“Why you can trust Digital Trends – We have a 20-year history of testing, reviewing, and rating products, services and apps to help you make a sound buying decision. Find out more about how we test and score products.“
Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS is a superb port, but losing the ability to share creations online may be a dealbreaker for die-hard level creators.
Super Mario Maker is a natural fit for the Nintendo 3DS. The short nature of its levels and free-form design mode lend themselves perfectly to playing in short bursts, dropping in and out of games on the go. Coming in December, Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS will bring make nearly everything from the original Wii U game portable, but the game’s few differences — namely that the game does not allow players to share their levels online — could make all the difference as to whether this portable version finds a place in fans’ collections.
In broad strokes, Mario Maker 3DS is the exact same game we loved when it came out last year. You can both play and create side-scrolling Mario levels, built from a toolkit of familiar elements collected from a few entries in the decades-old series. These can range from simple remixes of familiar tropes to more elaborate creations that push the boundaries of how the individual elements were conceived of for use, such as Rube Goldberg-style puzzle boxes or bullet hell dodging exercises.
The game’s inherently retro style still reads well on the handheld’s lower resolution.
Based on our time with the game, Mario Maker-made levels looked and played great on the New Nintendo 3DS, with no noticeable loss in quality from the platform change. The game’s inherently retro style — you can make levels with art from Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. — still reads perfectly well on the handheld’s lower resolution. The touch-sensitive lower screen with stylus worked very well when building a level in the game’s editor. We asked whether or not the game would perform differently on older 3DS models, but were not given a clear answer.
Almost all of the in-game elements from the original Super Mario Maker are present in this version, except for the Mystery Mushroom, which transform Mario into other notable Nintendo characters, such as Link from The Legend of Zelda. That means Amiibo support is gone as well. The Weird Mushroom, which transforms Mario into a lankier version of himself with Luigi’s jumping ability, remains.
3DS players will be able to download levels created in the Wii U version for the “100 Mario Challenge,” so long as they don’t include Mystery Mushrooms. The game also can’t search for levels by course ID.
Most importantly, 3DS players will also not be able to upload any levels created on the 3DS. Levels created on the 3DS can be shared with others, but only with other 3DS players via local wireless or StreetPass. Friends will be able to collaborate on levels by passing them back and forth via Local Play, though not simultaneously. This is a fun feature, replacing the global creators’ community of the Wii U version with more local, playground-focused social networking, though the lack of simultaneous editing raises the question of why the same effect couldn’t be equally well achieved by simply passing the 3DS itself back and forth, rather than sending the file locally.
Despite the local alternative, the diminished online functionality of Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS may be a dealbreaker for you, depending depends on what you want to get out of it. If you want a fun, portable, and replayable Mario fix, then it’s great. The 3DS version will launch with 100 exclusive levels designed by Nintendo staff, plus access to the lion’s share of fan-created content from online. If you want to focus on creating and sharing work with the game’s larger community, the 3DS version’s more limited support for sharing and taking advantage of the larger Mario Maker community may make it feel like a waste of time.
For established Mario level-makers, Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS may work best as a mobile supplement for playing with ideas on the go, rather than a straight replacement.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.