Super Mario Maker 2

A rare example of a Nintendo sequel that’s been brought to a console for which it’s not wholly suited

Compromise, Super Mario Maker 2 teaches us, can sometimes be a good thing. Fairness is the hallmark of good level design – as obvious as it sounds, it’s important to recognize that players are human and that giving them a chance to recover from their mistakes is a worthwhile concession to make. Likewise, there’s value in sometimes pulling back from your grand vision: creation goes hand-in-hand with curation, and stuffing all your ideas in one level will rarely make it better. Whether this explains Nintendo’s approach here is a trickier question to answer. Because if you’ve played the Wii U original, you’ll be acutely aware that bringing Super Mario Maker to Switch has resulted in a few trade-offs.

Some of these are understandable. The original, after all, was built specifically for Wii U; Super Mario Maker 2 handily illustrates the kind of problems that arise when you have to follow a game that’s been tailored towards an idiosyncratic piece of hardware. This is a rare example of a Nintendo sequel – Super Mario 64 DS is another that comes to mind – that’s been brought to a console for which it’s not wholly suited. On a fundamental level, fingers simply can’t hope to match the fidelity of a stylus: the inevitable compromise in switching from a resistive touchscreen to a capacitive display. Sure, you’ll acclimatize – at least when creating in handheld mode, since the pointer controls on the TV screen are even less ideal – but you can no longer put together a course with the same precision and speed. It might be enough to put a few budding creators off – one of the main benefits of the original was being able to get your ideas down quickly, and anything that slows down that process inevitably feels like a step back.