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Want to try your hand at crafting Super Mario Maker screens, but don’t have a Wii U? Right this way!

Nintendo’s Super Mario Maker hit a homerun with by letting users create and share content for history’s most popular side-scrolling platformer video game franchise. As Nintendo’s most treasured intellectual property, of course the only way to play with Mario Maker has been by also purchasing the company’s Wii U console, but now there’s a way to get a taste of it even if you don’t own a single piece of Nintendo hardware.

Nintendo has just launched the Super Mario Wallpaper Maker (Super Mario Kabegami Maker) website, which is free to use through either your smartphone or PC. Just like the name implies, it lets you make wallpaper images using the simple, intuitive interface of Super Mario Maker.

After going to the website here, scroll down until you’re presented with the choice of making a wallpaper for PC or smartphone use, followed by a list of resolutions to pick from.

▼ PC on the left, smartphone on the right

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▼ The highest PC resolution setting

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At the top left you’ll see an icon with the Super Mario Bros. title logo. Hovering the cursor over it presents you with a dropdown menu to select from original Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, or New Super Mario Bros. Wii U skins.

▼ Let’s just go ahead set it to the franchise’s greatest game right now.

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Next to the skin selector is another dropdown list of backgrounds (standard field, underground, water, ghost house, airship, or castle). Most importantly, you’ve also got a row of parts, including blocks, pipes, coins, and enemies, with which to craft your wallpaper. Start dropping in whatever pieces you like, and if you make a mistake, scrub it out by selecting the eraser (the second icon from the right on the bottom row) and dragging it over the problem area, or hitting the rocket icon in the bottom right corner to completely start over.

▼ You can also change skins in mid-creation.

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Since the screen obviously won’t be scrolling, space is at a premium. Still, it’s a fun test of your creative abilities to see how many clever traps or artistic flourishes you can fit into a single screen.

When you’re all done, hit the “finish wallpaper” button at the very bottom of the page (circled in red in the screenshot below).

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This will bring up a preview of the image, with the yellow button under it on the left being “return to making wallpaper” and the one on the right being “save wallpaper.”

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Clicking save will bring you to yet another preview image, with a yellow “download” button as well as icons to share your creation on Twitter or Facebook.

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Oddly enough, clicking download won’t automatically save a copy of the wallpaper for you. It will, however, bring up a dedicated window for the image so you can save it without having to do any cropping.

▼ The finished product, because why end with a giant Bowser when you can end with a giant squid?

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The fact that the whole thing is free seems like a pretty generous gesture on Nintendo’s part, given that it’s essentially a free demo of one of its hottest titles. As a matter of fact, there’s nothing stopping you from going back multiple times and designing the screens that would come next in a complete, scrolling level.

Of course, no one will be able to actually play through the screens you design, and after you’ve made a few and seen how easy Super Mario Maker is to use, odds are you’ll be wanting to pick up a copy of the game and/or the hardware needed to run it. That essentially makes Super Mario Wallpaper Maker an ad, but with one as clever and entertaining as this, we can’t say we mind it one bit.

Follow Casey on Twitter to see him look for any excuse to talk about giant squid.

Source: Gogo Tsushin via Hahcima Kiko
Images: Super Mario Wallpaper Maker (edited by RocketNews24)