Thursday, July 4, 2019

That Goomba had a family... The story behind the hit Mario Maker 2 level.


Mario Maker 2 has been out just 1 week, and has been met with resounding success. Players are making, sharing, and playing thousands of levels around the globe. Of course every Maker's dream is to reach the Front Page and have their level launch them to Mario Maker Fame & Glory...


So imagine the disappointment you would feel if a journalist at Kotaku copied your level, uploaded it, and became Mario Maker famous for it. Well it seems like that's what happened to Maker JoshLamm with his incredibly creative "Mario's Remorse" level just this week. 


In his level, Mario's Remorse, Mario is met by a goomba walking out of his home. As Mario often does, he stomps the goomba on his head... which rewards you with a key for the house.


Once inside the house the player realizes this is not going to be an ordinary Mario level. Inside is a quaint home with a Goomba family. The stage makes great use of the special horror sound effects here to capture the feeling of shock that Mario must feel realizing he's killed a loving family member.


After killing the rest of the family, Mario goes outside for a short period before finding a warp zone down to hell. 


Once in Hell, mario is confronted with his actions, and must climb his way out... I'll leave out the rest of the story so as not to spoil anybody's playthrough, because this article is about something else...

A Kotaku writer whose Mario Maker alias is Kobun uploaded a suspiciously similar level 2 days after maker JoshLamm launched the original. It's no surprise that a journalist stumbling upon this level would be amazed at its fantastic use of the engine to tell a story much deeper and darker than we are used to in a Mario game.

Assuming it's not just an incredible coincidence... what's really disappointing is that this would have been a great chance to use the platform of Kotaku to shine the spotlight on a talented creator, rather than self promotion:


With the help of the Kotaku platform, the Kobun's level reached the front page of Mario Maker's Course World and at the time of writing has over 10,000 plays.

For anyone who would like to try the levels, here are the codes:

Marios Remorse, uploaded July 1st: CB9-QSL-6PG
That Goomba had a Family, uploaded July 3rd: 7JF-QBH-34G