Well, that didn't take long. On the very day that New Super Mario Bros. Wii was released in North America, hackers Virus and Vash released Tanooki, a program that allows users to design their own levels in place of the game's existing locales. Coder Treeki also announced Reggie!, yet another level editor for New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Whichever wins, everybody wins.
Of course, these programs, while awesome, are pretty impractical for most of us, given that they run on a computer and thus work only with emulation. But, we must reiterate, these are awesome, and we appreciate the efforts of hobbyists everywhere who immediately make games better with their work. Check out example videos of both (with some NSFW language in annotations) after the break.
Lame videos. First one just added extra wheels to the normal first level, and the second (apart from being laggy as hell and missing the background) is just a level that already exists in the game (Coin-2) with all the fancy tricks removed.
That second video (with the lag and the remixed invincibility theme) shows a level that's not in the game. If you look closely it's a remake of the first level of Super Mario Bros. 1, if only a little compressed.
Yes, they need to do this with 2D Mario, Zelda, and Metroid and make it so you can share your levels! They won't though, because they don't want people to have no need to buy the next game.
Nintendo should hire those guys to help them make a peudo-expansion to New Super Mario Bros. Wii that is basically this level editor for the Wii. In fact, I always thought it would be cool if Nintendo released some kind of Mario level editor for Wii Ware or something for those who use roms and emulators illegally, but for the purposes of making custom levels via hacking. Nintendo should just release some kind of software for people to make and distribute custom Mario levels.
True, but it really depends on how each party's editor works. Maybe these guys have a more user-friendly interface than what Nintendo has. And Nintendo probably would never show us how they make their game's levels or what editing tools they use, while we can see what these guys use in the screenshot, which looks relatively easy to manage. So that's what I'm going on.
Not to diss the two devs here, but the files used for levels are just text files, all that's really required to do is is change what order things are in or write the code and position to add a new part. It's not exactly "hire-these-guys-immediately" worthy.
I'm excited that someone manage to make this. The way i see this is, this is a fans way to say, "Hey Nintendo, look at what you should be doing instead of pissing off the fans". I congraduate the programmer who created and i hope Nintendo will learn for a change.
Personally I muted the video because the player overused that single curse. It also made me wonder if the player was not also the "designer" by the fact that he took caution before there was any sign of danger. That or he had already beaten the mod.
"... the efforts of hobbyists everywhere who immediately make games better with their work."
This statement is fundamentally false. It's only a very small fraction of said hobbyists that will make levels that are worthwhile. The rest will just clone Super Mario Bros. World 1-1.
Why does everyone want the origional SMB game redone..... I wanna see some sick and twisted levels that in no manner resemble anything ninty has ever done.
I think the interesting thing is that Nintendo has created a 2D game engine that can be quickly (cheaply) used to create levels. WiiWare All-Stars, anyone? Who knows how customizable the engine is? A physics tweak here, a new tileset there, and you could easily create dozens of 2D games.
