We are now in the final run of Wii U and 3DS online play. Nintendo has confirmed that the consoles' online features and functionality will no longer work from 8th April 2024, and with that will come the end of a lot of game modes.
One title that will see some pretty heavy cuts is Super Mario Maker. The end of online play means that all community-built levels will soon be unplayable and the chance of 100% completion will be gone. It's a heart-breaking thought, but one that the community — specifically, a trained task force dubbed 'Team 0%' — has quickly rallied towards to make sure that no level is left unbeaten.
We first caught wind of this brave mission back in October of last year. At the time, a whopping 25,000 unbeaten levels were remaining. Now, with a little over 21 days to go before the servers shut down (at the time of writing), there is only one level left. One. Level.
The stage in question is titled 'Trimming the Herbs' and, on an initial glance, it doesn't look all that hard (in a we'd-stand-no-chance-but-a-pro-could-probably-do-it sort of way). Yet, as it turns out, this level is very difficult indeed.
A mainstay of the Team 0% community, ThaBeast721, made a video breakdown of the level's requirements and it's intense. We're talking 18 back-to-back frame-perfect jumps, all while avoiding spikes, Piranha Plants and Boos and while catching and dropping a series of bombs to progress. You can find the video breakdown at the bottom of this article, but trust us, it's no picnic.
The question is, will Team 0% be able to complete it? The mission has been documented on the team's website and seeing the phrase "there is only 1 level remaining" fills us with hope. But what a level it is. And there's the ticking clock of the ending online functionality to take into account too. If it's not beaten in the next 21 days, it never will be. The drama!
We'll be keeping an eye out over the coming weeks to see if Team 0% can wrap up Mario Maker for good, but our fingers are crossed like never before.
Have you had a stab at the final unbeaten level? Do you reckon anyone will be able to do it? Let us know in the comments.
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Ive been checking their website like every hour. I can only wish team 0% the best for this historic achievement!
He beat it himself to upload it, and people have already downloaded and catalogued all the levels for play after Nintendo's official servers shut down, but it's still exciting to see if anyone makes it. That person would become a legend. :v
The level was uploaded in 2017, and is still unbeaten. 18 frame perfect jumps is nothing to scoff at. Best of luck to those practicing!
I'll sit this one out thank you. But keep us posted!
Meanwhile, I've long given up on my hopes of getting all the Super Hard rewards from 100 Mario Challenge. I unlocked two skins, downloaded levels people made with the rest, and am probs leaving it at that. Good luck to the team, I say.
Well that looks insanely hard. I’m bad enough at beginner kaizo hacks never mind this 😂
Already impressive that there's only one level left, but I wish them good luck at beating this one, too!
@Pod It certainly doesn't seem like it, but couldn't there be a secret door somewhere that allowed the creator to "beat" and so upload it?
Anyway, good to hear all the levels have been backed up and will be able to played in the future at least unofficially!
They either manage to beat it, or the one who made it will be the creator of the only unbeaten level on official servers. Both outcomes are pretty impressive.
@JohnnyMind the creator uploaded a video of him beating it
@Boo_Boy52 Welp, that's one indisputable way to know the creator beat the level legitimately, kudos to them for both making and beating it then!
@Pod @JohnnyMind @Boo_Boy52 The legitimacy of the level has been taken into question many times before, TheRileyC published a video recently discussing this if you're interested
tl;dr if you don't want to watch the video: the creator could have used a modded gamepad for the clear and there is (NOT DEFINITIVE) evidence that supports the claim that the clear is not legitimate
Just one more level...? be right back!
(not really, I don't have a Wii U anymore and I ain't that good)
@Vaporeon_meme I did wonder if it could have been TAS
I have never beaten even a beginner kaizo level, pre-kudos to whomever managEs to best this one!
I think it will be more trascendental if the servers shut down and the level is still unbeaten.
Godspeed. I could never do this. 😅
@Vaporeon_meme Didn't take that possibility into account, so we know for sure the creator beat it regularly instead of using a secret door but we don't know if it has been legitimate in the sense of input, interesting!
For the record: this level is almost certainly possible in theory. Pros have beaten the different parts of the level individually; here’s a video of someone beating its second half: https://x.com/LilKirbs14/status/1769220736835875108?s=20
There’s really no evidence to assert foul play on the creator’s part. It’s just a matter of having a player replicate all those feats in a single run. It’s also worth noting that the level was originally created as part of a kaizo contest, so that might explain some of the drive and persistence to beat it that the original creator must have had.
@JimNorman Will the Nintendo eShop still be available in legacy mode to redownload previous purchases after the April 8th online functionality shutdown? It'd seem weird if the Wii Shop Channel's legacy mode outlasts the Wii U and 3DS's legacy shops...
It's interesting how this level is the final one. At first glance, it doesn't seem as wild as a lot of other kaizo levels out there. But, the multiple frame perfect jumps makes this deceptively difficult.
Hopefully someone will manage to beat it before the servers are shut down.
@WiiWareWave This will continue to be possible “for the foreseeable future”: https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63227/~/announcement-of-discontinuation-of-online-services-for-nintendo-3ds-and-wii-u
Thab and the MM kaizo gods have got this!
I hope they make a documentary of this. Love these kind of stories.
Can you still upload levels on SMM? Can someone upload something terrible on April 7th?
Woah that means they played my few crummy levels as part of this? As long as they haven't been deleted yet I guess.
@TotalHenshin No... uploads haven't been possible for a long time.
@Vaporeon_meme genuine question. Are tool assisted runs an issue for Mario Maker, and if so wouldn’t there be stacks of levels that were effectively unbeatable by humans? How’d we get to just this one remaining level?
@Smth2024 ... i have no idea 😬😅
@Smth2024 what was the reference tho?
@Smigit While it is very possible to use macros to complete levels , the implication is so intricate that many people seem not use them. It is (or was) possible to share levels made in Yuzu which opens the door for many unbeatable levels using mods. There doesn't seem to be many examples of this happening though.
“ The end of online play means that all community-built levels will soon be unplayable”
Can you not download some levels to play offline after the servers are down?
Great work by these guys !
Just shows what a community can achieve when it stick together ! ...and there have been so many stupid, atrocious, spammy level and unbelievable tough kaizo ones !
What a shame that all the work people put in there for months and years building, grinding out records or beating tough level will all go in the bin soon.
Knowing this will happen to MM2 in a future not so far, far away breaks my heart !
Only made a couple of level in MM1, but spent 1200h in MM2 building my full Super World.
(which is the longest I spent in any game)
...and it will all end in the digital drain too !
I know MM3 will have new assets and styles but Nintendo should provide a way of transferring some of your Level or your world over !
I guess I won't be spending that much time again, specially when the world rating system and the framerate in multiplayer is completely broken !
(..and we pay for this)
...on a side note : now we all love Mario Maker again? Tried the level exchange board here on Nintendo a few times this year .
It's on life support and on it's last stretch, only used by a couple of dedicated people !
Such a shame, always thought this could have been just a perfect game if Nintendo had supported it the way it deserved !
Multiplayer, something like Nintendos picks of the month, regular updates(just a few new items here and there)
Would have been easy !
Times they are a changin (sadly)
This is pretty cool! It’s always exciting to see stuff like this unfold.
@Smth2024 ahhhhh yes i heard about that game. cool tho!
@JohnnyMind In Super Mario Maker 2, that's possible to do without people knowing (unless they use third party tools), but the original on Wii U allows you to download and edit levels other people have made, meaning it's possible to go through each part of the level and check for stuff like that.
Although as people say, there have been questions recently about the legitimacy of the original upload.
@twadebarcelona I remembered that you could download levels in the first SMM, but forgot that you could edit them by doing so, thanks for reminding me!
@Smigit It was actually possible to upload effectively impossible levels through complicated methods (example seen here https://youtu.be/9D5i3K5-QxM?si=_PtOiBsEG1lAHEf4)
As far as I know, Team 0% is handling this by excluding clearly hacked levels from the challenge. Also, levels that didn't get any star were already deleted by Nintendo so this reduces the number of impossible levels to a minimum
Regarding TAS, if you're not familiar to how it works I'll try my best to explain it simply but I'm sure there are people that could explain way better than me
TAS runs use savestates, which means you can load any previous frame to perfect inputs, that's how TASs manage frame-perfect inputs consistently
Another tool used is RNG manipulation, so anything that depends from RNG (such as spawns, projectiles, timings, drops etc) can be controlled to create the "perfect storm" in a run
The catch is, TASs are possible through a software running on a computer and not on a console (even if hacked, far as I know) so it should be impossible to have TAS levels on Super Mario Maker's official servers
Macros are basically carefully timed inputs, and you can mod a controller to do just that (modded controller rapid-fire in Halo is one of the most notable instances), but you still have no control over RNG, no savestates, and it takes quite a bit of time to create a frame-perfect run on a modded controller. You also have to account for:
-Absolutely monstrously skilled players that could rival a computer (and most of them are in Team 0%)
-The complications that come with modding a controller while keeping it compatible with WiiU
I probably left behind some infos but I'm still learning a lot about these arguments, also English is not my first lang so it's difficult to explain some things properly
Youtube has a lot of great video essays about TAS, macros in videogames and Mario Maker exploits if you're interested
@Vaporeon_meme thanks for the thorough response
@JohnnyMind I have spent a lot of time over the years (especially during the pandemic) watching SMM YouTubers and I recall them discovering you couldn't edit downloaded levels in the second game and being disappointed because a lot of the YouTubers who did some of the Super Expert No Skip videos used to like to look through any difficult levels that ended their runs so they could work out where they went wrong and then try to beat it afterwards, so it would be marked as cleared by them.
@twadebarcelona Yeah, as overall better as I'd say SMM2 is there are a couple of features exclusive to the first game which were great and it's a bummer that they didn't come back - the Mystery Mushroom costumes is the first thing that comes to mind for most people me included, but being able to edit downloaded levels is definitely another one!
@twadebarcelona @JohnnyMind
..of course it doesn't help for the editing part, but there're a couple of MM2 level viewers online !
Not sure how accurate they are and even if they still get updated, but they worked fine for mine !
@SGE2000 Those were what I meant by third party tools.
@JohnnyMind Yeah, I miss the mystery mushroom outfits. When Link was announced for SMM2 it made it seem like they removed the ability to have those outfits so they could create multiple different characters that used those assets and then no others happened. It was like how 3D World is categorised as if there would have been even more themes. SMM2 has a lot of areas where it feels like more was planned then ultimitely dropped.
@twadebarcelona
Just overflew your conversation !
Thought I could help !
@SGE2000 I didn't know about those so thanks for telling me!
@twadebarcelona Would've been so cool if we had got more characters as full-fledged power-ups instead of just costumes, fingers crossed for them (and also costumes back for characters who won't have those) in a future Mario Maker!
Games like this should not have its online dropped just like that, I hope some team will take care of this or did already and everyone will be able to play all the modes on an emulator easly.
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