I have Super Mario Maker now

Since this month contained my birthday, it apparently means I get a 30% "Just For You" discount on one of a few select titles on the Wii U/3DS eShop.  It was either going to be New Super Mario Bros U + New Super Luigi U (a two game bundle!), or Super Mario Maker.  As you could infer from the title of this post, I went with Super Mario Maker.  I had about $10 left over from the $50 eShop card I got for Christmas last year, so I only had to part with a little over $30.  I've wanted Super Mario Maker for a long time anyway, whereas I only have a general level of interest in NSMBU/NSLU, so the choice was clear.

I haven't done much in it other than the accelerated method of unlocking the course elements.  What is that, you ask?  Well, I feel like it's already pretty well documented, but since you're here:

1. Go into the editor, place things.  I hate having "New!" indicators on things, so I placed everything I had available.
2. Make a large square of blocks, and copy/paste it a bunch.
3. Eventually the game will tell you that you'll get the next batch of unlocks tomorrow.  That takes too long, so keep pasting things.
4. The game will give in after a few more pastes and give you the next set of stuff now.
5. Change level styles and game styles as you unlock them.  Or at least, that's what I did, I dunno how essential it is.  Play around with things while you're there, you might as well.
6. Repeat until it says you have everything.
7. If it won't let you paste any more, use the rocket to erase everything and start over.

Also, you may have seen in videos that different people have different cursors for placing stuff in the editor.  The default is the hand with the stylus, but it can be changed.  Nothing ever says how, so you just have to mess around pressing buttons until you figure out that pressing the analog sticks in will cycle through the available cursors (and change whether they're right handed or left handed).

Finding levels to play is the next step.  Fortunately for me, I've watched a bunch of Mario Maker videos, so I know of a bunch of good creators going in.  Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn't make it easy to follow a creator.  You have to get one of their levels, either by entering the course ID on your Wii U, or through the bookmark website, then you can find their profile in-game and follow them.  Nintendo's idea of a search is "enter the 16-character hexadecimal unique identifier for the level that you already know you want to play".  No, sorry, that isn't a search.  Let me type in a creator's name and find them that way.  Let me follow a creator from the bookmark website.  Let me search for a level by name.  Fortunately, the community has stepped up and created makersofmario.com, which makes finding levels a bit easier.

The bookmark website is otherwise really nice.  You can bookmark levels on your computer, and then they show up in your bookmark list in-game.  This makes it a lot easier to use their bookmark system, because entering course IDs on the gamepad touchscreen is far less preferable to being able to use a mouse and keyboard to navigate a website.

Playing levels is only half the game, though.  What about making them?  Well, I do have a few ideas.  I'm not going to say anything about them now, since I haven't really played around with what's available to see how possible everything is.  It won't be worth doing an entire blog post about each level I make, so the way to find my stuff will be to follow me on either Miiverse or Twitter.