Mario Paint didn't have much to do with making games, but it wasn't a dry and straightforward creation program, either. And these aspects didn't return simply for nostalgia's sake. Heck, it even straight-up borrows several elements, like the interactive logo letters, Undo Dog, the save/load robot, and the little guys doing sit-ups on the loading screen. If you've had a chance to tinker with the basic functionality of Super Mario Maker, you might have noticed its interface bears a striking resemblance to the playful trappings of Mario Paint. Mario Paint may seem like an era-appropriate solution to graphics programs on expensive PCs-Nintendo always loved doing more with less-but there's actually a lot more going on under the hood. Sharing them, however, would still be an impossible dream. Needless to say, since this peripheral was never released in America, it wasn't until the Virtual Console rereleases that we could finally keep our creations, rather than have them vanish into the ether with the powering down of a console. If you wanted to save your user-created levels, you'd need to buy the Famicom Data Recorder, which would back this data up on the reliable cassette tape format. While each of these games give players access to all their bits and pieces, some technological limitations made their Design Modes not as useful as they could have been.
Excitebike, Wrecking Crew, and Mach Rider-three vastly different games-each give players the chance to create levels just as complex as the ones included on their cartridges. Strangely enough, Nintendo's experiments with player-designed content predate the first Super Mario Bros. And while their toolsets have grown more complex and intuitive over the passing decades, Nintendo's desire to turn consumers into creators hasn't changed one bit. With their earliest works, Nintendo designers and artists like Gunpei Yokoi (the brain behind the Game Boy), Yoshio Sakimoto (of Metroid fame), and Hirofumi Matsuoka (WarioWare director) have shown Nintendo games aren't just about the play they can also inspire their audience to do great things. Though this internal group has been dissolved for a decade, their history lives on through the Nintendo experiences that feel more like digital toys than straight-up games: the tactile, metronomic simplicity of something like Rhythm Heaven owes much to this division's pre-video-game roots. Since the dawn of the Famicom era, Nintendo's actively tapped into the natural human urge to make stuff, mostly thanks to the efforts of their R&D1 development team. Today marks the official release of Super Mario Maker, meaning thousands upon thousands worldwide will have their first chance at something they've previously only dreamed of: being an honest-to-god game designer.īut Super Mario Maker isn't the first Nintendo game to let players take an active part in the creative process.