In 2015, Nintendo released Super Mario Maker for the Wii U, a game that allowed players to create and share their own 2D Mario levels. In 2021, the company discontinued the ability to upload courses as the game was overshadowed by its sequel on the Switch. But in January 2024, Nintendo announced the end of all online services for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS games on April 8th. For Super Mario Makerthis meant that the millions of player-created levels were unceremoniously closed.
At least it would have been unceremonious if there hadn’t been a group called Team 0%. The group had spent years trying to beat every unexplained level in the game, which became easier when they had a solid goal in 2021. When the announcement came that the Wii U’s online services would be discontinued, approximately 26,000 levels were created by hand submit Super Mario Maker that had never been beaten before. The team mobilized to try to reach zero within the four months they had.
“I just wish I had more time with the game”
“I was pretty disappointed when the announcement came,” says group member LouMarru. “Several people felt it was on the cards, I just wish I had more time with the game.” This feeling of disappointment – but not shock – is shared by all members of Team 0% I spoke to. “It seems that all online communities have the same life cycle,” says The0dark0one, who created the first list of unfinished levels back in 2017.
Closing company-owned servers is one way games are continually deleted. A big part of it Super Mario Maker is officially unplayable nine years after its release. Looking back more than 15 years, only 13 percent of games are accessible outside of an archive, pirated copies, or purchasing old devices.
“Super Mario Maker is my favorite game and I have so many memories of it [it]So it’s pretty sad to think about all these levels being permanently deleted,” says Black60Dragon, one of the founding members of Team 0%. “Many people, myself included, have tried to set up as many alternate accounts as possible on their Wii Us to download their favorite levels before they disappear for good.”
But with a deadline, there was still something to do. “My reaction [to the announcement of the shutdown] “It was just a matter of making a call for help for 0%,” says group member Louis_XIX. And a lot of people responded. “It brought droves of people back,” LouMarru says. Most of these players were not skilled enough to overcome the most difficult levels, but they provided the necessary numbers to overcome most of the easier levels. And it also motivated the top players, some of whom had defected, like Jeffie, who founded the Team 0% Discord server in 2017. “I decided to come back for one last grind,” he says.
“This felt like the best way to end a game that meant so much to so many of us,” says Black60Dragon. “I know what it was like to put a lot of effort into making a level that I really liked, only for no one to be able to play it. So it’s very satisfying to make sure every single level is beaten at least once.”
“I decided to come back for one last attempt.”
This journey has been something of a roller coaster ride. The remaining levels were examples of “Kaizo Mario,” a design philosophy that can be broadly summarized as “very, very difficult.” On screens littered with death traps, players must move, jump and interact with extreme precision – often with consecutive, picture-perfect tricks or inputs that must occur within the right split second. But by mid-March, only two levels remained: “The Last Dance” and “Trimming the Herbs.”
When The Last Dance was defeated on March 15, Team 0% and the audience thought for a while that they had their final opponent, Trimming the Herbs, which required 18 perfect jumps in a row. Super Mario Maker To upload them, users had to have beaten their own levels, meaning it should be humanly possible. But on March 26, the level’s creator admitted that it had been created with illegal assistance. “Trimming the Herbs” was no longer part of the list. Super Mario Maker was 100 percent complete. (On April 6, two days before the servers went down, a player named sanyx91smm2 went ahead and beat it anyway.)
Complete Super Mario Maker This would likely have happened regardless of whether the servers were shut down or not. “The simplest reason is an urge to complete,” says Louis_XIX. But in the dramatic story of the path to completion, it becomes clear that the announcement of server closures had a somewhat paradoxical effect. Although disappointed by this, the group was extremely motivated to achieve their goal before it was officially no longer possible.
“To say it would have been less exciting [if the servers had never shut down] is an understatement,” says Black60Dragon. “At some point we probably would have done it anyway, but it was just a small group of people doing the mountain of levels. […] With the announcement of the deadline, it gave everyone a lot of incentive to make this happen.”
“It lit a fire in everyone to make it happen.”
Team 0% is now focused on achieving the same goal Super Mario Maker 2, the still active Switch successor. For now, it’s a fun way to keep up the momentum created by the SSM1 shutdown – they’ve completed all levels completed in 2019 so far and are making progress on 2020 courses.
But at some point it will probably become a timed challenge of the same nature. The online servers will only exist as long as Nintendo leaves them open and all levels are present Super Mario Maker 2 will one day officially disappear. The members of Team 0% know this well. “For me, the announcement of the shutdown was inevitable and only a matter of time,” says Louis_XIX. “I’m just glad we were able to finish everything.”