A decade ago today, Nintendo released Super Mario Maker on the Wii U. Today's actually one of three anniversary dates for the underrated exclusive, hitting smack dab in the middle of a strange rollout that saw the game releasing in Japan on September 10th, Europe and North America on September 11th (rude, honestly), and Australia on September 12th.

Maybe Nintendo felt that it needed to slowly introduce the world to something this subversive, a commercial product that gave fans the keys to the Mushroom Kingdom, allowing them to build their own levels from scratch. Or maybe it just wanted to make one of the Wii U's few first-party releases last as long as humanly possible.

Super Mario Maker Has An All-Time Great Pitch

As one of the small handful of Wii U owners, it was a game I was excited to get my hands on as soon as I heard the pitch. I can make my own Mario levels? In the graphical styles of various Mario games? And it's a normal video game, not a complex piece of software with an inscrutable UI? Sign me the Flomp up.

That's a little Super Mario Galaxy 2 reference, for ya. Floating Thwomps, look it up.

I'm not a technical person. I grew up being good at English, went to college for English, then made a career doing more English. I have never needed to be good at math, science, or computers, so the under-the-hood aspects of game development have always intimidated me. Super Mario Maker provided an opportunity to play around with the creative tools without the need to dig any deeper than I would while playing a normal game.

Super Mario Maker Asks The Question: Is Work Fun?

The problem was, when I played Super Mario Maker, I couldn't help thinking that I could just as easily be devoting that time to learning an actual development engine and making an actual game. What's the purpose of learning all this? Of making a bunch of bad levels? Of finally getting a handle on game design principles and making something enjoyable to play? I'm doing all this so I can have fun? Are you kidding me?

To be fair, Mario Maker skills are translatable. If you create enough courses, you'll get a good handle on what makes a good level, what makes a bad level, and what makes an extremely difficult level that kaizo perverts will mistake for a good level. And, of course, you can also just play Mario Maker levels. You don't need to make stuff. If you just want to play good 2D platformer levels, there's an endless amount online.

But to get back to the previous question: Yes, fun is the purpose of Super Mario Maker. If you've been playing Mario your whole life, like many of us have, it's an opportunity to use the things you've learned by osmosis; to put the preferences you've developed over the course of decades playing platformers into practice, then share those creations with the world and see if they enjoy them, too.

It’s a chance to see if game design is something you enjoy before you dive into the Source 2 Engine and start modding Half-Life: Alyx (something I spent a very confusing evening attempting). Mario Maker helps you see the building blocks of game design while you’re still playing a game. For the next generation of game developers, that’s as important in 2025 as it was in 2015.