Mario Maker because the original Mario Maker had some things patched into it based on demand like checkpoints and things like that. Yes. But there are a lot of like objective-based stuff in Mario Maker 2 that I don't remember being in the first game. Things like the goal won't appear until you do X or the goal will disappear if you do X. So things are like defeat this many enemies, collect this many coins, don't jump, don't

touch the ground, don't take damage. So you can build even more specific idea, a level ideas around these other objectives. The thing that bugs me about this is that there's no, I mean, certainly within the game, there is no list of all of those. They only appear in the maker once you put down parts that would work with them. And so you can kind of start building a stage and putting down parts, and then you can kind of look at, okay, well, what would my options be here? But there's nowhere in the game to just look at all the different options.

Like, for example, in story mode, there's a clear condition that is, like, clear this course after doing handstands on top of all 12 of the trees and level. And it's like, wow, that is really neat that they put that in there. But, like, I would never have, like, conceptualized. a course based on that if I didn't already have predetermined knowledge that that was even a thing you could do. Yeah, I do feel like, again, it is

like they want you to discover it, but it's also like, no, I just want to know what I can do. So, yeah, if you put like five coupas in a stage, that will become an optional objective you can check off. Like, okay, now you have to defeat these five coupas, but I've seen a lot of very cool ideas built around this. So yeah, and things like

I'm sure these were in Mario Maker 1, but I really love just how a lot of levels I played, and a lot of levels in single player do feel almost like Yoshi's Island Dungeons, which are very Zelda-like, where it's like, go in each room, do the goal, and get all the keys in order to achieve the final goal. I forget if that was in Mario Maker 1, but I've seen a lot of, like, dungeon stuff, patched in? Patched in.

Okay, yeah, yeah. Mario Maker 1, they left out bizarre stuff that was, like, you know, fundamental to the Mario experience, like, checkpoints and keys indoors. There were no keys indoors in Mario Maker 1 initially. They had to patch that in. Like, that was really a thing. And there were other things, too, where it was just like, are you kidding me? Like, they didn't, they end up doing all that.

And so with Mario Maker 2, they're like, oh, okay, here's everything you need. And there are things like pink coins, which I don't know if those were in the first game. That got patched in with keys and doors. So much got patched in. But, yeah, that's another way to just add another objective to the game. So when you collect all five, all however many that are on the stage, you get a key. So that's just another way to give you a key. So you can see there's just so many ideas I can go into making a state that's not just, you know,

reach the end while surviving. It's like there are so many things I can go into it and so many ways to think about it. And you can give a key to an enemy as well. Yeah, yeah. To defeat that enemy to get the key and move on. I forgot about that. So yeah, you can make things even more Zelda.

Like that's my idea is to make a Zelda-style Mario Dungeon, which there's one that's very similar to that in the single-player campaign. They make actually a few of those, which are really cool. Any other nice touches we can think of with this sequel? I just, I do like the objective stuff. I do like how it makes me think about, like, Okay, this has got to be more complicated. I have to think outside the box for these levels now.

I can't stress enough. I mentioned it a little bit earlier, but like how fundamentally transformative scroll stop is, the scroll stop feature. Oh, yeah, please explain that. So basically, if you put a line of solid, unbreakable blocks, either terrain or hard blocks, and put it all the way across one of the axes of the level,

when the player gets there, the scrolling will stop at that block. block, right, that line of blocks. And so this lets you, I mean, it lets you make levels that actually feel bigger because you can arbitrarily divide them up into sections and send the player into those sections and try to make those sections a little bit different from each other. You can create something that's like a lot more. I mean, you can even, this even helps you create linear levels, but you can create something

that's more non-linear as well. And you can create like puzzle levels and divide up the rooms. you could divide Mario Maker levels up into rooms, but the screen would keep scrolling. So you either, Mario Maker 1, so you either needed to put a really massive wall of like seven rows of bricks so the player couldn't see what was going on there. But this just makes it so much more elegant and better to do this.

And then also you can use hard blocks, and those will stop the scroll. But a player with the proper tools can break hard blocks. And then, like, you can use a b'bam to break hard blocks. You can stomp with a boot, one of the giant curbo shoe boots to break hard blocks below you. So if you do that and you break the scroll lock, then the screen will start scrolling again. So you could hide hidden stuff behind a wall and make it really hidden and make the player not even be able to see what's beyond the, you know, a certain block that you could blow up. I mean, there's cool stuff you can do.

design a lot of levels in Mario Maker 1 that was the most surprising thing like oh not only can you stop the scroll here but you can also hide a lot of stuff behind just the one like one block width of wall as long as you make it breakable other cool stuff I'm just thinking of now are the clown car

shooter stuff where you can essentially build schmup stages even make them auto scrolling in Mario Maker so you can actually make schmup levels if you want and Nintendo has made a lot of those since single player came made I haven't experimented too many too much with these but there's a lot of things you can do.

You can also, it's not just shooting fireballs. You can charge fireballs to break through certain obstacles. There's a lot going on with these different parts they've added to the sequel. And Nintendo did a lot of work. You can tell there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes to make auto-scrolling, like work and work well because when you put in doors and pipes and things like that, it sort of automatically says, oh, it shows you on the screen. Like, okay, your scroll's going to go like this.

You can then adjust the scrolling and the direction and the speed and everything. And then if there's doors and pipes, which would, would necessitate taking you back to, you know, where the auto-scrolling is? We'll be like, okay, well, then they'll show you, like, okay, well, if the player comes out of this door, then it automatically adds a line of scrolling from that door to bring you back down onto the main path. And all of that is just kind of happening behind the scenes. You can tweak it a little bit, but it just makes sure that the auto-scrolling never breaks, basically, which is really, I mean, there's some math going on there.

That's cool. I haven't played too much with that. But I did want to talk about our experience-making levels compared to the first game, or just in general. My, I don't know, I haven't experimented too much with this, but what I liked about Mario Maker 1 for the Wii U. So in Mario Maker 2, can you lay down comments wherever you want in a level? You could with Meverse. Yeah, yeah, but that's not present in 2, is it? It's not present anywhere.

Well, me-vers, no, no, so there's no me-vers, but you can lay down comments in levels in Mario Maker. Anywhere you want? Anywhere you want. I didn't discover that. I know, like, at the end, it's, like, leave a comment if you want or draw a picture. If you pause the game, it'll stick a comment when you are. Yeah. I guess my complaint is this is not a stylus-based game, so the pictures aren't as good.

That's all I got to say. Okay. The pictures on the Wii, the pictures I would get on my levels. I've seen some good pictures, but, yeah, they're not as, yeah. The people aren't trying enough. And we also need more stickers. But, yeah, I've only built one level. Chris has built a bunch, and I recommend you go to Chris's Twitter at Coben Heat on Twitter,

and you've got, like, a post that has, like, your four levels you made as of now, They're all really fun. I think you have the most experience out of all of us, Chris. Like, what does your experience just making levels been? For me, I made one level, and I'm not happy with it, but I shared it online. And I felt like I did feel just like things I never thought about developing games where it's just like, I'm testing my own level. And by the time I tested it a thousand times, like, oh, this level is too easy?

But it's like, I was in my head, like, is it too easy because I know where everything is? And because I made it and I know how to play it. And then I upload it and I find out only 10% of people, we'll finish this level. So I'm like, oh, shit, it was too hard. So things like that, like I don't have a QA department. So things like that, I'm discovering all over again. I might have forgotten from my Mario Maker 1 experience. Like, I can't always trust myself. And I can see why a lot of old games are so hard. It's like, oh, the developers did QA. And they're like, oh, this level's easy, but they design the levels. But what was your experience, like,

designing levels, Chris? And what did you learn? Well, I mean, I learned some of this with Mario Maker 1 as well. I mean, definitely the fact that, like, you have to have people test your levels. Like, the first Mario Maker one level I made was like a wall jump level and I was like okay I'm just going to make like an easy level it's going to be based around one mechanic I'm not going to I'm not going to toss too much stuff in there but I'll just make this really easy level and I upload it and people are just like wow these these jumps are so difficult and I'm like what the heck and I realize that oh when I am playing this level I am constantly holding down the run button because that's how I play Mario you're always holding down run because why wouldn't you let you move faster and jump higher

well guess what a lot of people don't do that a lot of people uh they just they they start out walking in a mario level and they only run uh when they feel like they need to based on the level and so all of the jumps that i had built in which were fine if you were holding it on the run button were would just send you right into a bottomless pit if you if you weren't um and so people perceived it as actually being much harder than than i wanted it to be and you just don't get that until you start testing um and i think then a lot of it was just just trying to come up with, just trying to realize that ultimately, unless you're really hardcore into this, like, Keizzo Mario Stage community, I think most people that are casually playing Mario Maker Stages are going to load one up, they're going to play it once, you know, if they make some progress in it and maybe get to a checkpoint, maybe they'll keep playing it, but I mean, they're going to bounce off your stage pretty hard unless you're giving them something really good. So I really do try, and I think I have more of an innate sense now of what is too hard, Like, you know, I'll build a stage and then dial it way back because I just want people to finish the stage.

Like, I want people to see everything that's in there. I mean, if you look at your stage once you upload it and when you play it, you can see where all the people die. And I was surprised like that killed you. Like that, you thought that, oh, Mike, I can't believe that. But yeah, like a- Well, I had a section of one of my stages where, you know, again, it was creeping around in the dark with a little circle of light around you. And then there was you got up to the edge of a cliff. and then what I wanted people to do was to see that there was a cliff

there was nothing that if you jumped off it you would probably die and then go okay well that's not what I'm supposed to do and then if they then walked backwards a little bit they would see in their circle of light a safe platform for them to stand on and keep going and I'm like oh okay I'm so clever

well every fucking buddy in their mom jumps off the cliff they just jumped off the cliff and they died and they blame me and they're like well I didn't like the leap of faith that I had to take at the end there. It's like, nobody told you to

jump off the cliff, and it's like you cannot know what people are going to do until you let them do it. And so this game does show you where people die. I wish it gave you more data. It's like, I wish that it would give me some playthroughs. It's like, show me a playthrough of somebody

playing this level. Like, that's something they could just, that's not a video to have to send me. They can just save that in data. Yeah, like, it would be cool to see that stuff, but instead they just show you a map, a sort of a heat map of like, where do people die? But it was astonishing to me, just how many people just jumped off the cliff and did it multiple times.

And it was just like, oh, my God. So I didn't realize that I had to do it, but I went in, I took the level down, and I made it so you couldn't jump off that cliff, and I'd have re-uploaded it. And I was just like, I hate to do it because I lose all the views. I lose all the views, all the likes. I have to start back from zero again. But I was like, wow, I did not expect this. And the thing is, there are game designers out there listening to this going,

now you know my pain. Now you know. Because, like, this is, like, learning about, it doesn't teach you, like, you know, I'm not going to go, I can't go get a job being a game designer now, having made five very successful Mario Maker levels. You know, I, but it does, gives you a little bit of a, a little bit of a taste of, of some of the good parts about designing a level and then, like, all of the bad parts about designing a game.

It's a tool for empathy. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Nintendo. was giving people a lot of trust in the single player content by saying, okay, you know how to play a Mario game. But what I learned from my bill in my levels is like, well, maybe they don't. And I feel like, so we're adding things to our school systems like common core math. We're changing the way kids learn. I think we need to teach like common core Mario competency because when you said the thing about not holding the run button,

and I've seen people play games, Mario games, like, oh, here's a Mario game play. And they don't hold it in. I'm a guest. I'm like, it's like if somebody sits down at like a table and eats off their lap or something, it's just like it's weird. It doesn't make any sense to me, but we need to teach the kids, and we need to start it at the home. And that's all my commentary. So teach those kids holding the run button. So I want to talk about the online system before we get going here.

We didn't help with the multiplayer at all, which is like a big deal in this game. Actually, let's start that off. So that's part of the online system. So multiplayer, I didn't realize it existed in this game. So if you go to your profile within the game, you will see like a little bar, like kind of like a level up system, like you'd see in like a Fortnite or PubG or Overwatch. whatever, and that comes from playing multiplayer. And what that is, it's like it's very much new Super Mario Bros.

Style, where it's Mario Luigi and two toads, and you either have to race towards the finish. Stop erasing toad. Yes. What's that? Stop erasing toad. Sorry, it's not, it's Toad and Toadette, because they kind of drew one more spright. But, yes, but my experience was, so you're either doing the challenges against the other players to get to the goal first, or you're doing co-op to get to the goal as a team.

and my experience was this is a paid service I'm paying for you can't make it so the Mario level doesn't lag when I'm playing with only three other people. It was way too laggy for me and you can't have lag in a Mario game. It just ruins everything. That was my experience. Did you play a lot of multiplayer

Chris? Yes, I did. I sunk way too much time. I think I said like Mario Maker level creation is what I do when I want to just calm down and chill out and zone out and, you know, be creative and have a good time. and Mario Maker multiplayer is what I do when I want to send myself from a good mood into a fit of sputtering rage. And apparently I really like doing that to myself.

So I keep playing Mario Maker multiplayer because like everything that happens in Mario Maker multiplayer is bullshit. If I lose, it was obviously bullshit. If I win, I guarantee you it was only because of some bullshit. And it's not even like the lag. It's just the fact of taking four people and throwing them into a course, which I, I guarantee you was designed by somebody for one person and then just watching those four people just caram off of each other and like BS around until one of them accidentally hits the goalpost. And also you have levels where it's just like, oh, you can't hit the goalpost until you get five coins.

Well, arbitrarily, whoever just so happens to pick up the fifth coin. Yeah, that happened last night to me. It's like, no, Luigi got the coin. They're the ones who get to hit the flagpole. But then the thing is, I mean, and this is, I mean, so here's the thing. A lot of this is really, it's like bad and also a lot of fun. If you are the person who gets the clear condition, you have a little clear flag over your head,

and you're the only one who can touch the goalpost, but people can steal the clear condition from you by jumping on your head. Oh, Bob, oh, I'm sorry, this is another thing that Mario Maker doesn't effing explain to you. I was wondering, like, it seemed unfair. He doesn't even tell you about this. So someone stole my flag when I got the coin. Yes, it happened to me too, and I was like,

hell? How did they win? No. So if you jump on their head, you steal the flag from them. So, Bob, you might think to yourself, well, if there's a level where you have to collect six pink coins and then open up a door that leads to the flagpole, why would I do anything other than go to the door, wait there, and wait for the jackass who has the clear condition to come to me and try to jump on his head and then go through the door. And you would be right. That is the way to beat those levels. I think you need to go into this. You're right, Chris. You have to go into this thinking this is not a test of Mario skill. It's utter bullshit, designed to be utter bullshit

for you to troll people. And when I stopped trying to just win the level, I just was like, I'm a Luigi, I'm going to try to kill you. That's my job in this day is to try to kill you and try to mess with you. And then I will sell passive-aggressive thank you messages whenever someone knocks me off a cliff when we're working together. And also, the best part is you get punished

so severely for losing. It's like you will go into a level where it is literally just like the flagpole is right there and whoever like just so happens to get a good bounce off of somebody else's head hits it first. And then you will go back to that ranking system that you were talking about.

And you will lose like half the points you got for winning the last time. They take points from you. And it's like in Mario 1, if you get to the flag, if somebody else wins, but then you grab the flagpole within this incredibly short like three second window, you won't

lose as many points. You will only lose like three points instead of like 30. But because that you can't grab the flagpole in Mario World or Mario 3 because it's a card and a finish line with a tape. Like, there's no way to do that.

So even if everybody crosses the finish line all the exact same time, the person who arbitrarily crossed it first gets like 60 ranking points. Everybody else loses 20. It's completely insane. Yes. And co-op just reminds me of actually playing Mario new Mario with other people

and that just I want them all to die. I want them to go away. Like you're ruining this experience for me. Seems like you should go back to the simpler time of arcade Mario Brothers, you know, sort of our hunter-gatherer culture version. But the crazy part about this is that like I hate it and I love it.

Like it really is like, it can be exhilarating fun to like BS your way into a victory in this. And even when it's lagging, it's lagging for everybody. And the explanation I heard about the lag by the way, and I don't know if this is actually true or not, but that it's it's lagging because

the game makes sure that everybody is always on the exact same frame at all times. So there is, because you will bounce off of each other and bounce into each other. And so if they were doing any kind, I don't know, maybe there's probably, again, people listening to this going, no color, you idiot. There's ways to get around that that Nintendo didn't do. But it seems like what they're doing is they absolutely want everybody to have the exact same experience because they need to know on a frame-by-frame basis like who hit

the flag all first. Right. I want to talk about more online stuff, so the course of mission process is as it was in Mario Maker 1 and that you have to beat your course in order to upload it. And then magic happens, I guess, and then people will play it somehow. I'm not sure how levels rise to the top is that you have to be a known creator. But I just noticed when I uploaded my level like, oh, nobody's playing this. just don't know what the what the trick is to get thing get people to play levels it just could

be random chance as if it like lines up in their endless play slot or whatever or I'm not really sure how that works no idea no idea it's a black box and the thing is it's like there's so so market maker has hot courses popular courses and new courses right yeah hot and popular what's a difference hot well hot and new I can't tell the difference okay well first all because hot is like I don't know what constitutes hot it's a whole bunch of courses with no plays on them. New is literally just a list of like brand new zero play kind of things. And then

popular is like incredibly popular courses. And I've, so basically when I was writing for, when I was writing for Wired, none of my courses became popular. But then when I'm writing for Kotaku and could share the course like on the Kotaku front page, that I think has actually made

my courses popular. I mean, you know, I can make you, you know, I can show them a course. I can't make them play it and I certainly can't make them like it. But, But I've been able to get it in front of more people. So I need to increase my degree of internet fame. Yeah. Okay.

I'll do that. I'll do that. And so, yeah, I don't know the difference between popular courses, but like you said earlier, Chris, the, what is available in the top rank stuff is way less gimmicky than was in Mario Maker 1. Like, it was often hard to find one that wasn't an automatic music player or an automatic, like, sort of Rube Goldberg device. So they're doing a much better job there. There's not enough tags. and I don't quite know, like, is this something that will be added in the future,

but, like, can you share a level with a friend or invite a friend to your level? Is that something that's, like, not possible yet? No, you, oh, you mean, like, like, Friends List integration on Switch? Like, if you're my friend on Switch and I say, I want Chris to play this level, do I just have to hand you the code through, like, a text or something like that? Yeah, I would really, I mean, as a person who does a lot of creation, I would really like it if we could upload levels and have them be unlisted, because then I could just have it up there with zero likes

and then have people test it and get feedback before I put it out there for the world because it's really, again, it kind of sucks to like put something out there, it gets a whole lot of plays, and then it's like, oh, but I have to delete it and I have to fix something in this. Yeah. Because that's pretty much how you test now.

I mean, unless you have people, you know, bring a succession of people to your house. You have to just put it out there for everybody. Yeah. Yeah, I did want to talk a bit about before we go here, before we wrap up, just a few of the levels you might have found out. This is going to sound unfair to the listener because you don't know how long these

will be online for if they'll be taken down but a few of the fun ideas that we've seen I just kind of want to discuss here. It just has the possibility of this creation engine. A few of the ones I really liked where, so Mario Maker has the Mario Kart card in it. And one level I played was you basically

a speed run against a Kupa in the cart. Like you have to get to a point before the Kupa does. Or else you cannot progress any farther. Other things, are like more fun narrative things like things like Chris has made one that's similar is basically Mario's Day at Work where you have to you take the bus you go to work you do file sorting so you have to sort files and there's a whole metaphor with like coupas and things like that and then you fight your boss to get a raise and that was really

fun too yeah another more puzzly one was one half of the screen was like the complete level and the half that you're playing on is incomplete and based on the information presented on one half of the screen, you have to figure out, oh, you're like, I have to hit this invisible blog, or I have to, or, like, the key will be here, so a lot of things you can do, and those are just, like, three things that jumped out to me. Again, if I gave you the codes, they might not work now or in the future, so, but these things do rise to the top of the popular hot list, and I think they're doing a great job of curation. Any ideas you guys have seen that really stood out to you as like, oh, that's a cool idea for

a level. I've used the cool idea tag a lot in this game with Princess Peach. Well, the guy who made the Mario goes to work level also made a level called Mario Mario joins the Armio Oh, this is political commentary?

Yeah, well, so the first one is not. It's literally Mario starts off like on an airplane and it seems like the airplane is kind of flying through the sky and then Mario has to get out of the airplane and jump to another airplane and then you leave and then you fight a bunch of tanks

and the tanks are constructed out of like spinning saw gears or saw blades and like conveyor belts and you're fighting your way across these tanks and then he did a second level called Mario Returns from the RBO where Mario has PTSD because he wakes up in his house and he goes, he leaves his house and he's kind of like walking down the street

but then like Rocky Wrenches start appearing in the trees and it's clearly like his imagination and the houses start turning into tanks it's really messed up It's pretty amazing the amount of environmental storytelling you can do with Mario Maker parts. Like, you were showing me a level of Chris. This is a spoiler for people that might play in the future.

But I won't get away too many details. But just using enemies, the enemies can also count as like signage or dialogue for the background. Or to indicate what will be beyond a certain door or pipe. I like that a lot. And that's something you could do in the first game too. But it's just like it's just using the parts in front of you to tell a story in interesting ways. Ray or Jeremy, any levels that sit out to you as far as user made content goes. I've been really impressed so far by just what people have made so far.

I'll say I kind of like some of the, you know, what I would call far side sort of one-panel comic type of levels where people just build a puzzle in one screen and try to make you figure that out. That's kind of cute. Pretty simple, but yeah, just like those, because those are the quickest hit sort of levels you can do. Yeah. I've seen something similar to that where it's not quite a far side thing, but it is basically just building little machines within Mario Maker with parts. And one of them is like you're playing Pong. And so on one side you have like a brick and I believe something like just like a non-shooting bullet bill cannon.

And basically you're playing against another one and you're having to hit a beetle shell back and forth. And there are basically like two lines of defense before the shell can hit you. And the same thing goes for the other side. So you're playing a game of Pong with a little machine made in Mario Maker. It's not quite like building a computer in Minecraft, but you can make simple like machines. That's the idea. That's what it is. I think somebody made a calculator in Mario Maker 1. I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. I did see that. Yeah. And just the things you can do with on off blocks. And it's just amazing. I can't wait to.

Like, I'm consistently surprised. Way more than I was with the first game, just what people are doing with this. Just like, I'm just having so much fun digging into these levels and seeing what people can do. I guess my final question, because we only have a few minutes left, is what would you like to see in a Mario Maker sequel or an improvement to Mario Maker? or like a patch. Of course, that new style as of this recording is not unveiled yet.

And I don't know if they will give us the promised Mario 2. I feel like the mechanics are too different to really work within this tool set. But I'm kind of at a loss.

I'll think of something while you guys are talking. But what would your ideal Mario Maker 3 look like? I think I just want more stuff, actually. I think I just want like, how about more of the Mario World enemies

or more of the Mario 3 enemies? Because the level, the enemy selection, pretty robust, but a lot of like the weird one-offs you don't really get in this tool set. Chris or Ray or Jeremy, like, what would your ideal Mario Maker 3 be in

terms of even going down to parts or functionality or you know, different options? Jeremy, you look like you're about to say something. Yeah, I was just going to say the persistence that I was talking about before, the ability to string together levels to create, you know, multi-stage experiences that have

carry through coins and lives and that sort of thing, even power-ups, Yoshi. Like, that would be, to me, much more satisfying. Yeah, people do that outside of the system. Like, I've played a bunch of levels where it's just like, oh, this is World 2-1 of an existing level set, but you actually have to, like, punch in all the codes yourself. It's not like just kicking it next level. It's definitely not the same thing. Ray and or Chris, any ideas? Like, what do you want to see now in the game, even? Like, what is missing for you? I would, I would really love, and I realize the sort of like moderation issue.

Actually, you know what? I'm not even going to say that it causes a moderation issue because everybody can just make whatever comments they can on levels anyway using text. I would love text integration. I mean, Super Mario World had text boxes. You could, you know, that little speaker box and it would tell you something. So as a person who likes making story levels, I would like the ability to write a little bit of extra text into levels if I wanted to. just a little bit because sometimes you can do a lot with a little bit of text that would be an issue where well I mean again like it's not even

people already title their levels in their own language and they do a description in their own language and so we can you know so it doesn't really change that much about how people approach the levels it doesn't make them less global by saying you know adding text in and even as a maker you're already going to be incentivized

to use less text so more people can play through your levels and not make it something that's required but I would really like that and I would like Mario too because honestly I think that they could solve the sort of the fact that the mechanics are slightly

different you do need to be able to put vegetables in the ground and pull them up but I mean kind of once you once you take care of that I think that it just it just lets you I think it would let us create some very very different levels that are outside of

you know I mean Again, we have, you know, Super Mario 3D world now, which has Cat Mario and climbing and things like that. And so I think they could do Mario, too. And I, I, I, I, that would be my, if you held a gun to my head and said, what do you think the style is going to be? I mean, I would say that would probably be my best guess. I would also ask him to shoot me, but, you know. It could be because, it could be why it's taking so long or why that style was delayed. Could be.

Yeah, just because it would take extra work. Ray, how about you? Okay. Well, I'm going to put on my. crazy Nintendo shareholder hat and come up with a crazy idea for you guys. What if they just made like a Mario Maker device, like a larger tablet that was just for Mario Maker that had all the same functionality or added functionality, maybe connect to a TV, but it would give you all that lovely stylus type control as well. That's just like a dedicated Mario Maker appliance. Thank you.

I'll take my question off here. MSRP. Yeah. I don't know. Okay. I'm a shareholder, so 999. I might pre-order that, but I do like that idea. Yeah. If they could somehow make the Switch work on my switch and my TV at the same time through magic, that'd be fun too. Yeah, yeah, that will never happen. That can never happen in the future that we use, forgotten and buried. Just make a Nintendo Chromecast, basically.

Oh, yeah, that'd be awesome, actually. But yes, thanks for joining us for our look at the Mario Maker series. I hope you guys are out there making Mario's, and you can share your levels with us. You can check my stuff out. And everybody else is, I'm sure, whenever we make a level, we post it, Chris has definitely done that. taken after Chris and I now make an image with my level that attract people's attention. I do like that. I've been seeing people do that and it's a real good way to get people's attention.

But I'm going to talk about Retronauts for a bit and then we'll go around the tables talking about all of our lovely guests. So as for Retronauts, if you want to help support the show and get all of our podcast one week ahead of time and at free and at a lower bit rate, please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. And if you sign up at the $3 level, you'll get all of that. I just mentioned it's a great way to support the show and it pays for everything we do. we are off of the former podcast network we were on, which means no more awkward

ads, but we still need your support more than ever, and because of your support, we're able to record here in lovely San Francisco with some great local guests. So please, if you want to get a little something in return and support the show, go to patreon.com slash retronauts, and sign up today for just three bucks a month. Let's start

with our non-regular guest. Chris, where can we find you online? Well, you can find me online at Twitter at Kobun-H-E-A-T. I'll try to, when this episode goes out, retweet my Mario Maker ID, which I don't, haven't memorized it or anything. But, yeah, with Mario Maker 2, you can just put in somebody's Maker ID and then just get access to all other levels, which is nice. And, yeah, that is where you can find me on the worldwide internet.

Oh, also, oh, so this episode is going up really soon, right, Bob? Very soon. Like, really soon. The day after we record it. So, that means that if you're listening to this at that time, if you're in the California Bay Area, this coming weekend. is California Extreme and that is

at the end of July and I will be there in person. It's a wonderful, it's an arcade show. If you're not already going and you're in the Bay Area, you really should go. All arcade collectors from all over the place, bring your arcade games and they're on free play for like two days and it's incredible.

I'll have a table selling some games and hardware and stuff like that. Probably have some books to sign to. So if you want to like meet me in person, it's this weekend. This is the eighth year in a row I have an existing commitment on that weekend. Dang. I will never make it to California Extreme.

I also need a car to get there, but California Extreme does seem awesome. One of these years, I will go. But yes, check out California Extreme, everybody. If you are going to be listening to this on the Patreon when it goes live, Ray, where can you find you? Okay, I'm on Twitter, R-D-B-A-A-A-A. I also

make games. I made a game called BlastRush, which is not a platformer, but could have used some more testing. That's for my company, Bipel Dog. Same name on Twitter. That's a good one, yeah. Jeremy, how about you? You can find me on Twitter as GameSpite,

and you can come see me at Long Island Retro Expo in about three weeks, two weeks, however long it is from when this episode comes out. And Pax, too. Oh, God, yeah, that's right, Pax. Please come. Be excited. Be as excited as Jeremy. You can come see me in many places.

Yes. It'll be a sight to behold. Yes, it'll be magical and wonderful. I'll be at Pax, too, so look forward to that. We'll record a nice promo for you guys, so you don't forget. But as for me, you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcasts are all about old cartoons, so they are Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon. If you like me talking about old video games, I think you'll like me talking about old cartoons.

So please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons to check out the extra stuff you can get there, including limited miniseries about fun shows like Futurama and King of the Hill and The Critic. But as for us, that's it for us this week, and we'll see you again soon for another episode of Retronauts. Goodbye. Thank you.