I’ve largely avoided stages labeled super expert in Mario Maker; they’re usually nonsense. Sometimes, they’re the right kind of nonsense.
My intention this morning was to stream the latest stage from Tristan, an eight-year-old from Canada who’s been crafting devious levels for me. Sadly, Nintendo deleted his stage before I was able to play it for reasons that I’ve written about many times on Kotaku. Now, I’m just sad about it.
Looking to channel my anger in a more positive direction, I booted up the super expert section of Mario Maker’s 100 Mario challenge. (I’m not clear if playing frustrating levels is “more positive,” but whatever.)
Though many people make super expert stages in Mario Maker, it’s largely the domain of cruel level designers from Japan. The moment any Japanese text appears on my screen, I know that I’m in for a very bad time.
I mean, look at my face when it happened today:
A few minutes later, I’d skipped past. (It opened with a section that seemed entirely reliant on luck.)
Towards the end, my enthusiasm nearly sapped by a level accurately dubbed “Troll,” I decided to roll the dice again. The result was, of course, another Japanese stage. This one was filled with P-switches, relying on a trick where players have to use them as platforms.
I held my breath, realized this was all for nothing and tried anyway:
To my surprise, the level was...beatable? Tricky and ridiculous, yes, but beatable. I kept my cool, meticulously jumping from one platform to the next, and slowly made my way through this P-switch death trap.
Want to know what pure joy sounds like? Watch this clip:
That was a damn good stage. I wish more super expert ones were like it.
You can watch me play the whole level (and others) over here: