My Top 115 Favorite Video Games (85-81)

Click here for the introduction!

85. Super Mario Maker (Wii U)

Super Mario Maker nearly became a full-time job for me when it released exactly one year ago today. Prior to the game’s release, I was reasonably excited for it, but I figured I’d play around with it for a few weeks and then move on. I ended up completely losing myself in this bottomless toy-box as my imagination completely ran wild. Super Mario Maker is a childhood dream come true for me. All those imaginary Mario levels I’ve daydreamed about and played through in my head over the years could now be reality (well, somewhat). While the game has some frustrations and limitations (most of which have now been addressed through updates), this creative-tool/game hybrid is nonetheless a treasure. I spent hours and hours deep into the night toiling away on making every brick perfect in creations that I poured my heart into, from a massive airship to an underground sewer complex to a four-level ghost story, and this isn’t even taking into account all the other time I spent exploring all of the creative and wonderful levels from other users. Super Mario Maker even extended beyond the screen as I’d pen ideas down in a notebook and plan out future courses; I even had a whole game planned but I inevitably got burned out before realizing my full ambitions. Looking back, this game fired up my imagination in a way that I hadn’t felt in many years; it was invigorating, and I was always excited to jump back into the game to start creating and playing around again.  Super Mario Maker is a universe, an endless template for creating and playing, and if you are someone who can appreciate both aspects of the experience like me, than it is a truly magical experience indeed.

84. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess/Twilight Princess HD (GameCube/Wii U)

I’ve written about this before, but to this date, I have never in my life been more excited for an upcoming video game than The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I remember when it was announced, I remember each new trailer, I remember when Midna and Wolf Link were revealed (in what still stands as my favorite video game trailer of all time)…there was the delay, the inevitable porting to the Wii, and all the hype and speculation surrounding the game’s release. I remember finally beholding the game Christmas morning in 2006, having just gotten home for winter break from my first year at college. I unpackaged the game, absorbed the title cinematic, and experienced those opening moments with shaking hands.

I had never been so immensely thrilled to herd goats.

I’ve long had a rocky relationship with Twilight Princess and "mixed feelings" only begins to describe it. Twilight Princess represents a catering to fans and a safe return to form after the unhinged imagination present in Majora’s Mask and The Wind Waker, a facet which sours the title a bit for me to this day. Nevertheless, Twilight Princess is a beautiful, impeccably-designed, and memorable adventure. Its dungeons are some of the strongest in the series, with the haunting Arbiter’s Grounds and the charming Snowpeak Ruins being two especially memorable highlights. While it is lacking in terms of sidequests compared to other Zelda titles, TP’s main quest is mainly one engaging venture after another that takes Link to the dreary depths of a giant lake, to a moonlit desert encampment, and to the far reaches of an enchanted grove. There are thrilling horseback battles, sword duels with an undead knight, and even an old-West shoot-out…by the time the credits role, there are few games that can say they’ve delivered such a satisfying journey. It’s nothing too daring and it certainly apes a lot of material from previous Zelda adventures, but there’s something comforting and pristine about Twilight Princess’s traditional adventure, and the Wii U’s HD remaster only makes its creative art direction easier to appreciate.

83. The Legend of Zelda (NES)

I was surprised by how easily I became immersed in the original Legend of Zelda the first time I played it. I expected something that would be awkward and difficult to get into compared to the Zelda games that I’d played, and while perhaps in some ways this was true, The Legend of Zelda ended up being an absorbing adventure that not only contains many of the hallmarks that make later Zelda games so great, but also a unique charm that is all its own. It’s a satisfying challenge and there’s something about its minimalist pixel art, tiled dungeons, and satisfying sense of progression that I find very endearing. Coupled with its lovingly-detailed instruction manual and official old-school-anime-style artwork, there’s a very classic nature to this game that I adore. I was late to the party on this one, first playing the re-released Game Boy Advance version, but thanks to a close friend also playing through the same version at the same time, I was able to have that experience of sharing secrets and experiences just like people did with the NES version. And even though Level 6 is still a major pain in the ass, I still enjoy going through the original Zelda quite a bit today.

82. BioShock (PC)

I still remember the pre-release buzz for the original BioShock and thinking that the game looked fascinating. The concept of a mysterious, derelict city under the ocean full of hulking beings in diving suits immediately intrigued me. It did not take long at all to realize that the game was something special the summer that I finally dove into it and began exploring the halls of the city of Rapture. The environment, atmosphere, art design, and sound design in BioShock is all brilliantly done, and working my way through every flooded corridor and listening to every discarded audio log was truly a treat. There’s a potent sense of place in this game, and Rapture and its many colorful personalities is a beautifully-realized creation.

81. Metroid Fusion (Game Boy Advance)

Can you believe that back in the glorious year of 2002, Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime both released on the same day in the US? I mean, what a time to be alive! Comparing that with the dark post-Other M times we live in today is bound to make a person a little wistful, especially since these two games were my very first experience with the Metroid series. While Prime admittedly left the bigger impact on me, Fusion is still a great experience. Taking Samus to a creepy space station overrun with mutants and a parasitic menace, Fusion is a polished and somber follow-up to Super Metroid, and is still currently the last Metroid story chronologically. While I prefer the more non-linear 2D Metroid titles over Fusion, it is nonetheless dripping with atmosphere and the encounters with Samus’s eerie doppelganger, the SA-X, are a tense highlight.

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Stop by again for #80-76!

Three Big Problems with Super Mario Maker

As I stated in my last post, I love Super Mario Maker. I’ve had a ton of fun imagining and creating new worlds for Mario to explore myself, and tons of other brilliant individuals have dreamed up fabulous creations I never thought would be possible in this game. It’s a blast to create and play and perhaps most importantly of all, it’s easy to use. I have bountiful praise for the game, but…

It has some problems. Three glaring ones in my opinion. Now, there are a lot of things Nintendo could add to the game via DLC and updates, and sure, plenty of other elements from the Super Mario series have been left out. I could go on and on about how I’d love to see slopes be here, other power-ups, new music, new level themes, etc. etc. There are also a lot of element combinations that I wish would work in the game, but don’t. But in all honesty, I think what the package has right now is pretty great; I’ve managed to find quite a lot of versatility with the available material myself, other people have already been creating truly inspiring things with what’s here, and there’s also still so much more potential just with what the game currently offers. The three big problems I want to address are not so much about adding more stuff, but are what I feel to be glaring issues that detract from the experience in a very notable way. It’s frustrating when such a beautiful thing as Super Mario Maker is held back by just a handful of glaring issues that could possibly be remedied. So enough preamble; here are three big problems I have with Super Mario Maker, in order from least problematic to most:

3.) No Checkpoints

        

There is nothing more frustrating than making my way through a really special level that someone created, only to make a stupid mistake three quarters of the way through it and have to restart all the way back at the beginning. Some levels benefit from having no checkpoints. One might want to make a highly difficult trial and error level meant to be learned and practiced that delivers high satisfaction when one finally conquers it all in one go. But other levels that aren’t going for high difficulty, but merely invite players to explore and experience them at their own pace suffer greatly from the lack of checkpoints. It kills my enthusiasm for a great level of this kind when I have to start back at the beginning and speed through the earlier bits to get back to where I had died. From a creator’s perspective, the levels I tend to mostly make myself are meant to be thematic adventures that tell a story of sorts. Sometimes, I wouldn’t mind adding some amount of difficulty, but adding any difficulty at all is a risk because I often don’t want players to have to redo the whole thing (or worse, just give up when they die). With this in mind, I’ve had to either pepper my levels with a sizable amount of power-ups or otherwise pay extra careful attention to their position and number. The lack of checkpoints is such a glaring omission and I can’t imagine that it’s simply an oversight. There has to either be a technical limitation at work here (I can’t think of one, but then again I’m not a programmer) or it was fully possible but a conscious decision was made to not have them. If it’s the latter, then it is an astoundingly poor decision.

2.) The Level Sharing System

So, I already covered my sorrows as a Mario course designer in my previous post, where I tried to get across some of my frustrations with the game’s course sharing system, so check that post out for the “introduction” to this problem. I’d like to elaborate a bit further here and also provide some potential solutions. In addition to talented creators going unnoticed, I think many of them were at a disadvantage to begin with if they didn’t upload a course immediately after the game released, or if they didn’t somehow attain a copy early. Many of the top creators and top levels are from reviewers and other people who got the game early and therefore were at an extreme advantage from the get go. I’ve heard that the servers that critics experienced the game on are different than the servers the public currently use, but at the same it certainly seems like a great number of people either somehow got the game a few days early with the current servers or had levels ready to upload immediately that they had previously created and saved. Since these creators had their levels on the server right at go, they had no problem raking in the stars and being able to upload as many levels as they desired from day one. If these creators made an “automatic level” or “remake level”, it wouldn’t really matter if it was really great or not, it was bound to get a lot of stars and plays because it was the only thing available. And since these creators received so much popularity early on, they got on the charts and stayed there because most people naturally look at the levels with the most stars first, and then these levels receive even more stars and so on. I find this to be unfair to people who got a later foot in the door and whose levels are massively overshadowed by the people already at the forefront of the star ranking page, since many people will simply only play the highest-ranked levels, or other levels by those same creators. I suppose this was natural, and I’m not sure how it could be helped, but it just seems unfair to me. Many of these early popular courses are good, but some also just seemed to get ahead of the curve and in retrospect pale in comparison to what people are managing to do with the game now. It’s not really fair to creators who pour their soul into a level and it simply gets ignored because they didn’t have it uploaded at midnight when the game launched.

Mainly, however, I find the search options and organization of Course World (where all uploaded levels go to live and die) very lacking. There are only three main categories for searching for courses, and I’m still unsure of how the “Featured” courses column even works. There’s a sizable amount of courses in these three lists, but they’re only a small taste of the vast universe of courses out there. You can sort courses in these three categories by regional and global and difficulty, but how about some actual, detailed filtering options? Like searching for courses by game style or level template? How about highlighting a handful of courses each day or each week or something, courses that aren’t getting mega numbers but are gaining some traction and could use a boost? Plenty of outlets online are doing this kind of thing, and Nintendo recently started doing this themselves on Mario Maker’s official website, but it would be really great if there was something like this built into the actual game. Also, while you can look at a list of top-ranked creators and your own followed creators, there's no option to simply look up a creator by name, which would also be appreciated.

There’s a lot more that could be done here and clearly more needs to be done because people like me and thousands of others just aren’t getting noticed or played, and therefore are held back by the strict upload limitation and devious star system. While on the subject, it would also be great if the star requirements for uploading more levels was less strict. Look, obviously I think my levels are pretty decent, but even if you disagree, I mean I’m not making total crap here. I’ve poured over 150 hours into the game over the course of a month. I think I can safely say my levels were at least made with effort. It’s just very frustrating that I paid $60 for this game and have given it so much of my time, yet there’s still Nanny Nintendo wagging their finger at me and telling me I can only upload 20 courses.

1.) Asset Limits

Originally, this was number two and the sharing system was number one, but the more I played the game and the more and more I had to sigh and scale back or limit my levels in some way because of the seemingly arbitrary limits on how many given elements can be placed in a course, the more I realized that this is easily my biggest problem with the game. This was the aspect I was worried about the most before the game released, about whether or not there would be an “object limit” to courses (I was thinking of the “weight limit” in the Super Smash Bros. series stage creators and praying something like that wouldn’t be here) so naturally my heart sank the first time I placed a block and heard that “Nope, no more!” buzzer sound. While I was certainly disappointed, at first I didn’t think it was that big of a deal as it still seemed like I could place a hefty amount of objects before the game yelled at me, but the more effort and ambition I put into my levels, the more frequently it happened, and this is when I began to get sad. The bigger I dreamed, the more my dreams were stifled. At this point, I’ve had to scale back or limit almost all of my levels in some way and I’ve reached the object limit, in both the main and sub-area, on almost every level I’ve created. This game just doesn’t seem to be designed for the type of levels I want to create, which is levels with a visual consistency and that are large in scope and theme. I’m not saying that limitations of any kind are universally a bad thing; I’ve had a ton of fun working with the limited palette of elements the game provides to see how I can, for example, make a car, a toilet, and a detailed haunted village. I’ve also had fun seeing how other people get around these limitations as well and being inspired by what they’ve managed to achieve. But there should be no limits on the amount of assets you can use in a level creator, or if there is a limit, it should be so generous that one never needs to realistically worry about it. This kind of limitation stifles creativity, plain and simple.

Ideally, courses themselves could be bigger, more than one sub-area could be created, there would be the option to turn off the time limit completely (consider that my unofficial fourth biggest problem with the game, by the way), etc., but I could get over all that if I could just place as many objects as I wanted in the amount of space they’ve given me. This extends to being able to have as many warp pipes as I want, warp doors as I want, enemies as I want, etc. It’d also be nice to be able to make a warp pipe that can transport Mario to the same level instead of a sub-level or conversely a warp door that can warp to a sub-level instead of just the same level. But maybe these latter requests are getting too ambitious. If so, fine, I can even live with these limitations, but I can’t get over the limit on the amount of placeable blocks and enemies/other assets. If you haven’t gotten deep into level creation in Mario Maker, it’s likely you have no idea what I’m going on about here or at least why it’s such a big deal, but I’m guessing those that have put a fair amount of ambition into creating levels know exactly what I’m talking about. Like with checkpoints, I find it hard to believe that there’s a technical limitation at work here on a modern HD console like the Wii U, and so assuming there isn’t one and the developers really did just arbitrarily make these limitations, that’s just asinine. This game’s tagline should be “If you can dream it, you can make it”, but right now at least, that’s hardly the case.

So those are my three big problems with the otherwise terrific Super Mario Maker. I’ve still managed to get a large amount of satisfaction out of both creating and playing levels despite these big drawbacks, but it would be wonderful if some or all of these issues were addressed in future patches and updates. If that were to happen, this game would truly begin to live up to its full potential and achieve true greatness.

Super Mario Maker Has an Important Lesson to Teach: Being a Game Developer Sucks

…or “A Diary of my Bittersweet Adventures with Super Mario Maker”

Ben Kuchera over at Polygon wrote an article shortly before Super Mario Maker released about how the game teaches one the anguish of being an indie developer. If you read Ben’s article, this post is going to seem slightly familiar; I don’t mean to copy his piece, but rather give my own spin on an idea that I think rings very true. I’d also like to broaden the thought a bit from indie developers to simply all developers. Yes, beneath its inviting and nostalgic exterior, Super Mario Maker has an important lesson for those who really sink their teeth into the level creation side of it: being a game developer must really be the pits.

Now, this is something I already knew, but it’s something that I’ve now, in some small, disconnected way, experienced for myself. I picked up Super Mario Maker the afternoon of its US release day, and holding the copy in my hands after I got into my car, I felt a kind of childlike glee. I couldn’t wait to dive into this robust world of imagination and start building and playing levels. I fiddled around with the level creation tool a bit and then hit up “Course World”, where everyone’s levels go after they upload them for the world to see. Already, there was a plethora of levels and several ones were already hugely popular (I knew this by the amount of “stars” they had acquired from players). Having just got the game, I was only allowed to upload ten levels myself until I earned more stars and therefore unlocked medals which would allow me to increase my max upload limit (up to 100 levels after acquiring all 10 medals). I wasn’t too intimidated by this. After all, the levels I’d played already had thousands of stars and creators seemed to already have achieved the ability to upload the max number of levels in just a day, and while their levels were good, they were nothing earth-shattering and I could already feel dozens of ideas forming in my head that would surely be a hit. It shouldn’t be too hard to rake in the stars as long as I shared creative and inspired levels, which of course was my plan.

Making some Mario

The first couple of levels I uploaded were basic and nothing to speak of really; I didn’t bother putting much effort into them because I didn’t have all of the game’s creation elements unlocked yet through the game’s annoying but oh so Nintendo “delivery system”, where the Course Maker is slowly expanded over the course of several days (or hours, if you know how to effectively cheat the system, which I recommend doing). As I unlocked more and more elements to play around with, I soon began to feel inspiration strike and I began to naturally get an idea as soon as I began to lay some blocks down. The first course I uploaded that I actually thought was worth a damn (not too many damns, mind, but at least one), I shared with some pride, this time actually somewhat pleased with my creation. I looked forward to seeing how it would be received. As of this writing, “Magikoopa’s Platform Keep” (I’ll share some of my course IDs at the bottom of this article if you’re interested) has a meager 131 plays and 5 stars. For the longest time, it didn’t get any stars at all. Ok, so in retrospect, that course wasn’t that great. I still didn’t have all the course-making elements at that point, and it’s still a largely basic level. It didn’t take too long to make, so I wasn’t too discouraged. The next course I made I spent a lot more time on and put even more effort into, but the one after that is where I really went overboard. I’d finally unlocked every tool and spent a combined twelve hours over the course of two days to build “The Grand Koopaship”, a massive flying airship designed with a meticulous attention to detail to resemble an actual ship. I paid special attention to the aesthetics of the ship and agonized over the placement of power-ups and how difficult each section should be. This thing has a cargo bay, bunks, a bathroom, a mess hall, a bridge, an engine room and finally the captain’s quarters, where a showdown with Bowser occurs before a fast escape out the back of the ship to the goal. It’s not a perfect course by any means, but I poured my heart into the thing and I think it turned out pretty nifty. It’s currently one of my most popular courses with 412 plays and 23 stars, which doesn’t seem too bad, but compare that to “Don’t press anything” (ID: AA64-0000-000F-7D4C) by creator Niramou, one of the first (or possibly the first, at least uploaded to the released game's servers) hugely popular Rube Goldberg-style “automatic” courses (in which you, um, don’t press anything to reach the goal), which currently has 1,676,474 plays and 104,848 stars. Yeah, my “Grand Koopaship’s” numbers suddenly seem pretty pathetic, huh?

So at this point you may be thinking: “Wah, wah, so you made some courses that no one likes and are salty about it?” (unless, of course, you own Mario Maker, are invested in creating courses, and are not part of the Star Ranking category elite, in which case there’s a good chance you’re already nodding your head along in sympathy to everything I’m saying), which is of course true, but I’m also working towards a point…sort of. So in order to better illustrate that point, I’ll stop talking about myself for the moment and concentrate on someone else, a maker by the name of “Ricky”. I know of Ricky from a YouTube Let’s Play group he is a part of known as “Adamant Ditto” (their Kirby Let’s Plays are really fun; check em’ out). Ricky made a course known as “Super Smash Labyrinth” (ID: 099D-0000-003A-EB5F), an ambitious and clever idea that allows the player to choose one of twelve pathways, each one beginning with a  transformation into a character from the original Super Smash Bros. via one of Mario Maker’s sprite-changing mystery mushrooms, with each pathway themed around the particular character one chooses. I can’t fathom that a course based on such a popular series and one that is such a well-executed idea would have anything less than top status in the charts. Last time I checked, it has a respectable 1,548 plays and 127 stars…but isn’t exactly “Don’t press anything” numbers. This gives me pause. It makes me think that maybe, just maybe, Mario Maker’s sharing system might be a load of total bollocks. And there are several other fantastic creators and courses I’ve come across, sadly not getting the recognition they deserve. Ricky has proven himself a maker to keep an eye on, with several other inspired courses including a spooky “Haunted Hotel” level (ID: 9C6B-0000-0043-BF08), another excellently done horror-themed level known as “Mirror Manor” (ID: 1992-0000-0072-2F13), an “RPG Adventure!” (ID: A5C3-0000-0091-03A0), and a lot more, but he still has yet to reach the max upload limit of 100 courses (last I checked he is capped at 50 uploads), and the fact that such a clearly worthy creator should be limited in any way is just crap.

Perusing Course World

And that’s what it all comes down to: that upload limit. I wouldn’t care nearly as much about stars and what’s popular and all this if it wasn’t for the fact that Nintendo has cruelly tied the amount of courses one can upload to the amount of stars they receive. This is a good idea on paper, requiring players to put effort into their creations if they want to keep sharing them, but it all falls apart when makers like Ricky and so many others are pulling more than their share of weight and are still faced with restrictions. The star requirements for each milestone are extremely strict as well; it takes 50 stars to just being able to increase the upload limit from ten levels to twenty levels and it only gets worse from there, requiring 150 stars to get to thirty levels, then 300 stars to reach a 40 level limit, and on and on until 5,000 stars nets you the maximum upload limit of 100 levels. This creates another issue; here I am with all these level ideas in my head that I want to do…but I’m hesitant to put a ton of effort into them if I might not be able to upload them and share them with the world. Therefore, I’m faced with a dilemma: make what I want to make or bite my tongue and try to make something that I think will be super popular and get a lot of stars in a short amount of time (in other words, make a level where you don’t have to press anything or a level with a mystery mushroom costume that’s a remake of a level from another game).

I tried to get around this by making an automatic course, but one with a unique spin on the formula and one that I could be proud of. I decided my creation would not just be a bunch of random nonsense floating in the sky (which can certainly be entertaining if done well), but it would have context and somewhat of a story behind it. I started with the theme of Mario being trapped in some elaborate machine and through the process of creating it, the idea evolved with some inspiration from the Portal series. I designed the course to have two “endings” of sorts: one where a player can choose to not press anything and let the machine take its course; here they would still hit the goal at the end, but Mario would also go flying into a sawblade afterwards, implying that just going with the flow will result in Mario meeting his doom. But, and here’s the Portal-esque part, if players cleverly observe their surroundings, they can escape the machine and discover hidden areas outside of it, such as the observation room where the machine’s operators are watching Mario go through it, and another path that leads to the core of the machine, a hidden boss fight, and finally the true exit out of the machine. I spent hours and hours fine-tuning this course, paying special attention to how it looked and operated, and I kept adding more and more details until finally I felt it was ready. Here was a creation, I thought, that would meet the popular demand for the automatic course, but innovate and put a new twist on it. After uploading it, I wasn’t able to play the game until two days later and I was eager to see how what I felt was my finest creation yet had been received…

The Mushroomatic Machine

…it had 5 plays and 0 stars. In a word, I was crushed. It was simply devastating to have something I worked so hard on and had such high hopes for get such a poor reception, or indeed, not even really be noticed at all. As time went on, it only got worse, because more and more people played it, but none of them starred it. Why didn’t they like it? I thought. Was it not exciting enough? Did they discover the hidden secrets? Did they strive to get to the “good ending”? I had agonized over the name of the course, trying to find something in the small number of characters available that would be both catchy but also capture the intricate nature of the level. Advertising is the most important aspect to consider when uploading a course if you want it to be played. All you have to recommend your course is a name, the zoomed out picture of your course’s layout (or at least part of it) and a second close-up picture of a particular section of your course that you can choose. If these things aren’t eye-catching, people will just pass you up. As of this moment, “The Mushroomatic Machine-2 Exits” as I called it, has a paltry 78 plays and 2 stars. Most people finished it; they just didn’t seem to care for it. I have no idea why, none of them left comments and all I have is a couple of red “Xs” on the zoomed-out picture of the course to show me where people lost lives. This feature doesn’t help much, by the way, especially when it doesn’t show where people died in the course’s “sub-area” (the second part of a level accessed by going down pipes), where most of some of my levels take place. Another thing to take into consideration is that many simply don’t know what “stars” are, or how important they are to level creators. Many people bought Super Mario Maker to partake in the playing side of things and not the creation side, and considering the game never explicitly tells the player about the starring system anywhere except in notifications that randomly pop up on the screen from time to time, it’s easy to consider the fact that many people may have enjoyed my levels, but just don’t think to star them or don’t know what starring is. I also can’t help but wonder about how helpful it would be if I was able to make a brief description of my levels in addition to their title. If I had been able to do this, I could have gotten across what I felt made my machine course unique, not to mention give some context for my other courses as well.

At this point, I had a nine-world (four courses per world) Mario adventure planned out in my head that I wanted to build in Super Mario Maker (well, not just in my head, as I outlined the whole damn thing with pen and paper). That was what I really wanted to start making, but with nine courses already uploaded out of the ten course limit that I was struggling to break through and the stars very slowly coming in, even after a handful of levels I spent hours of effort making, I didn’t want to start making that game when I wouldn’t be able to upload (and keep uploaded) the whole thing. So I had one final idea. One final crazy idea that would surely get some stars and “fund” my game. I would make a “remake” level, the other popular surefire thing. But if I was going to do this, I was going to make something I would enjoy doing, that I would be passionate about, and that would be a fun challenge to undertake…

So I decided I would recreate Clock Town from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask in Super Mario Maker, Stock Pot Inn included.

Four days and many hours later, I felt that I had pulled this feat off, at least as best as I could within the limitations of the game. In the end, it was a fun challenge, and also one that drained me. After my last big course failed “financially”, I tried not to get my hopes up too much, but surely…

Just over twenty four hours after uploading it, my Clock Town recreation had 13 plays and 3 stars. Not a bad turnaround compared to how slowly my other courses acquired stars, but still not exactly big money (last I checked it’s my most starred course with 24 stars at least). But hey, I finally hit fifty stars at this point and could now upload up to a meager twenty courses. That’s just great, but now all I could think about was how long of a road it was going to be to reach 150 stars and the thirty course limit, which still wouldn’t be enough to hold my ambitious nine-world adventure (which I eventually thought of a tenth bonus world for…aren’t I the dreamer?). Even after uploading six more courses (including one of the worlds from my planned game) following Clock Town, I still have yet to reach 150 stars and to date still only have just a little over 100.

Clock Town's clock in Super Mario Maker

I want to be clear about something: outside of a handful of very notable problems I feel the game has (which I’ll talk about more in a follow-up post, including some suggested remedies for my problems with the level sharing system), I love Super Mario Maker. The game is a childhood dream of mine come true and I’m happy it exists. It even reignited a creative side of me that I’ve been keeping dormant lately, which I can’t be more grateful for. With that said, my experience creating and uploading courses in Super Mario Maker has been completely demoralizing. Melodramatic? Sure. But I create what I feel is my best course yet, and one that I am sure will be popular, and no one cares or notices. I spend hours and days and weeks pouring my heart and soul into a creation I truly believe in, but no one is buying. I spend so much time arduously testing and re-testing, tweaking and re-tweaking, only to discover one possibly large problem I missed after uploading my level and to fret about whether it will break the whole thing for people. In the end, I can’t imagine making a whole video game, something I spend years putting my life into, only to have someone finish it overnight and nitpick about a bunch of stuff wrong with it. In the end, people are only buying the stuff that’s already popular, the stuff with the good review scores (stars) and the most sales (plays), whether that camp is full of several similar ideas or not (just to be clear: I don’t mean to say that the mega popular courses are bad, in fact most of them are pretty awesome and there’s some really inspired ideas in there, just that there’s so much more out there just as awesome that is getting ignored). Worst of all, perhaps, is when you see that someone else had your same idea, and that their version of it is getting a ton of attention while yours rots in the back alleys of the Course World server (this hasn’t really happened to me personally, but it’s definitely a possibility, and I’ve seen others execute ideas that I still have in my head, or two different versions of the same idea, one much more noticed than another, regardless of quality). I gave in, just a bit, and tried to make something that would appeal to the masses, but still something I can be proud of, and all to fund the stuff that I really want to be making. And my attempts to cash in this way fell on their face too. And yet I’m still dreaming of all the great worlds I want to put in my full Mario game, and getting more ideas every day. In the end, I’ve had a blast creating levels because of the passion I have for creation and the joy it brings me, even though I know few will likely appreciate or even play my stuff. Being a Mario level creator has its rewards, and I’m sure being a game developer does as well, but it’s also pretty shitty and I, for one, am totally burnt out on Mario making right now.

My conclusion with all this? Right before Super Mario Maker’s release in the US, I played through The Last of Us for the first time, and I wrote about how I thought it was an unrelentingly stressful and bleak experience that was almost difficult to play (and also a great experience I highly recommend for the record). After finishing it, I was greatly looking forward to relaxing with some colorful Nintendo fun in Super Mario Maker, but found instead an experience even more emotionally devastating. Game developers, you have my sympathy and infinite respect.

For those interested, here are a few of my course IDs, including the ones I mentioned in this piece (if you want to check out all sixteen of the courses I currently have uploaded, than simply check out my profile in the game):

Magikoopa’s Platform Keep: 5D6F-0000-0031-2F1D

The Grand Koopaship: 0662-0000-0040-5BFD

The Mushroomatic Machine-2 Exits: 1E81-0000-0049-6843

Zelda: Majora’s Mask-Clock Town: 4AAB-0000-0062-DC60

4-1: The Lost Village: 7464-0000-009C-8759

My Favorite Games from E3 2015

I tell myself that E3 is nothing but a week long commercial, a hype generator cooked up by business people in business suits engineered to make me want to give them money and treat them like gods and the games shown like holy artifacts, each trailer a hallowed gift. I tell myself to sit back, to be measured and aware of what E3 really is. But there was real emotion last week, there was genuineness, and there were games no one thought would ever see the light of day, games that look refreshing and imaginative, nostalgic games, and games that look like they are really taking the medium to a new level. Sure, the usual onslaught of cars, guns, and bloody killing sprees were there, and yes, all the corporate shilling was intact, but for me all of that was overshadowed by some of the most exciting video games I’ve seen get the spotlight at E3 in a long time.

These are, in no particularly ranked order, the games that stood out to me the most this past week. Whether they were extensively demoed or simply teased, it doesn’t matter. As long as it was a game that was announced or shown off in some fashion at this year’s E3, it’s applicable for this list. There are other games not present that I’m very interested in, but they didn’t make the cut either because I’ve already known about them for a while and didn’t find out much new, or because these ten games just eclipsed them somehow in term of surprising me or leaving an impact on me this particular year. These are the titles I’ll fondly remember from this E3, and the ones that I’m just really jazzed about right now.

Super Mario Maker (Sep. 11, 2015)

Nintendo had a rough E3 this year. Many people, myself included, were a bit underwhelmed by their Digital Event, people are complaining about Star Fox Zero’s controls, and some misguided individuals are petitioning for the cancellation of Metroid Prime: Federation Force. But if there’s one thing I think we can all agree on, it’s that Super Mario Maker just looks swell. Easily Nintendo’s star game for me this E3, Nintendo’s celebration of Super Mario’s 30^th anniversary looks to be delivering on its full potential with robust and easy to use level creation and sharing options in addition to pipe-loads of quirky charm. It hits all the right nostalgic notes, but it’s also an innovative and spectacular idea. On top of all that, it’s kind of like a direct sequel or expansion to Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World all in one (like a new “Lost Levels”, except for all three games, and with not necessarily all brutally tough levels). Super Mario Maker feels to me like an apology for that lazy Super Mario All-Stars port Nintendo released for the series’ 25^th anniversary back in 2010. It had a very strong showing at the 2015 Nintendo World Championships before the show even started, and continued to make me smile all throughout the week. Like seriously, I can’t not smile watching this game.

ReCore (Spring 2016)

In the past, I’ve railed on CG trailers and how their abundance at E3 always annoys me. I’d almost always rather see actual in-game footage instead of just a pre-rendered movie that tells me nothing about how the actual work is going to turn out. This E3, however, I’ve realized that CG trailers have their place, and they can be done well. Right from the get go, I was interested after seeing “from Keiji Inafune and the makers of Metroid Prime” (umm…yes, please!), but even beyond that, the music and art design of ReCore immediately set a tone that pulled me in, evoking the likes of both Kino’s Journey and Metroid itself, while also being something fresh. The trailer for ReCore also does a great job of telling a succinct little story that effectively gives me an idea of how the game’s central mechanic is going to work, and the reveal of the title at the end drives this “core” concept home (sorry, I had to). ReCore, you have my attention.

Cuphead (1936 plus eighty years)

Do I even need to say anything? I think Cuphead’s footage speaks for itself. Shown for all of one second during an indie montage at Microsoft’s conference last year, it was the kind of thing that made me lean forward and say, “Hey, wait! Wait! What was THAT?” The description for the E3 2015 trailer on YouTube reads “Inspired by 1930s cartoons, the visuals are hand drawn and inked and the music is all original jazz recordings”…now that is how you sell me a video game. I love visually-creative platformers as a general rule, but Cuphead really stands out to me because of just how utterly seamless it looks. There is nothing about Cuphead’s presentation that gives away its status as a video game; it’s just a playable cartoon.

Beyond Eyes (Summer 2015)

I love seeing small indie developers with hugely creative ideas get the spotlight at E3, and this trend has become more and more prominent in the past couple of years. One of the most unique and special things about video games, and one of the many aspects of them still brimming with potential, is their ability to let us inhabit the role of anyone or anything, to let us walk in the shoes of someone or something else. The potential here to explore different life experiences other than our own and build empathy is enormous. In Beyond Eyes, the player steps into the shoes of a young bling girl looking for her lost cat. As she moves through her world using her other senses, the landscape and objects within it materialize around her, like watercolor paint expanding across a dry canvas. In one scenario, she might hear some rushing water and think it’s a fountain, only to get closer and realize that it’s actually a sewage pipe. Not only does the game’s art look beautiful and the concept show a lot of promise and originality, but this game is just one example of the power and potential of video games as a unique artistic medium, something that I really like to see at E3 in-between all the gun scopes and improved car textures.

Unravel (TBA)

…Speaking of which. Partway into the EA press conference, of all places, out onto the stage comes a shy, visibly nervous man with a tattooed hand and small doll made out of red yarn in his shaking hands. He goes on to explain that he got the idea for his game, called Unravel, about a small creature named Yarny that traverses beautiful environments inspired by Northern Scandinavia and leads a thread that connects all of us together, or something poetic and beautiful like that, when on a camping trip with his family. Unravel is a game aimed directly at my soul and my sensibilities. Saying in an interview that he doesn’t believe in “heavy-handed storytelling”, the game’s creative director, Martin Sahlin (the aforementioned tattooed man) says that he believes in "filling the world with interesting things, with clues, with details” that the player can discover on their own, adding that it's also fine if they don't because "it's more about the atmosphere and the feeling of the whole thing". So Unravel takes what I love about the Pikmin series (a small character running around huge photo-realistic environments) and presents a puzzle-platformer with reason and context for its level design, all wrapped up in a minimalist presentation? I think Martin Sahlin might be my soulmate.

Yoshi’s Woolly World (Oct. 16, 2015)

The yarn genre has really been taking off recently, hasn’t it? I love colorful Nintendo platformers, so naturally I anticipate playing and enjoying Yoshi’s Woolly World. But what sets this spiritual successor to Kirby’s Epic Yarn (which is one of my favorite platformers from the last console generation) apart from the likes of something like New Super Mario Bros. is just how much handcrafted effort seems to be being put into this game. Obviously, the game’s artistic design is a huge draw, with everything being crafted out of wool, fabric, and giant knitting needles; it truly looks like something I can reach out and touch and feel. But I just love that the developers actually crafted real-life Yarn Yoshis during the game’s development. In addition, the composer for the game, who is trying to have a different song for every level, actually took up guitar lessons to make sure the soundtrack was up to par. I’m really looking forward to finally playing this during the cool autumn months later this year.

Horizon: Zero Dawn (2016)

One thing that made this year’s E3 stand out to me was a theme of change, of growth, of this medium and this industry finally beginning to take the first steps of reaching maturity. Sure, there was the usual onslaught of sense-assaulting cartoonish violence, cheers for particularly brutal digital decapitations, and all the familiar faces and concepts present, but there was also creative-looking new worlds and ideas, more of a focus on narrative and how games can evoke emotion. The words “emotional narrative” were uttered onstage at Sony’s press conference, as opposed to another bland, self-defeating joke about “f*cking blood and guts! Video games, am I right?”. In addition, there was a very notable effort in making games and the gaming scene more diverse, to reflect a growing and diverse audience. There were more female presenters on stage and a surprisingly ample amount of new games featuring female protagonists or at least a woman in a strong central role.

Then there was Horizon: Zero Dawn, a game starring a woman that takes place in a world unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The game’s extensive and fantastic trailer/demo begins with a well-acted narration over beautiful panoramic landscape shots that tells the story of a modern civilization like our own falling and eventually being reclaimed by natural forces. We then see hunter-gatherer tribes emerge in a “post-historic” world that tells tales of the “old ones” that went extinct. We’ve seen this tale before, but it’s told so well through visuals, narration, and some truly gorgeous music that I was completely immersed and already on board with this game. Then the twist came: “…for this world was never ours…we’ve always shared it…”, the female narrator suddenly says as we see otherworldly mechanical animals enter the scene, first in the form of a few small scavengers, and then followed by massive robotic dinosaurs with disks for heads that come stomping across a stunning, sunlit prairie, like some kind of cyberpunk Jurassic Park. It’s wonderful, and the juxtaposition of the natural elements and the unnatural, metallic creatures makes for an immediately intriguing and fresh-looking world. That would have been enough to get my interest, but then the trailer seamlessly transitions into a lengthy gameplay portion where the familiar narrator, now fully revealed as our player character, starts creeping through wonderfully-rendered plants as she hunts mechanical deer in order to harvest some kind of green canister attached to their backs. Before reaching her prey, she kills a smaller beast, after which she subverts every law of E3 by expressing remorse and actually apologizing to the life she’s taken. It all culminates in a thrilling Shadow of the Colossus-esque battle with a robotic T-Rex thing. In a word: it’s breathtaking, a genuine surprise, and I can’t wait to see more (ok, more than a word).

…did I say Shadow of the Colossus?

The Last Guardian (2016)

It’s real, and Sony opened their show with gameplay of it.

I know I said I wasn’t putting these games in any significant order, but I obviously saved these last three for a reason. After years of rumors, cancelation scares, and many dashed hopes, The Last Guardian’s long-awaited, often doubted, and always hoped for return kicked off an hour of dreams. I said this E3 was special for showing signs that this troubled and stagnant industry is changing, but it was equally as special for how it spoke to a generation. How it resurrected old legends and made me cover my mouth in stunned disbelief. I just don’t even really need to say it, do I? The Last Guardian. It’s one of those games, those ones I sigh about at the end of every E3 press conference cycle because once again it didn’t show up. But this time it did.

The spiritual successor to a work of interactive art that defined an era of video games for me and remains one of my most cherished interactive experiences, The Last Guardian also just looks like an incredibly touching and ambitious game, and it’s central “mechanic” revolving around the bond of a young boy and his giant gryphon-cat-bird friend has me enchanted all over again. Sure, there have been many games since The Last Guardian was first unveiled back in 2009 that have aimed to capitalize on the emotional potential of interactive art, but The Last Guardian still excites me due to its promising concept and its masterful pedigree. It also just makes me tear up every time I see it (why does Trico have to look so much like my own dog?). I don’t even know if I’ll be able to handle this game when it hopefully, oh please hopefully, releases next year.

Final Fantasy VII Remake (TBA)

So they opened with The Last Guardian? I mean, what could they possibly have if they…Oh. Ooooooh. Even though it was set up by Adam Boyes beforehand, Final Fantasy VII fans have learned better than to trust a smug presenter promising the world. Even as the trailer went on and a recognizable Midgar began to be more and more slowly unveiled, with talk of “reunions” and “promises” accompanying the proceedings, I still wasn’t convinced. At first I thought it was a proper, full-fledged sequel to FFVII, then perhaps another movie. Even at the end of the trailer, at first only a logo appeared with no title. Well, in order to dissuade any confusion, to make things perfectly, perfectly clear, a single word appeared with booming fanfare afterword:

“Remake”

Now this is how you use a CG trailer. And what a fantastic trailer it is. Every word spoken, every shot, just designed to evoke specific emotions in those watching, just toying with all the fans hoping and anticipating. Now, I like Final Fantasy VII a lot, and there’s plenty of things that I admire about it, but I’ll admit that I don’t have as emotional a connection to it as many others, due to me not playing it when it was in its prime. I still remember how huge it was at that time though, and still have a lot of nostalgia for finally playing through it myself one summer years ago (though, I must shamefully confess, I never finished it, stopping just before the crater and Sephiroth; I hope to go back and run through the whole thing again sometime, this time to completion). I realize how massive the FFVII remake’s announcement is, and I think the way it was announced and the trailer itself is all brilliant, but it was almost immediately followed by an announcement that was my personal moment to start shouting things at my computer screen…

Shenmue III (When it’s ready)

Even as I write this, as I continue to look at the kickstarter (and yes, I backed it, of course I did) and the title: “Shenmue III”, I still can’t quite believe it, and I laugh to myself. Let me back up. I received a Dreamcast on Christmas day of 1999, right after it launched, and it blew my mind. Way ahead of their time, the games for that console delivered experiences I’d never dreamed of (heh…) in video games before. Sonic Adventure’s clean visuals and sense of speed made my jaw drop, Jet Grind Radio’s pioneering cel-shaded visuals and unique style were unlike anything I’d ever seen, and then there was a little game called Shenmue that made me realize the potential of video games. Never before had a game felt so real to me, had so much to interact with, and transported me to a place like the way Shenmue did. At the time, its detailed, fully interactable world, voice-acting (now notorious), and potent story-telling fully transported me, and not only cultivated my love of eastern culture, but cemented my love of video games.

I could go on. But suffice it to say, when Shenmue II was released in the west as an Xbox (at the time I only had a GameCube) exclusive, I was pretty bummed. I never played it, but I always, always wanted to. Well, now it’s finally time to get on ebay and pick up an original Xbox, I guess.

What made the announcement of Shenmue III (or to be more exact, its kickstarter) all the more potent was not only just how long it’s been since the release of Shenmue II (fourteen years), but because the continuation of Shenmue has long been nothing but a dream: the series’ continuation has become a joke, and has always been something I never thought would happen. But in front of a bewildered audience still recovering from Final Fantasy VII’s return, a shower of flower petals and Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki showed me that nothing is impossible, and that the legacy of Shenmue lives on, long after those enchanting Dreamcast days met with an all too abrupt end.  

Bonus! GameTrailers’ Live Stream

While not in fact a video game, I had to mention the always entertaining and somewhat revolutionary live stream that GameTrailers put on this year. Filled with genuine human moments and giving off the vibe of a bunch of friends hanging out and talking about E3, GameTrailers’ stream was the cure for the stiff, PR-fueled interviews and more “professional” streams that litter the internet during E3. Their stream was a constant highlight throughout the week for me, as I would dip in to see what they were up to, only to see Brandon Jones’ hilarious impersonations of his colleagues, Michael Huber crying about Shenmue, and more serious conversations about the potential of video games. The GT crew feels like a family and I just loved seeing their shenanigans all throughout the week. Also, their reactions to Sony’s “Triforce of Dreams” are simply the best thing on the internet.

Honorable Mentions: Dishonored 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, No Man’s Sky, Dreams, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Star Fox Zero, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, Earthbound Beginnings, The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes, Fire Emblem Fates, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, FAST Racing Neo, Typoman, Kingdom Hearts III, Below, Edge of Nowhere, Soma…a lot of great and interesting games this year.

Some disappointments from Nintendo aside (that were, honestly, tempered by some great times with the still awesome Treehouse Live and some definitely fantastic-looking games on display; also puppets and Miyamoto visiting shrines and Mario courses on graph paper), this was a great E3. A legendary E3 even. And even though I tell myself it’s just a big, loud, silly, week-long corporate magic trick, hell if it isn’t a lot of fun, and hell if I’m not just excited for video games right now.