UPDATE: Ahoyoo has confirmed that Trimming the Herbs was uploaded with TAS tools, meaning that The Last Dance was the final legitimate level all along! Congrats to kazeihinn on the Last First Clear! The journey continues in Super Mario Maker 2…
ORIGINAL POST:
Team 0% is attempting to clear every level in Super Mario Maker before the servers shut down on April 8. (New level uploads have been disabled since 2021, so there is no danger of new levels appearing at the last minute.) As of a few days ago, only a single level remains: Trimming the Herbs, uploaded in 2017 by Ahoyoo. (See also Ahoyoo’s original upload video.)
The level is short but extremely precise, requiring Mario to use Bob-ombs to precisely remove Piranha Plants and collect coins while navigating a tight space filled with spikes. There have been over 200,000 attempts so far! If you have a Wii U and feel like you might be a Mario master, this is your opportunity to pick up the final First Clear in Super Mario Maker history.
The real story here is that the servers are being shut down. Games like these deserve to have the ability to run their own third party servers. To this day I can still log unto a number of Unreal Tournament (1999) community servers and frag until my eyes bleed.
I’m sure one day they’re going to be selling those user created levels back to the users who originally created them.
You’re probably right. I’m starting to think Nintendo is fully rotten to the core.
They’re just a corporation.
Which is to say they’re all rotten to the core when it comes to profits.
I already switched my Wii u over to the pretendo network. Uploading and playing levels already work in super Mario maker.
It’s still far of from a drop in replacement, but miiverse, wara wara plaza and som in game things are working.
Wait what? Ut servers are still running? That’s insane
It’s weird, because I despise these Nintendo-style game murders, but love the Mario games… How can something so bad, make something so good? One need only look at Nintendo’s complete and utter lack of respect for us the players and the games they kill with impunity to make a very solid case to increase our rights in preserving ALL of our video-game legacy. Legalize all sources for reverse engineering! This has gone far enough.
I think Digital Extremes has kept a UT server up since 2003.
I still pop into UT99 games every now and then. One of the greatest games ever made
So if I own this game we won’t be able to play it anymore?
Welcome to modern gaming
Technically, you’ll be able to “play” it, but without the online aspect of levels other people created there wouldn’t really be much of a point.
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Feels like I saw the ads for this game just yesterday. I want to trust these proprietary services won’t disappear with my work, but I simply can’t. Some people say 10 years is a long time, but not me.
That’s nice but do they hold the world record on Bowser’s Big Bean Burrito?
Many years back, I manually dumped thousands of Mario Maker 1 levels and uploaded them to the Internet. It’s sad that the servers will be shutting down, and I knew this would happen, which is why I did it even though it took a long time manually downloading them one-by-one and then copying them off of my softmodded Wii U. Still though, it was worth it, knowing the game will live on to some extent even after the servers are shut down.
Internet archive?
That’s a good idea tbh. I should probably do that.
edit: It has been done, it is done uploading, it also includes levels I obtained elsewhere from other downloads, I won’t link it here tho.
You preserved a lot of people’s hard work and creativity just like that. You’re awesome!
I already mentioned pretendo in a comment. But for anyone how wants to play super Mario maker on there Wii u after the shutdown. You can switch networks (you of course need to (soft)mod your Wii u).
In super Mario maker uploading, playing uploaded levels, death point, world record and staring them works. There is still a lot missing. But you can still play.
Some games and features are behind a payed beta(which I hate). But all super Mario maker stuff is free.
Seeing wara wara plaza alive on my Wii u is amazing with random Mii’s and post from miiverse.
Did Mario Maker have any kind of safeguards against users publishing troll levels that were just physically impossible to beat? Since there’s only one uncleared level left, I assume so, but I would’ve thought that the easiest way to verify a level could be beaten would be to make the creator beat it themselves before it could be uploaded.
I would’ve expected either loads of unbeaten levels or no unbeaten levels at all, but having only one unbeaten level is interesting…
I believe you had to complete it before publishing
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do i have the youtube creator for you… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D5i3K5-QxM
Doesn’t that video show someone finishing it? Or is it uncleared by everyone except the creator or something?
That video is a TAS, no human has cleared the level.
Forgive my ignorance, as even a quick search failed me, but what is a TAS?
UPDATE - thank you all for answering my question so well!
Tool assisted speed run. People write programs to run the game over and over, and by doing that they can prove or disprove potential strats, routes and such and then humans can try them.
Tool Assisted Speedrun
Using a script to automatically press all the buttons on the exact right frames so that you can automate a speedrun.
This?
“Tool Assisted Game Movie” https://tasvideos.org/
That video is rumored to be a tas. The only proof of TAS we have is salty egos. It would have also been as hard to TAS on the WiiU at the time than to just practice the level.
Also the creator has another bomb based level where he shows off his skills. It’s technically easier but uses the same tricks as this one.
There’s no serious reasons to believe he didn’t clear it correctly.
It would have also been as hard to TAS on the WiiU at the time than to just practice the level.
What do you mean by that?
Ahoyoo was known to be a good player, particularly with bombs (his other level, bombs5, is the same kind of tricks).
In 2017, there was no emulator capable of running SMM1 properly, and there was no controller for it to TAS with. So in order to TAS the level, he would have had to build an Arduino, learn to code, detect somehow when the level starts, send inputs to the USB port, enter the right inputs, and try and work out timings which are actually very difficult even in old systems, and very time consuming.
The best players currently are making progress on the level with around 20 hours of practice. Ahoyoo likely had hundreds of hours on this level alone (as the creator even, just to make the level), and it’s said he spent thousands of hours playing the game obsessively. Spending more time to TAS would have been counter productive. If not impossible without an emulator (for reasons that are very technical TAS’ing a modern system is close to impossible without a camera and some AI).
Now there is a theory that he could have cheated the video (with editing) and cheated the submission process, but the cheats for submission were not widely known at the time (2017) and Ahoyoo wasn’t known as an editor. So he would have needed help etc etc. That leave traces on forums that people likely would have found by now.
Being a good player and obsessed at the game as he was, it’s more likely that he beat it fair and square, the way people are getting closer every day to beat it. So with all the evidence we know that accusation doesn’t hold.
Edit: well that didn’t age well. I guess he DID have early access to TAS tools.
May not have aged well, but it was still an interesting read thanks
in 2017, the Wii U was an already open book for homebrewers IIRC, that’s why I asked why considering TAS was almost no-go at the time.
thanks for thr write up though!
The website says 99.9% but also that the level was cleared by cardigacimeira?
And it’s beaten! congrats!
I’ve been glued to twitch and YouTube waiting to catch it when it goes.
