Super Mario Maker Hits 3.3 Million Created Courses, November Update Adds Checkpoints

Super Mario Maker has really picked up this month at 3.3 million courses made, and now Nintendo has announced a new software update adding key features, including checkpoints.

This course creation milestone means that a million courses were added in in the span of less than a month. Irregardless of the game’s actual sales (which has also been healthy), its momentum is still going strong with loyal creators and players.

And now, the big bombshell. Nintendo will be uploading a major update this coming November 4. That update will allow you to add checkpoints, in the form of flags as you see in our cover image. You can shake an arrow sign on an existing course to make it a checkpoint flag.

Also new are contextual powerups. In the original games, you can get a Fire Flower or another power up in some places that originally had a mushroom, assuming you were already powered up. Super Mario Maker will now allow you to recreate this.

Finally, Super Mario Maker is getting new curation tweaks in Course world, including Event Courses. These are courses made in special events. The first such Event Course will have courses from the recent Facebook hackathon.

Checkpoints are not just a neat little bonus to Super Mario Maker. As Carolyn Petit argues here, they fundamentally color our experience of theMario games in general. While this update hasn’t yet added an overworld, it will go a long way in giving players a sense of journey.

Only one question lingers; course creator RagnarokX subverted the game’s prepatch limitations on his course Junior Airship Showdown. You can watch how the code works below, but will this person still keep this level as is now that there’s an easier way to do checkpoints?

Are you going back in to revise or make new courses? Or are you still an active course creator already planning those changes? What do you think RagnarokX should do about his course? Share your thoughts with us in the comments. You can also check out a trailer of the next update above.