For example: When creating a course on the Wii U GamePad, you drop and drag your stylus across the touchscreen on the main TV screen, a giant photo-realistic hand represents your own. Some of the fun graphical touches that made sense on the Wii U no longer work here, and their loss is felt. A tiny letterboxing occurs to help the game achieve a resolution that fits the handheld’s screen, but the loss of real estate is a welcome sacrifice from the crispness and readability of the on-screen graphics. The aesthetics are of course borrowed largely from 8-bit and 16-bit games, but still, the NES original Super Mario Bros.-style courses look remarkably sharp, as do the Super Mario Bros.

Besides this biggie, let’s round up where the newer Mario Maker makes the grade and where it falls on its head.įrom looks alone, it’s very easy to forget this is a full-fat HD Wii U game squeezed onto a 3DS game card. The most obvious change is in sharing options: The Wii U game lets you upload your creations online and share with the world, whereas the 3DS game restricts sharing to local wireless and StreetPassing strangers. In others, the 3DS version acts the same while missing an important feature, like a gymnast whose phantom limbs encourage her to attempt a cartwheel after losing her arms. In some ways, the portable child out-wits its bigger, stronger sibling. But the title addendum does spotlight an important distinction: Even if they share 95% of the same concept and content, these are not the exact same game. For a company known for whimsical worlds filled with magic mushrooms, time travel, tie-wearing apes, and power-sucking pink globs, it’s all a bit on the nose.Īnd so it is with Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS, a port of last fall’s Wii U game that calls out its host platform. Nintendo has always leaned towards literalism: Witness the many games on the Super Nintendo endorsed with the titular superlative, or the robust line-up of Nintendo 64 games with the requisite “64” suffix, or even their recent habit of labeling new versions of games or systems with the word “New” in the title.

The industry has moved away from platform-specific versions of the same games, but it still happens on occasion when attempted, the title is the first evidence that something is amiss. Mortal Kombat for the Game Boy was just called Mortal Kombat, even if a more accurate name would have been Mortal Kombat for Game Boy: A Chunky Unplayable Mess of Stuttering Green. Once upon a time, portable versions of console games did not feel the need to have clarifying titles.

Super mario maker 3ds