Alongside Shigeru Miyamoto, the world has Takashi Tezuka to thank for the franchise that is Super Mario Bros. Tezuka worked alongside Miyamoto on just about every single Mario game that’s been released in the franchises’ 30 year history, so no man knows the series better.
In a recent interview, Tezuka was asked about some of the hard community-made levels that are cropping up on YouTube and other sites as players share their experiences with the game. Tezuka said his team has to consider a wide variety of gamers with their official releases, but given the nature of Super Mario Maker, he’s not at all surprised to see hardcore levels being released.
I expected that the users who wanted to play more of the hard courses would be attracted to Super Mario Maker, so itās not surprising to see that a lot of difficult courses are being made.
When asked about the difficulty spike of some of these levels, Tezuka imparts a short piece of game design wisdom for those of you who are still setting about to make difficult courses.
There is a tendency for the courses people make to be a little harder than they think they are, the creator already knows the design, where they have placed their traps, and the best route to take. So it would generally be easier for them to play through than someone trying it for the first time. As a result, the course ends up being more difficult than the creator meant it to be.
Of course, with Super Mario Maker now out in the wild, Tezuka will have plenty of inspiration for new levels of Mario games thanks to the community. He readily acknowledges that he’s enjoyed seeing what players have created with their levels and that it will inspire him to create new challenges.
Iāve been watching lots of different courses on YouTube, it was quite a surprise how much fun it was to watch the videos, without even playing myself. There are so many intriguing and inventive courses, like one which you couldnāt beat if you picked up a mushroom. Itās been a huge motivation for us developers to do better.
There’s no telling when the next official Mario game will become available since Nintendo has put the keys of creation in players hands with Super Mario Maker, but it’s nice to see one of the fathers of the modern platformer has enjoyed our player creations just as much as we have making them.
