To celebrate the franchise’s 30th Anniversary, Nintendo launched Super Mario Maker. Providing official tools for the community to use, this title allows players to create their own Super Mario Bros. levels based on different aesthetic/gameplay milestones in the franchise. With more than 3.3 million courses to now play globally, Nintendo have announced a new update which is set to go live on November 5th 2015. This update will provide access to a range of new features, both those present in previous titles and those exclusive to Super Mario Maker.
One of the major additions is the ability to levels to have mid-level checkpoints. With a maximum of two possible per level, this allows players to resume from the last checkpoint passed if they lose a life – rather than having to start over at the beginning of the course. Players can choose to edit and re-upload their own courses, or create new courses from scratch using this feature.
Players will also be able to insert power-ups which are dependent on Mario’s status. For example, by attaching a Super Mushroom to a Fire Flower and placing it inside a block, Mario will receive the Super Mushroom when he is small, and the Fire Flower when he is large.
Also introduced in this update are “Event Courses” in the game’s Course World online hub. These courses will feature levels from partner creators outside of Nintendo. One of the first Event Courses will be “Ship Love,” the winning level from the “hackathon” event that was held at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park earlier this year in co-operation with Nintendo of America.
