We believe this is what’s known as ‘the old bait-and-switch’.
We got our hands on Super Mario Maker at E3 and bloody loved it: It’s like your childhood and your inner desire to be a game designer got together and threw you a big surprise party with all your favourite things.
There’s obviously going to be some innate competitiveness among the Super Mario Maker community to see who can come up with the best Mario Maker level. Obviously that’s a deeply subjective thing and the best Mario Maker level for me might not be the same for you – it’s “my dad could beat your dad in a fight” all over again – but Nintendo have the opportunity to help.
As with most titles that include user creation – from the massive hitters like Sony’s Little Big Planet to indie darlings like Mike Bithell’s Volume – people want to show off and share their creations with their friends and the community at large. Any developer or publisher with a modicum of intelligence will latch onto this user engagement and showcase the best user-created levels.
Which is exactly what’s happened here. Nintendo have put together a showcase of the 100 best Mario Maker levels.
In this instance, Nintendo have the opportunity to be an arbiter of not only the best Mario Maker level, but also the ones they feel the community at large really needs to play and experience. Nintendo are acting as the quality control of what constitutes the best Mario Maker level here (not us) so you can direct any angry correspondence to them for what’s about to happen…
And that, my friends, is how it’s done. Well played, Kocobé. Well played.