Super Mario Maker Turns Ten, but the Original Game Is Gone Online

It has been ten years since Super Mario Maker first changed the way players interacted with Nintendo’s most iconic franchise. The game allowed fans to design their own Mario levels, upload them, and challenge the world to complete them. Today, however, the experience that made the title revolutionary no longer exists. The 2024 shutdown of online services for the Wii U means that while players can still create levels locally, sharing those creations or exploring other players’ levels is impossible.

Mario Maker 2 on the Switch keeps the concept alive, with a smaller community continuing to explore its level editor. The sequel sold well, benefiting from the success of the Switch, but many argue that the original Mario Maker had a more significant cultural impact. When the 2015 game was released, it was a rare moment for Nintendo, a company normally cautious about letting fans interact with its intellectual property. For the first time, players could take the brand into their own hands, often bending or breaking the rules set by Nintendo in the process.

The game also introduced mainstream players to the Kaizo community, known for designing punishingly difficult levels. These “impossible” challenges became a viral sensation, amplified by YouTube and Twitch content, and inspired a generation of streamers to test their skills against the most intricate and lethal level designs. Popular, nightmare versions of classic levels, such as 1-1, became cultural touchstones, yet these experiences are now inaccessible after the servers went offline.

Nintendo has not revisited the concept on this scale. There is no Zelda Maker or Pokémon Maker, and even though other creative modes, like Donkey Kong Bananza’s sculpting tool, exist, the type of open-ended 2D level creation seen in Mario Maker remains unique. Nintendo’s challenges in finding developers skilled in pixel art and limited palettes may explain why similar projects have not appeared in the decade since.

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The shutdown of Mario Maker’s servers is a reminder of the impermanence of online game services. While Mario Maker 2 continues to attract dedicated players, the original game’s ten-year legacy now lives in memories, videos, and community creations that can no longer be experienced firsthand. For a decade, it offered an unprecedented sandbox for creativity within Nintendo’s worlds, but the full Mario Maker experience is now lost to time.