People are making all kinds of stages in Super Mario Maker. There are brutally hard stages, traditional stages, clever stages, and others. These are clever ones.
The interesting thing these two stages have in common is their use of comments. Nintendo intends for comments to be exactly that: comments on a level. But with some trickery, comments can be used in some unexpected ways.
Goomba Story 3 (D34E-0000-0100-444E)
Episode three in a multi-part saga, Goomba Story 3 doesn’t even work correctly unless the player turns the comments on. I mean, it’s possible to complete the stage, but you’d miss out on all the fun ‘n flavor; the comments are used as dialogue boxes for the various goomba NPCs that are littered about the world.
A-ha!
(The only way to make them NPCs is by boxing them in so they can’t walk.)
Though I played some of the other Goomba Story levels, the third one stood out because it literally made me laugh out loud and feels a bit like a Mario RPG.
Here’s where I lost it, by the way:
P-Ticket!
That’s a a Dad Joke, but as a 30-year-old heading towards 31, I’m cool with it. By solving a few puzzles, players gain access to a P-Switch (aka P-Ticket) that can be used to waltz through the “locked door” and move onto the ship itself.
The ship is what really impressed me. In particular, this little section:
To simulate the overheating stove, there’s a bouncing fire enemy. Neat.
Later, as you’re trying to fight off pirates, there’s even a sequence where Mario is forced to walk the plank. Thankfully, there are some friends to help him out.
It’s not a particularly challenging stage, but I had a smile the whole time.
Boring Menu-Based Combat (D738-0000-0152-8F19)
This one is a little more straightforward, as it tries to simulate a JRPG. The comments are used by the designer to represent different actions in a menu.
The comments both tell you what to do and provide important information about the boss you’re facing. Yes, you do have to hit Bowser at least 40 times to move onto the next area. Clever or not, it’s as tedious as it sounds—just like most JRPGs!!!!! Oh, shit!!!! Can you hear the slam junk on that joke, Schreier!!!
I’ve been playing Super Mario Maker daily for months and months now, yet I’m still finding awesome stuff every day. Hopefully, that continues well into 2016!