Mario fans of the world, unite! Now you can play, create, and share the side-scrolling Super Mario courses of your dreams in the Super Mario Maker 2 game, available exclusively on the Nintendo Switch™ system! Dive into the single-player Story Mode and play built-in courses to rebuild Princess Peach’s castle. Make your own courses, alone or together. And with a Nintendo Switch Online membership*, share your courses, access a near-endless supply made by others, enjoy online multiplayer, and more.
A new side-scrolling Mario adventure that unleashes the creative potential of Super Mario Maker 2 NINTENDO SWITCH awaits in Story Mode, which contains over 100 built-in courses. And in Course Maker, a wide range of parts, tools, and more are available so you can construct your own courses. Want coin-shooting cannons? Bowser riding on a giant Goomba? Cat Mario sliding down slopes to take out an army of baddies? Go for it! You call the shots.
Pass a Joy-Con controller to a partner to build cooperatively on a single system.
A transcendent experience that will only continue to improve over time. [Issue #41 – September 2019, p. 68]
In short, it makes creating levels as exciting or more exciting than playing them. Miyamoto would be proud.
Super Mario Maker 2 is a much needed and long awaited addition to the Switch. Even the smaller additions to course making goes a long way to giving players the tools they need to make courses that you wouldn’t be able to distinguish from the real deal. If you’re not interested in building levels, there’s plenty to play in the story mode and the content from the Course World will ensure there’s content for years to come. While there are some limitations that might irk hardcore course builders, there is so much more to like about the game. How can you pass up a Mario game that has the most inventive courses the series has seen in years.
The necessity of a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to fully enjoy some of Super Mario Maker 2’s best features is an unfortunate reality for Switch owners, but the wealth of amazing online content is worth the price of admission in my eyes. If you own a Nintendo Switch, Super Mario Maker 2 deserves to be permanently installed on your system.
Super Mario Maker 2 expands on the first in a great way. New possibilities, a story mode and coop are a great addition. There are however a few details that can lead to some frustrations, but they are few and far between.
Super Mario Maker 2 is a remarkable continuation from the original game. This new entry in the series takes the best elements of the previous one and adds a huge number of new elements, modes and styles. The creator mode is larger and deeper, the online multiplayer is just fun; but the story mode lacks on personality. Even though the game is bigger and extensive, it is definitely not the ultimate Mario Maker.
But that toolkit is only half of the equation. The other half is a platform game with no quality control, no impetus for putting legitimate effort into your original designs, and no way to weed out poor content creators other than trusting that players will be able to discern the difference between a bad level and good level and rate them accordingly. Given how many positive messages I've seen attached to genuinely bad stages, I don't have much faith in the Mario Maker community right now and I question whether it'll get better down the line.
February 14, 2019
Super Mario Maker 2 comes to Nintendo Switch in June. Watch video
