Jan 13, 2024 18:00:00

Super Mario Maker 2's communication has been analyzed and an API has been built to obtain all data, allowing you to view any course on the web.

Super Mario Maker 2 is a game released for Nintendo Switch on June 28, 2019, and was a huge hit, selling 8.42 million copies worldwide. By using Nintendo Switch Online, it is possible to post courses to users around the world and play posted courses, but it is clear that all APIs used for such communication have been analyzed. It has become.

Mario Maker 2 API

https://tgrcode.com/posts/mario_maker_2_api

Mario Maker 2 Datasets
https://tgrcode.com/posts/mario_maker_2_datasets

Nintendo uses a protocol called NEX for communication between the game and the server in many of its games since Wii U, such as Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon 2. This protocol has been analyzed by the Pretendo project and others, and it is possible to impersonate both the client and server. In fact, fake client software such as Nintendo Clients has appeared, making it possible to communicate with Nintendo's servers without starting the Nintendo Switch.

TheGreatRambler, who has been playing Super Mario Maker 2 for many years since its release, used Nintendo Clients to build an API to retrieve Super Mario Maker 2 data. The API is free and publicly available, and many developers are using it to build viewers for viewing the content of courses posted in Super Mario Maker 2.

One of them is the level viewer hosted on TheGreatRambler's site. You can view the course contents by accessing the site, entering the course ID, and clicking 'Download Level'.

Once the data is acquired, the data itself will be displayed on the left, and the course content will be visualized and displayed on the right. Hidden elements that only the creator knows can be revealed in one shot.

Course data can be saved in JSON format as well as images.

TheGreatRambler spent one month in February 2022 downloading all course data and uploading it to Hugging Face as a dataset for machine learning. The data set is divided into 15 parts in total, and the total capacity is 2.3 TB. The connections between datasets are explained on TheGreatRambler's blog .

With Wii U's online play service ending in early April 2024, some players of the original Super Mario Maker are already unable to play the game online . However, if it becomes possible to save any course on the Internet using API analysis, as in Super Mario Maker 2, even if the service ends, you can still remember the many creative courses that have been created over the years. It seems possible to keep it as data without any problems.