Game Theory: Super Mario Maker, BIGGER than the UNIVERSE!

Mega Maker is a fan-made game similar to Mario Maker but designed for creating Mega Man levels, released recently without Capcom takedown.

It represents community creativity in retro platformer design and demonstrates ongoing fan passion for classic game franchises.

• Check GTLive for early levels created by the Game Theory community • Players are invited to create their own levels for the team to play • Free and open project available to anyone interested

Support the Mega Maker project and participate in creating and sharing levels with the community.

How many possible levels can actually be made in Super Mario Maker?

While the premise seems simple, solving it requires addressing the largest and most complex counting task ever tackled on Game Theory.

• Uses mathematical counting principles to enumerate all possibilities • Requires considering every variable option in level creation • Results in unexpectedly massive numbers that may surprise even Nintendo

The final answer reveals just how powerful and versatile Super Mario Maker actually is as a creative tool.

There are 50 different timer options available for level creation, ranging from short to long time limits.

• Autoscroll can be disabled for no automatic scrolling • Autoscroll can be enabled with fast speed • Autoscroll can be enabled with medium speed • Autoscroll can be enabled with slow speed

With 50 timer settings multiplied by 4 scrolling options, there are 200 different level possibilities before adding any other variables.

• Classic Super Mario Bros. • Super Mario Bros. 3 • Super Mario World (SNES) • New Super Mario Bros. U

There are 6 different course themes including underground theme and grassy level variations, multiplying the previous 800 combinations by 6 to reach 4,800 possibilities.

• Minimum level width: 1 screen (24 blocks) • Maximum level width: 10 screens (240 blocks) • Total length variations: 216 different options

Before placing a single block or enemy, multiplying 4,800 by 216 yields over 1 million different level possibilities.

As of 2016, Nintendo counted over 7.2 million actual levels created by players, which seems massive until compared against the theoretical possibilities.

Levels can include bonus areas with coins and different challenges, adding an additional layer of complexity to level design.

• Sub-areas can be up to 10 screens wide • Sub-areas may not exist at all • This adds 217 additional configuration options

Adding sub-area possibilities multiplies the 1 million previous total by 217, resulting in over 200 million blank level configurations.

If players maintained a rate of 7.2 million levels per year and devoted their entire lives to creating every configuration before placing blocks, it would take over 30 years.

A single grid square can contain one of 96 different items including blocks, coins, bill blasters, and Bowser, creating the foundation for complexity.

• Plain note block • Pitched note block • Winged note block • Pitched and winged note block

• 125 different enemy varieties available • Includes regular Koopas, flying Koopas, giant Koopas, and giant flying Koopas • Single block can contain up to 500 different possibilities with modifiers and enemies

Including the option of placing nothing, there are exactly 18,147 different things that can be done with any single grid square in Mario Maker.

Placing content on the first grid creates 225 million times 18,147 possibilities, resulting in over 4 trillion possible level variations.

• Second grid adds another 18,147 possibilities • Calculator returns 7.409 × 10^16 (70 quadrillion) • Numbers quickly exceed what calculators can practically display

After accounting for all grid positions and all possible block combinations, the total reaches 9.1 × 10^6217 possibilities.

Multiplying by 217 sub-area configurations and then by the block possibilities again yields the ultimate grand total of 1.8 × 10^12444.

Among 1.8 × 10^12444 theoretical levels, many would be unplayable: Mario surrounded by bricks or crushed by autoscroll since Nintendo requires all levels to be completeable.

• Developed by physicist Enrico Fermi, famous for estimating atomic bomb yield using dropped paper • Relies on rough estimates within order of magnitude accuracy • Over-estimates balance against under-estimates for reasonable approximation

Using Fermi Estimation, approximately 0.0000000001% of randomly created levels would be both fun and completable.

Even accounting for this extremely small percentage, the number barely changes, resulting in approximately 1.8 × 10^12431 playable and fun Mario Maker levels.

The number 10^12431 receives a new name: MarioPlex, created specifically to represent this uniquely enormous and specific value.

• Observable universe contains between 10^78 and 10^82 atoms • Mario Maker contains more level possibilities than atoms in the observable universe • This is despite being a single $60 game for the Wii U

• Impossible to play all fun and completable levels in any human lifetime • Insufficient storage capacity and time to catalog all possibilities • The game has truly infinite creative potential despite finite calculations

Super Mario Maker represents an unprecedented amount of creative possibility in a single commercial video game, surpassing comprehension of universal scale.