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The best part of Super Mario Maker on the Wii U aside from making levels was the community behind the game. If you’re a hardened Mario and Mario Maker fan you still might find some good ideas for your own levels, if not you can completely skip all of this. The lessons will teach you a technique or tool and then you’ll have to play it out. It’s a Mario Maker game, sure, so it doesn’t need personality – but it’s a nice touch. The tutorial and guides from the two ‘hosts’ may seem like an annoyance or hand holding but they actually add some personality to the game, something the Wii U version didn’t have. This won’t be the first thing you’ll find removed from its console brother. That also means there’s no event courses and no amiibo support for the game whatsoever. The entire creation toolkit is available here as it was in the Wii U version, with one notable exception – the mystery mushroom. Unlike the Wii U version, most of the tools are unlocked from the get-go with others being unlocked later in the single player modes. The game starts with a welcome from Yamamura and Mashiko/Mary-O and then you’re pretty much just shoved straight into the editor.
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The packaging and the presentation of Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS looks and feels exactly the same as the Wii U version. So can Super Mario Maker be good without one of its defining features? Is making stages without being able to share them to a wider community still fun? Let’s find out. Then Nintendo slowly revealed the bits of the game that wouldn’t be making the transition to the portable and the hype deflated like a two week-old party balloon. It was something no one expected and a pleasant surprise.
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When Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS was revealed, there was elation.
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