Super Mario Maker 2

Nintendo Switch | $79.95 | www.nintendo.com/

THERE’S SOMETHING ODDLY transgressive about Mario Maker. After over 30 years stomping Goombas in carefully designed and refined Super Mario Bros. levels, the opportunity to take the reins comes with a strange sense of power. With every utterly ridiculous corruption of Nintendo’s famously breezy platformer, with every gargantuan-sized Thwomp placed maliciously and secretly at the end of a marathon level, Mario Maker can feel like breaking into school at the weekend and wreaking havoc in the canteen.

Nintendo isn’t so reckless as to leave the keys in the door and turn the other way: one of the greatest improvements this sequel has over its predecessor is a full-length, Nintendo made campaign of levels that are not only fun to play, but provide a crash course in all the clever things it’s possible to do with the very snazzy editor. While veterans of the original Wii U Mario Maker are likely to skip this, it stands as the most innovative (and weird) single-player 2D Mario game since The Lost Levels. Given the focus of Mario Maker 2, it shows Nintendo daring to experiment and get silly with its approach to 2D level design.

Because overall, Nintendo must understand that is a fairly ‘hardcore’ game by the measure of Mario games. Endless Mode returns, which allows players to tackle an endless stream