Today’s Super Mario Maker 2 Direct revealed a truckload of new information about the upcoming game. Let’s dive right into it, starting with the game’s style, marked by a new twist.
SMM2 will have the same styles as the other two games: Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U.
However, it also introduces the Super Mario 3D World style, including Cat Mario and Cat Bowser, which opens up a ton of new options for stage design.
These range from creating platforms Cat Mario can climb up to the clear pipes we’ve already seen in previous ads, setting tracks for Piranha Plants, bosses, and more:
- Floating crates
- Boxes that phase in and out
- Warp boxes
- Customizable track blocks
- Mushroom trampolines
- Skipsqueak enemies
- Koopa Troopa cars
- Pom Pom
- Charvaargh
The Direct only showed a bit of what fans can expect from the new style, with the promise of even more to come.
It’s important to note that unlike the other styles in Super Mario Maker 2, which players can swap freely between as they create their stages, the Super Mario 3D World style cannot be swapped in and out. It’s built on a completely separate engine thanks to the unique physics required for the stage mechanics.
New Themes, Items, and Bosses…Oh My!
SMM2 is introducing new themes as well: desert, forest, sky, and snow. Each has new music created by famous Mario composer Koji Kondo as well.
There are plenty of new items that will be available for all styles:
- on and off switches
- crane claws
- twisters
- fire-breathing red Yoshis
- parachutes
- icicles
- Dry Bones shell (for extra protection)
- Big Coins
- Angry Sun
- Boom Boom
And a lot more to come.
Slopes can now be customized into different gradients, and the water and lava levels can be adjusted, too. There’s a new scrolling feature that gives players the ability to turn any stage into a side-scrolling stage, and the speed and direction of the scroll can be adjusted at will.
That opens the door to new vertical scrolling sub-areas, just like in the mainline Super Mario games.
The Angry Sun gets a counterpart this time as well, with the Moon item. It turns any stage to night and, unlike the Angry Sun, it doesn’t hurt Mario. In fact, it’s rather helpful. If Mario jumps and touches the moon, the moon then destroys all the enemies on screen at the time.
Different themes react in different ways to night mode. For instance, gravity is reduced in the sky theme, water turns to poison in the forest, and the slopes become dangerously slippery in the ice theme. Items will change somehow as well, though nothing specific was shown other than a rather frightening looking mushroom.
After unlocking night mode for each theme, the moon item doesn’t have to be placed; players can just choose to include night mode from then on.
Finally, two players can work together to build their stages as well by sharing Joy-Con.
Story Mode comes to Super Mario Maker 2
Super Mario Maker 2 will build on the inclusion of 100+ pre-designed stages in Super Mario Maker 3D and expands on it in a big way. That’s because SMM2 will include Story Mode for the first time in the series.
Story Mode sees Mario work to rebuild Princess Peach’s castle from the ground up. To do this, he’ll need to take on various missions for the constructors and other randos that happen to be around the castle as it redevelops.
Each request revolves around completing a specific course or clearing a set of conditions, and they reward Mario with a set number of coins; these coins are then used to build the castle.
A firm number of courses wasn’t mentioned, but like its 3DS predecessor, SMM2 will have more than 100 courses to play through, along with the side quest courses.
Stage Share Mode Returns
Super Mario Maker 2 marks the return of the much-loved stage sharing mode from the original game.
Naturally, since it’s an online mode, it will require a Nintendo Switch online membership.
Stage sharing is largely the same as before, though it does include some important new additions. One of them involves challenges. Players can create stages with challenges built in, such as clearing x number of enemies or gathering a set number of coins.
All players will have a Maker Profile, which lets them customize their Maker (think Mii 2.0) and earn Maker Coins for popular stages; these can be spent on outfits and the like for their Maker.
Players can search for courses using various tags, such as themes or features, or even multiplayer.
That’s right, Super Mario Maker 2 will include multiplayer modes for stages: versus and co-op modes. Versus modes pits up to 4 players against each other in a race to finish the course first, while co-op mode has up to 4 player work together to finish a course.
If players are nearby and each has a copy of the game and a Nintendo Switch, then one player can host an online room for their play sessions, and the online element will be based on the host’s connection.
Some Bundles
Nintendo is offering a few special deals for Super Mario Maker 2. One is a physical or digital bundle featuring the game and a 12-month subscription for Nintendo Switch Online for $69.99. If the purchaser already has a subscription, then the new 12 months will stack onto their existing subscription.
The other promotion is for existing NSO members. 2 game vouchers can be purchased for a total of $99.99 and then redeemed for 2 Nintendo Switch games, including pre-purchasing Super Mario Maker 2.
A list of eligible titles can be found here.
