![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sadly, as I posted about when I was discussing Super Fresh 2⌒3 World, Nintendo has shut down their servers supporting software for the 3DS and Wii U effective... an hour or two ago.
I had been thinking of writing my thoughts and feelings about the game and this impending shutdown for ages but the last few months have gotten away from me - not in the context of my gaming activities (or blogging) but professionally. This evening, however, it seems like I ought to make the time for it! I haven't got any of my own brilliant videos or screen captures for the occasion so if I've got any nice graphics in here, they are either stolen (shh) or added in later.
When my family was newly growing, I had a period of sparseness with regards to gaming. I mostly had a hiatus partway through the Wii's console generation, and I was a late adopter to the Wii U, having a break when my kids were really young. I actually ignored Smash 4 coming out, even though I loved Melee, followed the hype for Brawl, and adore Mega Man. The Wii U hadn't caught my fancy in the least until I started hearing whispers about Super Mario Maker. I guess I couldn't hide my excitement and even though I never asked for it explicitly, my wife bought me a Wii U with Super Mario Maker for Christmas in 2015.
I haven't editorialized on this very much on this site yet, and probably will, but I am mildly obsessed with user-generated content. I was making maps for videogames before I even owned a console. It's part of the reason I love romhacking communities so much! For me, with many games, it's not unlikely that I may have spent more time creating crap for the game than playing the game normally. Usually, I don't even have anyone to share this content with. Regardless, we all know Nintendo has first-party titles of a quality that is rarely matched. I knew that this game was going to be fantastic. And it was! I had no big ambitions for what I was going to make, and I'm not sure I made more than one or two truly "good" levels, but the sandbox is what I wanted, and I got it. I played a lot of other folks' levels, too.
As I said, when Super Mario Maker was new, my family was growing. My oldest sons could still have been considered toddlers at the time, and it was funny getting into building levels and playing infinite numbers of other folks' levels while my kids were in this developmental stage. I mean, if they wanted to try, it was really easy to make them a stage they could beat and enjoy. And if I gave them the gamepad, they could scribble out a stage and then I could beat it. Supposing that gaming continues to matter to them, Super Mario Maker was an important early game in their lives. On a related note, a fair number of my levels were of downright dubious quality, such as "My 3-Year-Old vs. Bowser" and a few others along those lines.
I think at least some of my children share my love of user-generated content, although it's unclear whether they think about it or not. They have spent many, many hours making courses in Super Mario Maker and its sequel and I'm not sure any of them have ever beaten a hard run. Very infrequently do they actually check out random levels. I find similar habits in other games, too. This game was an interesting way to indulge in their creativity. It still is, too, as long as they don't care to upload anything! It's not like we've stopped playing Super Mario Maker entirely since the upload feature was shut down last year.
In 2016 and 2017, I also made a few levels strictly for a playful form of communication; back when Twitter was in its golden age, I was regularly communicating with students of mine using the platform, so I would share levels. I made one level called "Level For My Students" that spelled out that they should stop gaming and get back to work. There were a few students that I legitimately connected with over Super Mario Maker around this time... even getting faculty reviews that were like, "Kyle is a great teacher but he can't kaizo worth a damn".
Another of my levels that was uploaded for a short time was a literal pregnancy announcement! Amazingly, mine was not the only Super Mario Maker-based pregnancy announcement I saw in its heyday.
What did I like about Super Mario Maker? The editor really was very easy to use, and made excellent of the Wii U's freaky gamepad as a controller. If they had to limit the game to just four game styles, they picked an excellent four, and they represented those source games well. Building was excellent fun. I didn't feel like the game was missing much, with slopes being the only truly notable omission from my point-of-view. The 100 Mario Challenge was excellent, and reasonably fun to play on all difficulty levels, and that is something that Super Mario Maker 2 failed to recapture. As with anything with this much user-generated content, there is a lot of crap out there... but it never felt like it took too long to stumble across some gold, at least in my own experience. My favourite thing to do was play random things until I got a "lead" on a creator who really tried, and then stalking that creator and playing everything they did.
It really does feel pretty sad... but there isn't much that is lost here, really, I guess. I mean, Super Mario Maker 2 is still going strong, in its own way... and there's always hacks! However, I think Super Mario Maker is/was an important game... and I'm not sure SMM2 fully captures every aspect of its magic, especially for me personally.
The idea of a legislation allowing people who buy software to use and support it independently if the vendor stops supporting the service is intriguing to me.
I had been thinking of writing my thoughts and feelings about the game and this impending shutdown for ages but the last few months have gotten away from me - not in the context of my gaming activities (or blogging) but professionally. This evening, however, it seems like I ought to make the time for it! I haven't got any of my own brilliant videos or screen captures for the occasion so if I've got any nice graphics in here, they are either stolen (shh) or added in later.
When my family was newly growing, I had a period of sparseness with regards to gaming. I mostly had a hiatus partway through the Wii's console generation, and I was a late adopter to the Wii U, having a break when my kids were really young. I actually ignored Smash 4 coming out, even though I loved Melee, followed the hype for Brawl, and adore Mega Man. The Wii U hadn't caught my fancy in the least until I started hearing whispers about Super Mario Maker. I guess I couldn't hide my excitement and even though I never asked for it explicitly, my wife bought me a Wii U with Super Mario Maker for Christmas in 2015.
I haven't editorialized on this very much on this site yet, and probably will, but I am mildly obsessed with user-generated content. I was making maps for videogames before I even owned a console. It's part of the reason I love romhacking communities so much! For me, with many games, it's not unlikely that I may have spent more time creating crap for the game than playing the game normally. Usually, I don't even have anyone to share this content with. Regardless, we all know Nintendo has first-party titles of a quality that is rarely matched. I knew that this game was going to be fantastic. And it was! I had no big ambitions for what I was going to make, and I'm not sure I made more than one or two truly "good" levels, but the sandbox is what I wanted, and I got it. I played a lot of other folks' levels, too.
As I said, when Super Mario Maker was new, my family was growing. My oldest sons could still have been considered toddlers at the time, and it was funny getting into building levels and playing infinite numbers of other folks' levels while my kids were in this developmental stage. I mean, if they wanted to try, it was really easy to make them a stage they could beat and enjoy. And if I gave them the gamepad, they could scribble out a stage and then I could beat it. Supposing that gaming continues to matter to them, Super Mario Maker was an important early game in their lives. On a related note, a fair number of my levels were of downright dubious quality, such as "My 3-Year-Old vs. Bowser" and a few others along those lines.
I think at least some of my children share my love of user-generated content, although it's unclear whether they think about it or not. They have spent many, many hours making courses in Super Mario Maker and its sequel and I'm not sure any of them have ever beaten a hard run. Very infrequently do they actually check out random levels. I find similar habits in other games, too. This game was an interesting way to indulge in their creativity. It still is, too, as long as they don't care to upload anything! It's not like we've stopped playing Super Mario Maker entirely since the upload feature was shut down last year.
In 2016 and 2017, I also made a few levels strictly for a playful form of communication; back when Twitter was in its golden age, I was regularly communicating with students of mine using the platform, so I would share levels. I made one level called "Level For My Students" that spelled out that they should stop gaming and get back to work. There were a few students that I legitimately connected with over Super Mario Maker around this time... even getting faculty reviews that were like, "Kyle is a great teacher but he can't kaizo worth a damn".
Another of my levels that was uploaded for a short time was a literal pregnancy announcement! Amazingly, mine was not the only Super Mario Maker-based pregnancy announcement I saw in its heyday.
What did I like about Super Mario Maker? The editor really was very easy to use, and made excellent of the Wii U's freaky gamepad as a controller. If they had to limit the game to just four game styles, they picked an excellent four, and they represented those source games well. Building was excellent fun. I didn't feel like the game was missing much, with slopes being the only truly notable omission from my point-of-view. The 100 Mario Challenge was excellent, and reasonably fun to play on all difficulty levels, and that is something that Super Mario Maker 2 failed to recapture. As with anything with this much user-generated content, there is a lot of crap out there... but it never felt like it took too long to stumble across some gold, at least in my own experience. My favourite thing to do was play random things until I got a "lead" on a creator who really tried, and then stalking that creator and playing everything they did.
Probably my own best level was "Giant Kitchen", which I later made a copy of called "Red Coins in the Giant Kitchen" with forced red coins in order to get the player exploring a bit more. Y'all know I love a good level made to resemble giant things, and this felt right out a Tom & Jerry game. Shortly after Super Mario Maker 2 came out, I tried to re-create it, block-for-block... which means this is still playable, sort of! You can access it on SMM2 with level code W5R-20S-N6G.
It really does feel pretty sad... but there isn't much that is lost here, really, I guess. I mean, Super Mario Maker 2 is still going strong, in its own way... and there's always hacks! However, I think Super Mario Maker is/was an important game... and I'm not sure SMM2 fully captures every aspect of its magic, especially for me personally.
The idea of a legislation allowing people who buy software to use and support it independently if the vendor stops supporting the service is intriguing to me.
