The Wii U isn’t quite a failure on the level of the Virtual Boy, but it may be Nintendo’s most high profile flop to date. Even the GameCube sold more units (by almost double so far), and that console was hardly a rousing sales success for Nintendo in the face of competition from Microsoft and Sony. It has had some great software, though, and Nintendo’s trying to salvage that as the Wii U’s clock runs out by bringing some of those games to the 3DS.
The Wii U’s Smash Bros. already came to the 3DS as well—with effectively identical gameplay but some graphical sacrifices—where it sold more copies than its home console counterpart. So, moving other great Wii U software to the 3DS seems like an easy way to cash in on games that people weren’t buying because they didn’t own the hardware rather than because the games weren’t good. Super Mario Maker has been one of the Wii U’s biggest selling points since its release, so it was a prime candidate, even if a move to the NX, instead of the 3DS, would’ve helped bolster the new system’s launch lineup.
Mario Maker will arrive in December 2017 with almost all of the functionality of its Wii U predecessor intact—with the notable exception of uploading user-made levels and searching for specific levels online by their level codes. Players on the 3DS version can still play most of the Wii U courses online (and 100 pack-in levels designed by Nintendo, which is a nice bonus), but they’ll only be available randomly via the 10-Mario and 100-Mario challenges, which automatically select user-created levels for the player to complete on those fixed numbers of lives.
Players will be able to share levels locally with friends, but not allowing full upload functionality seems like a pretty big oversight for a game like Mario Maker—unless there’s also an NX version on the way, and they’re using this one as a way to give people a “demo.” (Still not a great move, but at least there’d be some logic.) This was all announced in today’s 3DS-focused Nintendo Direct, and Yoshi’s Wooly World will also get a port from the Wii U to 3DS in February (along with a rather adorable yarn Poochy Amiibo). The also talked about Pokémon Sun and Moon a bit more, announced a new, side-scrolling Pikmin title for 3DS, and talked about Sonic, Mario sports, Mario Party, and more, so take a look at the entire replay above to see what’s in store for your portable gaming library.
(featured image via Nintendo)
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