Super Mario Maker 100% clear challenge completed, thanks to a last-minute confession 

Team 0%, the international player community racing to beat all user-created Super Mario Maker levels before the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS servers shut down, has achieved their goal. Their success was not without complications, however. We previously reported on March 19 that Team 0% had one more level to complete, Trimming the Herbs. However, the creator of that stage has since confessed that it broke the upload rules. Therefore, it turns out that Team 0% successfully beat their challenge on March 16 with the level called The Last Dance. 

Super Mario Maker is a 2D action game originally released on the Wii U back in 2015. It allowed users to create their own levels for Nintendo’s plumber mascot and upload them to the servers for players worldwide to enjoy.  

In February 2023, Team 0% set themselves the challenge of completing 41,121 user-created stages. However, Nintendo announced back in October last year that it will shut down its Wii U and 3DS servers on April 9. This means that after April 9, it will be impossible to play the user creations that were uploaded to the servers, putting pressure on Team 0% to clear all the stages in time. 

The team gradually conquered the remaining stages. The Last Dance, created by user Sou, was the appropriately named final stage that the community cleared on March 16. 

However, at this point, Team 0% still had one overwhelmingly difficult stage left to beat- Trimming the Herbs. In order to be uploaded to the server, user-created levels of Super Mario Maker had to be cleared at least once by their creator. However, Trimming the Herbs’ creator Ahoyoo admitted on March 23 that their 2017 creation had actually been illegally uploaded.  

Ahoyoo explained that they cleared Trimming the Herbs using TAS (Tool Assisted Speedrun), a technique that uses tools to replicate movements that are difficult to produce by hand. This allowed them to upload the stage to the servers without actually completing it by themselves. 

Revealing why they did this, Ahoyoo explained that Trimming the Herbs was deliberately created with the intention of confusing players with its unreasonable difficulty. He delayed revealing his use of TAS in the hope that Team 0% or other players would uncover the deception.  

Ahoyoo also uploaded a stage called Bombs5 using TAS in March 2021, which was when the Super Mario Maker servers stopped accepting new user-created submissions. However, unlike Trimming the Herbs, several users reported that they were able to clear Bombs5 manually.  

Suspicions arose among Team 0% members about Trimming the Herbs’ legality, leading to escalating arguments. It seems that this prompted Ahoyoo to confess, apologizing for the divisions and drama that Trimming the Herbs caused among the community. 

Team 0% had already excluded other fraudulently uploaded levels from their challenge, so Trimming the Herbs met the same fate upon Ahoyoo’s confession. As a result, it turned out that Team 0% had successfully managed to complete the final legitimate user-created Super Mario Maker level on March 16, 25 days before the server shutdown.  

Written by. Verity Townsend based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2024-03-23 11:38 JST)