Making Mario

I spent weekends as a kid sitting in front of my Super Nintendo, daydreaming about designing my own Super Mario World levels. A ghost house full of red Yoshis. An underwater level with Koopas everywhere. A forest of doors, each hiding some impossible puzzle. I’d grin to myself, knowing that someday I’d actually build all this.

That someday came in 2015 with Super Mario Maker on the Wii U. Not quite what I’d imagined, but close enough. You could design levels across different Mario styles, upload them, see what thousands of other people were making. The internet filled with brilliant designs and absolutely sadistic kaizo levels that required inhuman skill. I made some mediocre ones. Didn’t matter. I was finally doing it.

Super Mario Maker 2 landed on Switch with better tools. I lost months to it, building levels I’d never finish, entire worlds that only exist on my console. There’s something about building these little spaces, even if nobody plays them, even if they’re not good. Finally got what I wanted as a kid. Finally got to make my own Mario games.