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.
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…
The creator has to beat it to upload and
people can download a level to open in editor and see everything
That way it’s not a random pipe to win
Yes. You have to beat your own level to upload. It’s right here in the post. You can even see the video of the guy doing it
Oh, so I guess the “uncompleted level count” just refers to “uncompleted by anyone except the creator.”
The creator’s clear check doesn’t count towards the level being cleared, so these levels are uncleared. I think if the creator plays it on the uploader account it wouldn’t count either.
The one uncleared level refers to the 0%team clearing every maker level with that being the last one they have to do.
Is it here in the post? I’ve looked all over and can’t find mention of that. There’s the video of the author clearing it, but that doesn’t imply that all levels are beatable.
Sorry, yeah, it is intended that all levels are beatable. To upload a level you must prove that it is beatable by clearing it from the beginning without dying, and then clearing it again from each checkpoint (if there are any) to prove that it can also be cleared from any checkpoints.
Hacked levels have existed that cannot be cleared, but they can be reported and Nintendo takes them down. They should all be taken down by now, but in any case if it’s obviously impossible (the goal is completely blocked by impenetrable walls) Team 0% marks them as hacked on their spreadsheet in addition to reporting them, so they wouldn’t count.
In this game you can download levels and see the full level in the editor, so it isn’t possible to make a level that is “practically” unclearable using hidden information. Any things like hidden keys, “passcode” sections (where you need to hit blocks a certain number of times in order to manipulate things hidden off screen), etc. are trivially defeated by viewing the level in the editor.
I know I’ve seen “cryptographically secure” levels (as in, you can only possibly beat it within a human lifespan if you know the specific “combination” or “cryptographic key”), but maybe only in Super Mario Maker 2.
And I’m not sure if in 1 you can inspect the whole level. The SMM2 cryptographically secure ones I’ve seen rely on mechanisms that must remain off-screen the whole time or else it’s trivial to derive the key.
It’s only in SMM2, which doesn’t allow you to edit other people’s levels. And actually there is now a 3rd party tool to view SMM2 levels so those levels are now exposed as well.
In theory there are unbeatable levels. With some updates Nintendo fixed glitches, hit boxes, etc. Usually, when you play a level that was uploaded on an older version of the game, you get the old behavior. But there was one update, which did not adhere to this, and which did cause some levels (designed with now fixed glitches) to be unbeatable now.
But this project isn’t about beating all levels, it’s about beating all uncleared levels. Since those glitch levels probably were beaten before the patch OR you might be able to play them on an older version of the game (if the server allows it), these shouldn’t be a huge problem.