Upon dying for the seventh time I began to wonder if I was the problem.

The response to my expertly hand-crafted Super Mario Maker levels were not going as well as I had planned. Created with all the love and finesse of an inebriated hippopotamus attempting to swallow a watermelon whole, the general consensus on my Mario levels was that they possessed a degree of difficulty that some may call … cruel. Some players thought my levels were hard.

Really hard, in fact. The highest clear rate out of my three levels was ten percent. After having my seasoned gamer of a wife try her hand at my finger crampingly hard levels, I came to the conclusion that maybe I needed to take another look.

I was dismayed. It couldn’t be me that was the problem. No, it was everyone else who was wrong.

Filled with determination to prove my invisible internet detractors wrong, I launched into an aerial level I created with the Super Mario Bros. 3 tile set. I immediately flew into a cannonball.

And then a flying Koopa, and then a spike, and then another cannonball. After that, I missed a jump. In fairness, my cat had jumped on my lap, causing the last death. Of course, I then proceeded to get stomped by Thwomps.

Fourteen tries later, I cleared my masterpiece, thus giving proof to my harsh critics that tough love is the only true path in creating Super Mario Maker levels.

Surely I was on the true path to Mario enlightenment. No “don’t touch anything,” roller coaster style levels. No remixes of 1-1 where all I had added was a flying Goomba inside a Kuribo’s Shoe. None of this “make people feel good via creating a balanced and entertaining course” malarkey.



Players are going to have precise and meandering fun on my courses, even if I have to take all of their extra lives to do it. I’m not the one who is wrong, it’s the Course World who is incorrect.

So … Why isn’t anyone playing my levels?

Oh well: Back to Disney Infinity I go. They love me there.

Will Harrison is a games critic from Toledo, Ohio that is published in The Blade, a daily newspaper. Contact him on Twitter @DoubleUHarrison or via email at backlogadventures@gmail.com.