In Super Mario Maker, the whole primary point of the game is to do what us NES and SNES ROM Hackers have been doing with the official data from the carts for years: Make your own Mario Levels. Execept unlike some questionably obtained ROMs and possibly janky DOS/Windows/Mac utilites for edting ROMs, it's now through an official channel. This is one of the reasons I keep a certain reasonable view of Nintendo's policies regarding the downloading of their I.P. off the internet. However, to make this an actual game and give it a purpose, NIntendo has a few things. First off there WAS A online level sharing program where you could download levels from the internet via your Wii-U and then play them from other creators (died 2013 - R.I.P. until the Nintendo hackers make their own custom server for it). However, the primary way you obtain pieces to make your own levels, as well as the level-sets themselves (which come from Super Mario Bros. (NES), Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES), Super Mario World (SNES), and New Super Mario Bros. (Wii) - with some alterations I might add, as well as some other special new stuff for value), is by playing the "Ten Mario Challenge" - basically a series of developer designed Levels that act both as fun little minigames, and as a tutorial on how to make your own levels. If you beat the 10 mario challenge, these levels are added to your list of levels and the parts from these levels are added to the options to use on your own creations (as well as editing/expanding the Tutorial Levels).

Then this came out, and this is the thing I wished Nintendo had made for years, or some aspiring homebrew dev had come up with for the actual NES. IT almost drove me to purchase a Wii U as a 32 year old man or something like that, but I chose not to because 1.) I had a brand new Wii already (well, 2-3 years old at that point), and 2.) I'm not buying a $200+ game console just to play ONE Game on it.

My first encounter with this was a relative on my wife's side who always buys the latest game systems. I got the Wii-U and a few games and have been off/on playing them as I feel like. I actually was inspired to give some love to the Wii-U section tonight because I started playing more than just this on it. HOwever, it's really cool to just have to drag-n-drop the parts in place. However, I'm finding a lot of fun in playing the little mini-tutorial-levels in the 10 Mario challenge when I'm not in a creative mood. It's going to be a little while before the Wii-U gets plugged into my capture rig and recorded with since my docking station blew up and I need to find the HDMI to Composite converter for the Wii-U.