Mario Maker glitch allowed players to modify levels before playing

Earlier this week, Nintendo took down the servers for Mario Maker. This of course meant that you couldn't play any online courses, or upload any new ones of your own. Nintendo didn't provide any explanation, except for calling it "emergency maintenance" and later saying "adjustments have been made for a more pleasant gaming experience." However, the real reason for it was a pretty big one.

One part of Mario Maker that excites people is the fact that you can set world records for completing various levels. This is especially exciting on very difficult levels. So what happens when people are able to suddenly complete a level in an impossible amount of time? Well, that's exactly what was happening.

As it turns out, there was an exploitable glitch in the game where you could download a course, edit it in a specific way, and then be able to run the course with additional items that you wouldn't have been given access to before. When those certain edits were made to a course, the game would mistakenly think that when you played it, you were playing the live version on their servers. Thus, if you completed it in record time, your amazing time would show up for all the world to see.

It's obvious now why Nintendo would take such drastic action to correct this issue. If left unchecked, it could have meant that many levels would have impossible world record times, which no one would even bother trying to beat. Hopefully this is the last we see of this sort of glitch.

VIA: Kotaku