On November 4, Nintendo fans will get a free update for Super Mario Maker for Wii U. The update will include new creator tools and new Course World categories, including one that features a level designed by…a Facebook employee?
I’ll get to that in a moment. First up, mid-level checkpoints are coming! This means that if a player dies partway through your course, they don’t necessarily need to go all the way back to the beginning. Woo! In order to access the little mid-level flags while building a level, you’ll just need to pick up an arrow sign and shake it.
Shake shake shake!
Second, we’ll be getting power-ups that are dependent on Mario’s status. In other words, you can make it so that tiny Mario gets a mushroom and big Mario gets a fire flower. Sweet!
The new updates will also be introducing Event Courses to the Course World. This category is designed to highlight content from Nintendo partners. The first course to be added is “Ship Love,” which was designed by a Facebook employee. Why Facebook, you ask? A few months ago, Nintendo hosted a “hackathon” at Facebook headquarters in California where they invited staff members to compete by designing Mario Maker levels. “Ship Love” was the winner.
New levels will be added to the Event Courses category over time. Coming soon, you’ll also be able to play the level featured in the final round of the PAX Prime Omegathon back in August.
Lastly, Nintendo will be adding an Official Makers category to the Course World. These courses will be “specially selected” and some of them will be designed by Nintendo. Well, that’s kind of vague…
So far, more than 3.3 million levels have been created and uploaded to the Super Mario Maker community. Let’s see what they do with their new tools.
