I got this game for Christmas in 2017, and honestly I did get a lot of enjoyment out of it. Obviously the fact that you couldn't share your levels online kinda defeats the whole purpose of the game and makes it inferior to the Wii U version, so I'm not gonna defend that. But the often overlooked part about this game is that it has a full, fleshed out story mode with levels designed by Nintendo. Judging it in that aspect, it's almost as good as a normal 2D Mario game with the added bonus that you get to fiddle around and make your own levels. For what it is it's not a bad game, and since I didn't have a Wii U growing up, this was the next best thing.

I played this in early 2024 well after the Wii U and 3DS online services have died, so I got as little as possible out of this. I can't play courses made by others, I can't share my own courses but with people I know irl who won't look at me weird when I hand them a 3DS in 2024 and onward. I didn't hate the 100 courses Nintendo made for me, but the way they're dressed up doesn't help the situation. You will hear the same short song over and over with slight variation and it almost made me feel like I was in a Mario purgatory. Endless Marioing forever. Little time between levels to breathe. It's probably the weirdest way I've experienced a Mario campaign. The levels range from being typical Mario to being like weird puzzles you have to solve. There's some neat ones, but like most 2D Mario games, I couldn't call out a specific one and recommend it. You have quite a few options for Mario on 3DS, and I guess this is a fine one.

I mean...It's still Mario Maker....Just...Without being able to look for specific levels...And you can't play 3DS levels on the home console version...

Yeah, it's just a shittier version of the same game, but I never cared too much. The core Mario Maker experience is still there, and you can still create your own levels...It just serves no other point outside of that.

I'm sure if I had ever bought a WiiU with the WiiU version of this game, I would've never touched this version at all. Oh well.

This is really neat to see running on the 3DS, especially New Super Mario Bros U, but it's far from an ideal version. Of course now that the online servers are scheduled to go down in April, it doesn't matter anyway, but at the time not being able to upload stages, or even look up stages if I remember correctly defeated a lot of the point of Super Mario Maker. There's some neat singleplayer modes here, for what they're worth, and you could still play random user-made levels, but in general this was a really bizarre release that never made much sense

Awful port. The lack of online level sharing makes Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS nearly useless. The story mode levels are enjoyable but aren't enough to make up for that. It would've been nice if they added them to Super Mario Maker on Wii U or Super Mario Maker 2 so they weren't doomed to obscurity. These are probably some of the least-played official Mario levels.

The challenge medal system feels disrespectful to the player's time. Both goals should be shown at the beginning instead of only showing the Bowser one after the first goal is achieved since it's often possible to get both in one run. Another annoying aspect is that it doesn't tell you if you've already failed to meet the criteria and need to restart.

I also disliked how they put an enormous amount of levels behind a set number of lives, but give you so many that they may as well have just removed lives entirely. Why even bother at that point? The system only serves to punish people who have a lot of difficulty with platformers. This also results in you needing to replay the courses in Coursebot to earn medals instead of completing them during the main campaign to avoid the risk of losing a lot of lives, which feels like padding.