Super Mario Maker is about to become just Super Mario Player.
A game that gives players a toolbox with which to build Super Mario levels, then upload them to let other people play online? Super Mario Maker is an idea so brilliant that in hindsight it seems obvious, and from the moment it was released in 2015, Nintendo had a smash hit.
Opening up the design process to fans anywhere in the world not only meant a wealth of innovative, outside-the-box courses, but also a virtually unlimited amount of content for players to enjoy, with over seven million levels uploaded in less than a year. However, the online nature of the game means that those levels only exist for as long as Nintendo wants to keep them on their servers, and it looks like the company’s support for Super Mario Maker is winding down.
Nintendo has announced that it will be removing the digital version of Super Mario Maker from its eShop on January 13, and with physical copies of the game no longer being distributed, that’ll be pretty much your last chance to buy it without dipping into the used game market. The even bigger goodbye, though, is coming on March 31, when Nintendo will be retiring the game’s course upload function, marking the official end of players being able to share new courses they’ve designed.
That day will also see the closing of the Super Mario Maker Bookmark website, which allows you to browse through playable courses on any web browser and bookmark them for later play. The ability to search for courses by which ones have the most likes will also be going away on March 31, so if you want to check out which levels are the most popular, now’s the time.
On the bright side, already-uploaded courses will still be playable after March 31, and Nintendo is still fully supporting Mario Maker 2, which just came out for the Switch last year. It’s inevitable, though, that one day the original Mario Maker’s online functions will be shut down entirely, but at least for the time being there’s still the chance to achieve the insane excitement of beating this level.
Source: Nintendo via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Nintendo
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