A ton has happened in the time since, but (and this is very cheesy sorry) the game remains as fun as it ever has been. Even if the community has moved onto other things I'm sure a lot of us have fond memories of playing it for the first time. For a lot of the older forum members here it also had manifested into one of the first online communities we had been a part of, which in this day in age of social media/Discord/whatever the new hip thing is, I'd especially like to express my gratitude to Murk/Sašo for keeping the forums running for as long as they have been. Many of us have good memories here and it's nice to see it actually still being used time to time!
Huge congrats to Maurice and Sašo for reaching this milestone. Even if the passage of time basically guaranteed it happening it's nice to know both of you are still around doing things, lol. It's awesome to see the game still alive and kicking to this day and I'm looking forward to what you all may have in store for the future!
And on a personal note I'd just like to say I wouldn't be where I am today without this community and even the game itself -- thank you all!
But seriously, I am glad that this game lives on with a new community and never got taken down like some other Mario fan projects. Also, I made this SiIvaGunner rip for the occasion. Well, it's just a shitpost, but I wasn't really worried about making something super special, I just wanted to remind people about Mari0 today in some way.
ten years already! where has the time gone? i still vividly remember glancing over at the StumbleUpon page my friend had pulled up in our high school computer lab, detailing the portal gun, multiplayer, and most importantly, the full level editor.
i followed the game's development like a hawk, eagerly anticipating each new blog post... until its eventual release, forever altering the course of my life.
how much do i owe to Mari0 and its community? let me count the ways.
the very first thing i did with Mari0 was make a New Super Mario Bros. tileset. to show it off, i made a handful of levels under a very simple name – New Super Mario World – mostly playing around with the different structures i could build using these tiles. once i released the first few levels, i got my very first feedback:
that comment was EVERYTHING to me. it springboarded my entire level design career both in Mari0 and beyond! without this little push, i would not be where i am today.
New Super Mario World would go on to be my biggest mappack, as well as one of the few that i actually finished – and it would kickstart years of Mari0 level designs in over a dozen mappacks total. all it takes is a little validation... always be kind to fledgling creators!
i stuck around on the forums – not just for Mari0, but because everyone here is genuinely wonderful to be around. we've had our rough patches, but for the most part we've been a tight knit community – my first online friends!
one day a new forum thread popped up called "Livestream Thread" that introduced me both to Twitch and to streaming in general. we declared 2014 the "year of streams" and supported each other both with streaming and chatting... i got to know my new friends so much more deeply!
i tried my hand at streaming as well – and that changed my life too! it helped me become far more outgoing, as i learned how to be comfortable speaking in public, both large and small groups. and y'all were SO supportive... you helped me find my voice!
i heard about discord and started a server there for STYS, hoping we could use it for streams and the like. we were already entrenched on steam, irc, and the forum – i didn't expect anyone to move from what they were already comfortable with.
today the server has over 400 members, both old and new, with a thriving community keeping Mari0 alive even after ten years... even though i didn't make the game like Maurice, or run the website and forums like Sašo – i was just in the right place at the right time to start it.
i learned a lot about managing a community in such a short space of time, and i've made my fair share of mistakes... but i'm so humbled to play a part in fostering a new generation of our community, and i hope it's helped them grow as much as it's helped me grow over the years 💙
Mari0: Special Edition's beta releases had already come and gone, but a select few of us kept maintaing it as a Community Edition, keeping interest in the game afloat.
i was between jobs at the time, and had some time to add to CE as my first open source contributions. i worked on porting Mari0 to Löve2D 11.x, fixing controller support from a previous port to 0.9.x, optimizing animated tiles, and other bugfixes...
then, when it came time to look for another job, i listed CE on my resume as a moonshot, hoping it would attract some attention. during my interview, i got TONS of questions about my work on CE... and then, i got the job. working on Mari0 helped get me hired! it was far from the sole reason, of course, but i doubt my application would have stood out nearly as much without it. i still work there today!
as if everything else wasn't enough, this community even helped me discover my identity – i came out as genderfluid, completing a five-year-long journey of acceptance and self-discovery that started here on the forums.
i won't beat around the bush: i didn't "get" gender at first, and i had so much trouble trying to understand it. anytime somebody explained it to me, i would be reductive or dismissive in response.
hindsight really puts my answer in perspective, but it took a LONG time to understand and come to terms with – tons of research, asking about others' experiences, doing some hard introspection. all starting with this little spark that got me to think about it in a different way.
what else does the future hold? i could make bold predictions about the state of the community, or bolder claims to finish my magnum opus of a mappack (Retrush) – but i could never have predicted any part of the last ten years, and so i shall make no attempt here.
instead i simply want to thank everyone for changing my life for the better.
Maurice, for making such a wonderful game.
Sašo, for fostering such a wonderful community.
and all of the friends i've made along the way, for touching my life. i can only hope i've touched yours too!
no matter where the future takes us – whether Mari0 is part of it or not – i hope i get to be there with you, learning and growing alongside friends new and old, just as we have so far. so here's to ten years, and perhaps even ten more! let's go into the future together 💖💖💖
I'm not one for long posts, my spelling holds me back but i needed to say something.
Unlike a lot of people that have posted i didn't become familiar with this community and the game until around mid of 2017, by this point the game had reached its peak years ago and was falling into obscurity, I've shared this story before but i only found out about the game after mistyping Mario as mari0.
I'd done a lot with Mario level editors, I was fascinated by it, I had been using Super Mario Remaker most at the time. I was also a fan of Portal and although had never played it yet i would still often think about making my own puzzles.
So as you could imagine, mari0 immediately became my favourite game. i'd spend all day working on mappacks that i'd never release (which are sadly, lost to time), Later on i found SE, and then CE and lastly AE. The amount of tools and entities it gave you sparked a part of my creativity i'd never seen before. In around a month, i made Up And Away and released it, I felt very accomplished at the time.
Before I knew it, 4 years had went by and I had made 20 MAPPACKS.
I never thought this simple game would change my life, but it really has, i've improved so much with my level design and art. I learned to make games. I've met so many amazing people who I am pleased to call friends.
Mari0 came around at one of the lowest points in my life, I hated myself and thought I was never good enough, I was insecure and shy. Mari0 helped me through and although i still have a lot of issues with mental health I'm proud of who I am.
There is many people I want to thank but I'll keep the list short because I don't want this to take up a whole page. I have to start with the most important 2...
- Maurice, without him the game would have never existed, thank you for making this game as well as all the other stabyourself games. You truly are an inspiration for us all
- Sašo, for keeping the forum up for all this time, and keeping the community alive. Your hard work has never gone underappreciated, (thanks for not letting me change my name to Aidan The Mapper lol)
As for the others,
- Alesan99, while he didn't make the game he has still kept it alive through his mod, some broken slopes and a plethora of bugs would never stop it.
- Sky, for creating the discord server which was where most of my fondest memories of this community come from. It may not be official but in my eyes it never mattered.
- And everyone else who has been there for me, whether it be reminding me to add screenshots to my post, reminding me i used the wrong their 4 times, and most importantly, playing my stuff, It truly does mean the world for me.
What will happen next? will mari0 get dmca'd? will mari3 ever come out??
Who knows, all I know is I'll still be here when it happens.
I first learned about programming because I was obsessed with Mari0 in 2011 and scoured literally every single page on the stabyourself website. When I stumbled upon the page stating that stabyourself games were made with Love2d, I followed the link and wrote my first ever Hello, World program. I taught myself to code via a mix of online tutorials and just constantly reading and tweaking Mari0 source code.
10 years later, I'm about to finish my bachelor's in computer science. Mari0 motivating me to learn programming has opened many doors for me, both professionally and academically. For those who watched my old series of Love2d tutorials - I'm about to start a Master's degree with the eventual goal of being a university lecturer in computer science. Old habits die hard I guess.
I find it a little strange reminiscing, because the memories of the forum for me are not entirely positive. The 2012-2014 environment was in retrospect quite toxic. I think in our nostalgia we forget the overwhelming focus on intelligence over all other attributes, including kindness. We normalized writing blistering critiques of not only each others creative work or projects, but each other's post style. If you comb through the archives I'm sure you'll see members deriding each other as "annoying" or "stupid". As a kid who wanted his work (and himself) to be respected, I definitely participated in that culture and I regret it.
However, the forum also provided a comfort to me when I was moving schools and friendless for a while. Being on the forum and working on things like Idiot Puzzles, All Night Stabyourself Super Mario Bros, the half life mod, the online mod, and others gave me something to do when I was struggling to fit in socially IRL. I remember the streaming years that Sky mentioned with fondness.
But ultimately, even if I've wiped as much of my post history as I can, my time on the forums has undoubtedly shaped me in the person that I am today. Thanks to everyone who made the community what it was.
To share the the sentimentality that others have expressed so far, Mari0 for me was the game to introduce me to custom content creation in games, in Mari0's case maps and modding. It doesn't feel like it's been a decade... While I frankly should not have been on internet forums as much as I was as a kid/early teen (causing some embarrassing incidents), I still deeply cherish the forums and my time spent working on Mari0-related things for what I got out of it all :)
Looking around the forums and the discord server, it's awesome to see people still making & sharing Mari0-related content, and that the community as a whole is still alive and doing well :D
