In part of celebrating the 30^th anniversary of the original Super Mario Bros. video game, Nintendo released Super Mario Maker, a video game that allows players to become the creator of their own Super Mario levels and share them with the world.

Back in 1983, thanks to poorly made video games and higher and higher prices, video games, as a form of media, became a dying breed and was set to completely bury itself into the annals of irrelevance and obscurity like some sort of strange fad. The future of video games looked bleak, unless some sort of weird force amassed the enormous success it took to save the industry altogether. Enter Nintendo, a funny, little playing card making company, turned video game legends. Nintendo, already finding success in the video gaming industry in the late 1970s with the Game & Watch series of handheld video games, released their first home video game console with the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. Bundled along with the console would be what ultimately saved the industry from keeling over.

The original Super Mario Bros. video game cartridge came inside of a small black box with the titular character, a pudgy looking man, shooting fireballs in front of a blue brick background. The cartridge itself was nothing special, but found inside of it was a game. It was a strange game about jumping on mushrooms and turtles that suddenly spawned a global phenomenon, making the company world famous and giving the video game industry new legs to stand on. Whether it was the vibrant colors, intuitive gameplay, or the catchy music that captivated audiences throughout 171 Mario games, one thing is for sure, whatever captivated audiences then is more than present today and in Mario’s latest game, Nintendo wants to see if you can create magic.

Quite possibly the biggest Mario game to come out this decade, Super Mario Maker is more of a tool than a game. Sure, there are game aspects, but the bulk of the experience is crafting levels, rather than playing them. The course maker is based off of a 1992 art making application based off of Mario. The course creator itself was actually built the same way Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Super Mario Bros, actually designed the levels of the original game. Courses are easy to create and can be as straight-forward or as intuitive as one may want them to be. Courses can be designed using one of four styles, reminiscent of past Mario classics.

The overall best thing about this game is the feeling one receives when turning it on. Turing on this game feels like opening up a brand new Mario video game. No two levels are exactly the same, and each one offers a new and fresh adventure. I can confidently say that Super Mario Maker is the ultimate 2-D Mario video game and can probably be the final game of the series. Thanks to the incredibly in-depth course creator and the myriad of people able and willing to create amazing levels, this game will continue to spurt out a lot of great content years and years after the game and the system are outdated.

Super Mario Maker is out now and is only available for the Wii U. This game is good enough, in my opinion, to just buy a Wii U for. This game has an infinite amount of replay value and is one to play for many years to come.