Super Mario Maker 2 is a 2D platforming and level-creation game released for the Nintendo Switch worldwide on 28 June 2019. The sequel to 2015’s Super Mario Maker on Wii U, it carries the same brilliant premise — “make and play any Mario level you can imagine” — but expands it into the most complete creative Mario package Nintendo has ever shipped.

It is recognised on Mario Portal as the 22nd mainline entry in the Super Mario series. The headline additions over the original are huge: a fifth game style based on Super Mario 3D World (with the Super Bell and Cat Mario), slopes at last, four brand-new course themes (desert, snow, sky, forest), a transformative night-time effect for every theme, full online multiplayer (co-op & versus), an enormous Story Mode, and — added in a free 3.0 update — the World Maker tool that lets players string their levels together into full Super Worlds.

The result is a game that’s effectively three things at once: a 2D Mario platformer (Story Mode + 120 Nintendo-built courses), a near-infinite live Mario game (Course World, with millions of player-made levels), and the most accessible game-design tool ever made.

A major new addition over the original, Story Mode is a full single-player campaign of 120 official courses hand-built by Nintendo, woven together by a charming light narrative.

The Premise

Mario, Toadette (the “Chief”), Toad (the “Taskmaster”), and the rest of the Toad crew have just finished building Princess Peach’s Castle — only for Undodog to accidentally step on a button that triggers a Reset Rocket, erasing the entire castle. The whole construction crew has to start over, and Mario’s job is to earn coins by playing courses (“jobs”) and use them to rebuild the castle piece by piece.

How It Works

• 120 official Nintendo courses playable as “jobs” assigned by Taskmaster Toad — these are some of the finest 2D Mario levels Nintendo has ever published
• Coins earned from clearing courses spend on rebuilding the castle (parts ranging in cost from a few coins to thousands)
• Optional side jobs from other NPCs — Mr. Eraser, Undodog, the Builder Toads — add extra courses and unique conditions
• Rescue Toads hidden in many levels add a collectible challenge
• Five lives per job (with up to three bonus lives earnable per job)

Beating Story Mode unlocks Mario’s castle as a backdrop and serves as a masterclass in 2D Mario design — effectively a full-length Nintendo-made 2D Mario, taught by example.

The Course Maker is the heart of the game — a remarkably deep, accessible level editor that lets players assemble any kind of 2D Mario course they can imagine, using touch input (handheld), Joy-Con motion, or button controls.

The Core Loop

• Pick a game style — one of five (see Game Styles section), each with its own physics, art, music, sound effects, and course parts
• Pick a theme — one of ten (see Themes section), each with day & night variants
• Set a time limit — anywhere from 10 to 500 seconds
• Place parts — terrain, enemies, items, blocks, hazards, gizmos, sounds, even Clear Conditions
• Playtest, refine, upload — you must beat your own course before publishing, then share it to Course World for the world to play

New for SMM2

• Slopes — a series first in the Maker line, available in every style
• Custom Scroll — set the level to auto-scroll in any direction, with up to 10 direction changes per area
• Vertical sub-areas and rising/falling water/lava/poison — dramatic new pacing tools
• Clear Conditions — require players to collect X coins, defeat Y enemies, finish as Super/Fire/Cape Mario, never touch the ground, and dozens more — effectively turning courses into custom challenges
• Night mode — a transformative effect on every theme (see Themes section)
• Multiplayer creation — build a level together with friends, either locally or online

SMM2 carries forward the four original styles from Super Mario Maker and adds a brand-new fifth one. Each is a self-contained “art kit” complete with its own physics, music, sound effects, enemies, and power-ups.

Each level can be set to one of ten course themes, each with its own art, music, enemies, and behaviour. Every theme has a night-time variant, which triggers dramatic visual and gameplay changes — turning levels upside down, dimming the lights, making enemies behave differently, and reshaping the physics. Night themes give every preset a second life.

Ground

The default theme — grassy plains and clouds, à la World 1-1. Standard physics.

🌙 Night effect: Causes various enemies and items to behave differently — a chaotic challenge mode.

Underground

Cave levels with darker palette and slightly different enemy layouts.

🌙 Night effect: Turns the screen upside down and inverts all vertical controls — a dizzying twist.

Underwater

Slow underwater swimming physics. Cheep Cheeps, Bloopers, and other aquatic foes.

🌙 Night effect: Becomes dark with a tight light radius around the player and certain items.

Ghost House

Boos, dark corridors, and disappearing platforms — the classic spooky stage.

🌙 Night effect: Players run backwards toward the goal — a complete control reversal.

Airship

Bowser’s fleet of flying ships, bullets and cannons galore. Wind effects available.

🌙 Night effect: Activates a sideways gravity wind that constantly tugs the player.

Castle

Lava-filled Bowser fortresses with Thwomps, Fire Bars, and Magikoopas.

🌙 Night effect: Gravity is significantly weakened — jumps become floaty and dangerous.

Desert

New to SMM2. Sandy dunes, Pokeys, and quicksand hazards.

🌙 Night effect: Whips up a constant sandstorm, blowing the player and obscuring vision.

Snow

New to SMM2. Icy ground (slippery by default), snowdrifts, and Ice Bros.

🌙 Night effect: Removes all friction — every surface becomes pure ice.

Sky

New to SMM2. Cloud platforms, falling debris, and high-altitude vibes.

🌙 Night effect: Reduces gravity — jumps fly higher and the level becomes more vertical.

Forest

New to SMM2. Vines, leaves, and notably a water (or lava/poison) surface that can be set to rise and fall on a schedule — a powerful new pacing tool.

🌙 Night effect: Makes the level pitch black, with a tiny circle of vision around the player.

Where the original Mario Maker was Mario-only, SMM2 makes Luigi, Toad, and Toadette all selectable too, in both single-player and multiplayer modes.

Playable Characters

Mario & Luigi

Mario is the default; Luigi is selectable in single-player and the multiplayer modes.

Toad & Toadette

Both Toads are also fully playable across modes — useful for co-op and Story Mode.

Builder Mario

Available via the special hard-hat power-up that lets the player place builder blocks mid-level — the unique flavour of SMM2 Mario.

Cat Luigi

In the Super Mario 3D World style, the Super Bell turns any character into the wall-climbing Cat form — here, Cat Luigi.

Supporting Characters

Yamamura

A pigeon master craftsman who runs the in-game tutorial / lessons.

Toadette (“Chief”)

The Chief of construction in Story Mode — oversees the castle rebuild.

Course World is the online hub for the whole community of player-made levels — the beating heart of Super Mario Maker 2.

Browsing & Playing

• Popular, Hot, and New courses tabs surface the best of the millions of player uploads
• Search by ID — every course has a sharable code (e.g. ABC-DEF-GHJ) for direct play
• Search by parameters — filter by style, theme, difficulty, region, and applied tags (Puzzle-solving, Autoscroll, Music, Themed, Art, Speedrun, and more)
• Feedback — leave text, drawings, or one of 12 themed stamps for the course’s creator
• “I like it!” / “Boo!” — the new positive/negative voting system replaces the original’s stars

Modes

• Endless Challenge — a continuous gauntlet of random courses at a chosen difficulty (Easy, Normal, Expert, Super Expert), with shared lives
• Network Play — the new online multiplayer (added with launch). Co-op & Versus modes pit 4 players together against a random course (with a Versus Rating tracked over time)
• Ninji Speedruns — special time-limited Nintendo-run events where players race the clock on a curated course, ranked globally with a “Ninji” replay overlay
• Official Courses — a regular drop of Nintendo-made levels

Added in the free Version 3.0 update in April 2020, World Maker turned SMM2 from a level editor into a full Mario-game editor — letting players stitch their levels together into proper Super Worlds.

How It Works

• 7×4 world grid — build each individual world on a Mario World-style overworld map
• Place levels, terrain, pathways, Toad Houses, Warp Pipes using a palette of cute icon parts (Standard course, Ghost House, Fortress, Airship, Castle, Bowser Airship)
• Up to 5 levels per world, including the mandatory castle finale
• Up to 8 worlds per Super World — up to 40 levels in a complete Super World
• Lives carry between levels, unlike Story Mode — a proper Mario-game progression
• Shareable — the whole Super World can be uploaded to Course World, with a single ID that downloads all its levels at once

Yamamura’s Dojo is the in-game tutorial system — a series of unlockable, illustrated lessons run by the wise pigeon-craftsman Yamamura and the bird Mary O.

• 20+ structured lessons covering the fundamentals of good 2D Mario level design — from “Why a good first jump matters” to advanced topics like risk-reward, theming, and pacing
• Lessons unlock as the player progresses through Story Mode and uses different tools in the editor
• Far deeper than a tutorial needs to be — effectively a free, gentle introduction to game-design principles, presented in classic Mario charm

SMM2 was supported by Nintendo with a steady stream of substantial free updates well past launch, adding major new features and content.

Official Nintendo trailers for Super Mario Maker 2.

Super Mario Maker 2 received strongly positive reviews, praised as both an enormously expanded sequel and the definitive level-creator experience.

Acclaim

• Metacritic 88, with standout 9.5/10 reviews from outlets like IGN, who called it “the most accessible game design tool ever created”
• Massive depth — reviewers praised the new 3D World style, slopes, themes, night mode, Clear Conditions, and the depth of the editor compared to the original
• Story Mode — widely seen as a major and welcome addition for solo players, offering a full 2D Mario game inside the package
• Yamamura’s Dojo — praised as an unusually thoughtful design tutorial that introduces game design concepts to a mass audience
• Strong sales — over 9 million copies sold, well over double the original’s lifetime sales

Criticisms

• The conundrum of user-generated content — reviewers like Destructoid (7/10) noted that the quality of Course World inevitably varies wildly with the player base
• Online stability at launch — some friend-list and lobby features were missing at launch (fixed in the 1.1 patch)
• 3D World style isolation — the inability to share parts between the 3D World style and the four “classic” styles was disappointing to some
• No 3D World style in World Maker — Super Worlds use a Super Mario World map regardless of the linked levels’ styles

• Released 28 June 2019 — the 22nd mainline entry in the Super Mario series.
• Sequel to Super Mario Maker (Wii U, 2015) — and to its 3DS spin-off, Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS.
• The Super Mario 3D World style is brand new to SMM2 and the only one rendered in 2.5D.
• Slopes were a long-requested feature finally added in this sequel — the original Mario Maker shipped without them.
• 120 official Story Mode courses, all hand-built by Nintendo — effectively a full 2D Mario game hidden inside the editor.
• The Master Sword update (v2.0) added Link from The Legend of Zelda as a power-up form in the SMB style — a beloved series crossover.
• World Maker (v3.0, April 2020) turned the game into a full Mario-game editor.
• Versus Mode tracks a global Versus Rating to match players of similar skill.
• Ninji Speedruns are time-limited events where players race the clock with global rankings and ghost replays.
• Course IDs are 9-character codes (e.g. ABC-DEF-GHJ) and can be entered directly for instant play.
• Server discontinued? SMM2’s servers remain online; Nintendo Switch Online membership is required for online features.
• 9+ million copies sold, more than double the original Wii U Mario Maker’s lifetime sales.

Box art and key visuals for Super Mario Maker 2.

More on Super Luigi Bros.

Screenshots and artwork appear throughout the sections above. Additional footage is in the Videos section.