‘Super Mario Maker’ gets Starfy, dives into education like ‘Minecraft’ with game and level design tools

“Super Mario Maker” players can now get the new Mushroom costume for the game. The newest addition is Starfy from The Legendary Starfy. According to Siliconera, Starfy will have an Event Course, which rewards the player with the Prince of the Pufftop Kingdom costume for Mario.

The new event is already available in the Course World, so players outside of Japan can also already access it. The video below shows the course and how Mario will look once he dons the costume. Thanks to the conveyor belt paths in the course, Starfy looks hilarious when trying to run on the course.

“Super Mario Maker” has also recently enjoyed being the centrepiece at an event where Nintendo made good education use of the title. According to The Verge, the company had partnered with the San Francisco Public Library to bring some lessons on game design to kids.

“Kids these days really have some incredible choices when it comes to what they can do from an educational perspective, and it seemed to us like the creativity of ‘Super Mario Maker’ and the ease of creating a level and sharing it could be used in a different way,” said Nintendo’s Krysta Yang to The Verge.

The event was Nintendo’s initiative, as it saw the potential in The Mix space from the library, which allowed kids to explore the use of digital tools. During the event, the kids learned how to maximise the use of the unique feature in “Super Mario Maker,” which is the Wii U’s touchscreen.

The result of the event are a few levels that were created by the groups of children. While the event may be a simple showcase of “Super Mario Maker,” it can extend the experience to the complexity of game design.

“Super Mario Maker” is not the first game to be used for educational purposes. “Minecraft” has been used several times not only for education in the classroom, but also in building and creating notable projects beyond.