Facebook Hacks Mario via Nintendo

Facebook and Nintendo teamed up in a two-day hackathon to design levels for the new upcoming Super Mario Maker game. The winning level will be available for downloand when the official game launches.

We are talking about Mario here, a game that was launched 30 years ago and which still brings joy to the little child within every 20 or 30-year-old who played it back then. The main reason behind designing new levels is to reshape and refresh the Mario experience. In the end, it is the experience that brings people back and makes new people tag along.

Around 100 Facebook employees took part in the hackathon so that they could design the winning level. One of them was Amanda Maler, a 23-year-old who wasn’t even born when Mario first showed himself to the world. Maler described herself as a “millennial who grew up playing Mario” and that bringing Facebook to Nintendo would be a challenging process.

AJ Glasser, manager of the social network’s games partnerships team, stated that Facebook does have the brainpower to create some of the most dazzling and apparently “evil” puzzles that can keep players glued to the game four hours while pushing their limits. Having them behind the wheel will surely make the game more challenging.

Corey Olcsvary, a Nintendo product expert who also happened to be a judge during the hackathon event, described the levels he encountered and the selection process. Corey described some levels as being “very mean”. He had to make his way between rotating fireballs and falling Thwomps, among varied combinations of enemies and other dazzling challenges before he could reach safety.

When asked about how Nintendo would select the winner, Corey stated that they were looking for Nintendo’s core values “creativity, fun and surprise” alongside Facebook’s fast movement, being open and breaking things.

Some of the levels were ingenious and created the Facebook logo out of in-game coins, while other levels such as “move fast” really took their core game value seriously: you really had to be fast in order to finish. It was quite a remarkable event!

With all these being said, the young generation along with old-school gamers who played Mario “before it was cool” should look forward to the new Super Mario Maker game. It is going to allow players to create their own levels, have more fun and challenge them into breaking barriers. It is the new, complete, revamped Mario experience!

Photo Credits edgecastcdn.net