Nintendo's rolling out its first content update for Super Mario Maker, the Wii U game that lets you create and share your own Mario levels, on November 4. If you're expecting a huge bonanza of new items and enemies with which to fill your worlds, you may be disappointed, as Nintendo is only adding two new level-design features. But they carry with them momentous potential.
The features are mid-level checkpoints, so you don't have to start from the beginning of a stage if you die, and progressive power-ups---that is, a power-up block that will give you a Super Mushroom if you're tiny Mario and a Fire Flower if you're already Super-sized.
What links these two features, besides the fact that they're probably the most-demanded inclusions from players, is that they've both been a part of Super Mario games stretching all the way back to the very first, and therefore our idea of Mario level design already incorporates those, and it holds us back from being able to create levels that feel like Mario should. Some players have even gone so far as to attempt to implement ersatz "checkpoints" into their levels with varying degrees of success.
Both features will allow players more leeway to balance the difficulty of their levels, which will, I hope, lead to more engaging level designs overall: Without checkpoints or progressive power-ups, many Mario levels tend to either skew towards the too-easy side or the too-hard side. Now you can feel free to make your stage a little trickier, knowing that you can drop a checkpoint in after a particularly tough part.
Motivating players to keep going is important in game design (well, if you want people to finish your game, it is), and a checkpoint is the best motivation of all: If you die after getting 90% of the way through a Mario Maker level, there's a chance you'll get frustrated and just exit the level, rather than doing it all again. But if you've reached a checkpoint, it's like you've got sweat equity that you've already put in, a sunk cost that you don't want to lose---if you quit entirely, your checkpoint progress resets---so you're more likely to keep going and finish the level, then (importantly for Mario Maker designers) give it a thumbs-up star if you liked it.
It's a small update, but it's worth far more than ten new types of Koopa Troopa.
