A Brief History of Super Mario Maker

The first time I saw Super Mario Maker was on the Nintendo Wii U. I didn't own a Wii U, but I kept up with the Wii U news because I was thinking of buying one. I ultimately didn't buy one because of how poorly it was received and I still don't have one to this day. The Wii U failed because of two main reasons, People either thought it was going to be an add on to the Wii or they thought it was going to be a portable handheld version of the Wii. These both made sense because Nintendo was a creative company and always had interesting add ons to their consoles including ROB the robot, the Game Boy Player, and the lesser-known 64 disk drive. But ultimately, it was neither an add on or a portable Wii. Overall, the Wii U tablet controller seemed more like a gimmick than anything. This gimmicky controller looked unnecessary and turned off many people. Eventually, there came a game that seemed to use the most out of the Wii U tablet controller. You guessed it, that game was Super Mario Maker. This game was released on September 10, 2015, and it got great reviews. Many people who had a Wii U loved this game because they thought it actually used the tablet controller to the fullest. Even though this was one of the best Wii U games, not many people got to play it because it was on the Wii U. only about a year after this game came out, on November 2016, the Wii U was discontinued from stores, though you could still buy it directly from Nintendo until November 2017.
Based on how poorly the Wii U was doing, it only made sense for Nintendo to release a port of Super Mario Maker on the 3ds. This port was released in December 2016. Nintendo released a 3ds port to try and reach more people because of how much bigger the 3ds support base was and because of the bigger fan base, the 3ds version sold better. Ultimately, I bought the 3ds version because of how interesting this game looked. In the end, I didn't play this game that much and only made 2 or 3 levels in total. there were a few reasons why this game didn't totally do it for me. First, this game could have taken advantage of the 3ds touch screen and did except that the touch screen was significantly smaller than the Wii U tablet controller's touch screen and it felt cramped. Secondly, the Wii U version allowed you to be able to search for levels using level Ids you could share online and with your friends. On the 3ds though, you couldn't search for levels and only could look at the levels that Nintendo showed you. Finally, because of both of the previous reasons, the game failed to captivate me and I didn't play it much. When the Nintendo Switch finally came out in March 2017, The Wii U had evolved into a console that everyone thought it was originally going to be, a handheld. People loved the Switch because of the hybrid, home console, and handheld all in one. Nintendo wanted to make more money and decided to release many Wii U games that a lot of people didn't get to experience, as Switch games and marketed them as deluxe versions. Many games got these releases such as Mario Kart 8 and New Super Mario Bros U. I even thought That Super Mario Maker would get a deluxe version on the Switch because of how well it could use the touch screen for level design. Eventually, on June 28, 2019, the Switch got the game, but not in a deluxe version, but as a sequel. I got Super Mario Maker 2 for Christmas and I love it. I always wanted to create my own video games and did using Game Maker, but this software had a learning curve. Super Mario Maker, on the other hand, didn't have much of a learning curve and was accessible to many people. Way to go Nintendo, for using your franchise's mascot to create a great game!