With the success of the Nintendo Switch, fans felt it was only a matter of time before Super Mario Maker was ported over from the Wii U. It came as🥃 a surprise when Nintendo announced a sequel to the game instead of porting over the seemingly endless Mario ex🐠perience.
Super Mario Maker 2 is built on the foundation of its predecessor but is adding tons of new features, mechanics, and tools that make it feel like a real sequel and less like a polished port with a 2 on the end. Here are 5 ways Super Mario Maker 2 is the same as the origina♛l, and 5 ways it's different.
10 Different: Super Mari✃o 3D World 🐬
The biggest addition fans were anticipating with a port or a sequel of Super Mario Maker 2 was the inclusion of new Super Mario art styles. The likeliest guess was the one that ended up coming 𒊎true in the end.
In Super Mario Maker 2 creators will have all of the enemies, blocks, and features of Super Mario 3D World at their disposal. This means that anyone venturing into🍸 the wild wastelands of the user-generated levels will have plenty of Catsuit Mario and clear pipe levels to experience as often or𒅌 as little as they like.
9 Same: Every♎ Asset From The Original
Often times when a game gets a sequel, deꦬvelopers feel that they shouldn't be beholden to their previous projects and successes. Many of them have opted for a ground-up approach and fans are left with a follow-up experience that may be a good as the original they fell in love with, but won꧙'t feature anything from that first game.
Thankfully Super Mario Maker 2 opted for taking everything from the 🥂original and adding more to it. Nintendo understood that there's no reason not to include everything from the first🧔 game if they really wanted players to create to their heart's content.
8 Different: Better 💧Curation Tools ꦍ
The toughest and most common criticism leveraged at the original Super Mario Maker was that it was impossible to find neat or specif♛ic types of levels because the curation search tools were so bare and lackluster.
During the reveal of Super Mario Maker 2, the improvement of curation tools for players seemed to be a point of emphasis for the team. The🌳re will be plenty of non-creators hopping in that want an easy and approachable way to play the best Mario levels the community has to offer. Curation is tough t🐓o architect but totally worth the effort.
7 Same: Varying L🦹evels Of Challenge
Super Mario Maker, despite not having the best curation tool🍌s, did offer players varying levels of challenge based on their Mario platforming skills. The 100 life Mario challenges gave players a grouping of levels based on a specific level of skill and set the number of levels to clear on how difficult the set of levels were.
A popular fan-made version of this was the Super Expert No-Skip Challeng꧋e, where players would try and complete the 6 levels in the su🦂per expert version of the Mario 100 Challenge without skipping a level or running out of all 100 lives.
6 🍷 Different: On/Off Switches
One of the new mechanics featured during Nintendo's Super Mario Maker Invitational ൩at E3 2019 were the new on/off switches. These will allow creators t♋o design levels that feature platforms and obstacles designed with a binary switch in mind.
Creativity will be key in taking full advantage♕ of them, but if the first game's levels are any indication of the talent in the community, then on/off switches could be the base for so many incredible levels. Now that multiplayer levels will be an option, it seems like these switches could be used in devious and masterful ways.
5 💫 Same: Replay Value
Imagine having a console that severely underperformed and releasing great games that were stranded to this platform until later being ported over to the new and shiny system. This is what Nintendo had to endure with the Nintendo Wii U, and they probably didn't expect Super Mario Maker to r♔etain a dedicated audience𝔍 of people playing and creating on a daily basis.
Despite the failure on the hardware's part, the game showed how committed the game's community was to make the game replayable. Look for that to continue with Super Mario Maker 2, a game on a platform withꦆ almost 3 times the install base.
4 Different: Amiibo Won't Work 🌄
Despite the Nintendo Switch featuring an Amiibo reader in the joy-cons of every system, support for the Nintendo figures aren't mandatory or assured on new releases on the platform. Despite Amiibo support being a good part of the initial release on the Nintendo Wii U, Super Mario Maker 2 won't feature the same kind of integration.
This does come as a bit of a bummer for Nintendo fans who love using the collectibles, and there is worry that this could signal the phasing out of Amiibo as a whole. Whether that's true or not, you won't be using them in Super Mario Maker 2.
3 🔥 Same: Curation Tools
Though the curation tools in Super Mario Maker were considered minimal and less than ideal, they were still there. Thankfully, like previously mentioned they're receiving one heck of an upgrade an♉d retooling in the sequel.
Finding the specific types of levels you feel like playing should be easy and understandable for a game based on user-generated content. Sometimes it takes the feedback of a feature being lackluster for developer💟s to address it in the appropriate way in the sequel.
2 Different: Story Mo🐷de 🍰
One thing that was missing from the original Super Mario Maker was a traditional 2D Mario single-player mode. Though it had the 100 Mario Challenge wh🐲ich allowed play😼ers to select a difficulty and it would give them random user-created levels to test them and see how far they could go with just 100 lives, it wasn't what a good portion of Mario fans wanted.
In Super Mario Maker 2 Nintendo went all out and gave players 🍰the sing♉le-player story they wanted, as you'll use Mario and help rebuild Princess Peach's castle from scratch.
1 🎀 Sa🐬me: A Dedicated Community
Super Mario Maker managed to have a dedicated community of builders 𝔉and players that kept that game alive long after Nintendo gave up on the Wii U and focused on the release of the Nintendo Switch.
There have been entire Youtube series and Twitch channels where creators make content based on levels and challenges created by their fans and fellow Super Mario Maker enthusiasts. The sequel, on a platform with already more than 2 times 🐻the install base of the Nintendo Wii U will likely see the same type of support for years to come.