Tezuka’s interest in making a new Mario Paint led to Mario Maker

The creation of Mario Maker isn’t exactly traditional. Nintendo’s Takashi Tezuka originally set out to make a new Mario Paint game for Wii U that would leverage the GamePad.

Partway through, Tezuka changed his mind and the project we know of today became Mario Maker. He believed that creating Mario courses is much easier than drawing and would be more accessible.

Tezuka told NintendoWorldReport:

“So what I particularly like about Mario Paint is that it’s not just about drawing. It’s playing with the software itself and having fun with it as you draw. So I wanted to take those fun, clever little things from Mario Paint and implement them in Mario Maker, so it’s a lot more than just a course editor.”

As previously mentioned, Mario Maker came about from Nintendo’s internal Mario course editing tools. The team eventually created a prototype that they felt would be enjoyable for gamers.