With E3 now thoroughly out of the way and the coming titles well mapped out, I thought this would be a good time to discuss what the future holds for the Mario Marker IP. Nintendo's most creative software since Mario Paint all the way back in 1992, Super Mario Maker was a breakout hit on the Wii U that was then ported to the 3DS. With the advent of the Nintendo Switch, many have been wondering when, or even if, we'll be seeing the title appear on the newest hardware. I believe that we will, but I also believe that a few words could be well shared with Nintendo concerning the features and design ethos of the title. With the Switch's more powerful hardware and forth-coming robust online platform, there's no reason not to expect great things from the next iteration of Super Mario Maker. Here, then, are a few ideas for Nintendo and for the greater Nintendo fan-base to consider going forward. If we all speak loud enough, who knows? Just maybe we'll see a few of these make it into the game!

Slopes

The Mario games have featured sliding ever since Super Mario Bros. on the NES, and by Super Mario Bros. 3, uneven terrain had become a staple of the franchise which lent a new depth to established in-game sliding mechanics. I found the lack of this feature in Mario Maker to be creatively stifling. While the levels we could build in the traditional styles of the games suffered creatively, the inclusion of slopes could have allowed greater variety in the multitude of strange and wonderful contraptions clever users thought up. The greater processing power of the Switch offers Nintendo the chance to amend this sorely missed feature in intuitive ways.

? Orbs

Mario Maker included exciting new features that were great fun to experiment with. The ability to change enemy sizes and equip them with weapons or position them in novel ways made for strange quasi-boss battles that were always challenging. Unfortunately, the game offered no real way to have these bosses end the stage as is so common to the Mario games. The inclusion of a ? orb, as featured in Super Mario Bros 3 when defeating a Boom Boom (add Boom Booms, please!) is the perfect solution to this. It would be great to simply drag and drop the item into an enemy who would then drop it themselves once defeated! Perhaps Nintendo could even be clever and allow us to place it in hidden locations without the need to be attached to an enemy so we can make secret level exits, hide and seek style.

Koopalings

While the ability to make mini boss battles creatively through the novel features of the game was fun, it was a huge omission to not include the ever popular Koopalings in software which featured Super Mario Bros. 3 level design. Bowser Junior being in the game is proof this feature works. More variety is never a bad thing!

Verticality

While not a concrete item itself, games such as Super Mario Bros. 3, and especially Super Mario World, turned the franchise's play style on its head with the inclusion of greater verticality. Most of the Mario titles have been relatively horizontal affairs where the player runs from left to right, dodging obstacles and collecting items, until they reach the end goal. But these two titles saw Mario climbing, riding lifts, and flying to new heights with levels that were multiple screens high, or even scrolling vertically! This added a much needed depth to the series that mixed up the monotony of traditional side-scrolling level design and allowed for fun exploration moments when trying to discover secrets hidden in the clouds above. At a minimum I want to see Nintendo add height to the standard Mario Maker course, but the addition of vertical scrolling levels would be even better.

Background Objects

Mario Maker very cleverly incorporated a feature in which background objects native to the chosen level theme would spontaneously pop up as the player extended the length of their levels. It's the type of "little thing" Nintendo usually thinks of which separates them from the rest of the pack. In the next iteration of the game, however, I wish to see Nintendo open up this mechanic into a fully fledged player feature. Allow us to place those background objects as we see fit to craft our own ideal levels. Let us fill our courses with mountains or fences, open up the sky to our imaginations so that we may place clouds where ever the winds of our hearts blow. More control over the creative process is always better than less and such features are already standard in games like Terraria and Starbound.

Over World Map

Of all the features I was left wanting from Super Mario Maker, this was probably the biggest. Individual level design is fun, but there was no way to incorporate levels into a whole world in which the player had to navigate thoughtfully from stage to stage. I don't really expect to see a rich graphics editor which lets us craft the landscape by our own designs (although I'm not saying that would be a bad thing, Nintendo...), but at a minimum I want to see a course screen that lets us put 8 levels onto a prefabricated template. Maybe it could look like the one from the 100 Mario challenge. This way players of our worlds would have to tread carefully and suffer the consequences or delight in the success of how they moved through previous courses. It would would allow creators to explore level themes and game progression mechanics in a way that is more like what an actual Mario title feels like instead of just having this "level in a vacuum" sensibility Mario Maker presents.

More Level Theme Options

There's not much to say about this other than I would like to see the palette of level types expanded dramatically. Give us caves, and ice levels, volcanic wastelands and night time themes. Mario has run through almost every biome imaginable in his never ending quest to save Peach and her kingdom. The more of them we have access to, the more compelling the software becomes.

The Ability to Set Water or Lava Levels

This is a feature who's absence I found confusing. I would love to have been able to set the water height so that I could have made those hybrid swimming/running levels we saw so much of in later 8bit and 16bit Mario titles. How I missed the chance to torture players of my levels with a "Big Bertha" level! It would be as simple to implement as the land; give us those yellow directional sliders to adjust the height and length of the water/lave areas of our levels. Being able to adjust the lava level in dungeons and the proposed volcanic themed levels follows naturally, as well. Adding swimable waterfalls would be nice, too.

More of Everything!

While this may seem like a generic cop-out entry, I think one of the things that made Mario games so worthwhile was the sheer variety of challenges and enemies you encounter as your progress. Where were the boomerang brothers to compliment the hammer brothers? Why not add the blue and yellow turtles for Mario World themed stages? MOAR YOSHI PLEASE ! Less is never preferable to more where creativity is concerned.

An Open Plea to Nintendo

Having presented my personal wish list of what I'd like to see going further in the Super Mario Maker franchise, I want to offer Nintendo a word of advice; Have some faith in your customers! Through the years since the title's release I have seen a few of these issues spoken about by various people associated with the game's development, and I have been a little put off by how they have justified certain omissions by claiming it made the software easier to use. This sentiment can be seen at work in their insistence that every level should be able to be completed in each of the four game-specific themes that a player can chose. And I ask, why?

As I said earlier, what made Mario games so compelling that a guy like me, who had an NES back in the mid 80s and is today eagerly anticipating the arrival of Super Mario Odyssey, is the sheer variety the franchise offers. Forcing us into these pre-configured themes is not a benefit, it's a hindrance to creativity. Ease of use is not important today in the same way it was when I was a child and this whole "technology thing" was still considered a fad that would pass like bell bottoms and white-guy afros. (The 70s and 80s were weird, kids)

This is the Minecraft generation! The younger public has grown up with software that challenged them to explore worlds of huge variety and complexity, some even giving them the tools to build functional computers within the game world itself! They are very capable, Nintendo, and you should take advantage of their eagerness to be challenged in similar fashion to how Mojang did. It is a daunting task for a developer to create a software suite with this level of variety, but that's precisely what DLC is for. The next iteration of Super Mario Maker should be in perpetual development for the life of the Switch console, constantly adding more on a regular basis. It will serve your customers well for you to learn from the successes of modern companies, again such as Mojang, who have taken game development to strange new places. And it will serve you better that your customers should see you have progressed with the changing attitudes towards video games that are now native to the younger set who will either be your next demographic of life long customers...or not.

The choice is yours, and I have a lot of faith that you will make a good one if you simply hear what your customers are asking for.