How One Cheater Changed Super Mario Maker History

hello you absolute Legends for the past

6 and a half years a group of dedicated

Gamers known as team 0% had been on a

mission a quest to beat every single

level ever uploaded to the Nintendo

service for Super Mario maker on the Wii

U this was a gargantuan task as Gamers

from all around the world had created

and uploaded literally millions of

levels over the course of the game's

lifespan but in November of 2023

Nintendo threw a wrench into the mix

when they announced that in April of

2024 it would be closing down the Super

Mario maker online servers for good this

effectively gave team 0% a time limit if

they couldn't beat every level by April

they had failed at first this seemed

like too great a task there were simply

too many levels to clear but after

several creators put out a rallying cry

thousands of Gamers came together to

help team 0% finish the job and by

mid-march 2024 they had defied All Odds

less than a month before Nintendo would

shut off the service for good only a

single level remained unbeaten the only

problem was at this one remaining level

was hard really really hard it was only

12 seconds long but most of those 12

seconds required frame perfect inputs

despite being uploaded in 2017 when

players weren't as good as they are now

this level was still giving all of the

current top players huge problems but it

did seem fitting what better level to be

the last than the one that gave everyone

the biggest challenge hype was building

game journalists were writing articles

videos were being made about this final

level people were preparing to celebrate

this amazing achievement by team 0% and

then while everyone was putting on their

party hats and planning their

celebrations the creator of this final

level confessed that it was fake he had

cheated in order to upload it and it

wasn't a legitimate level after 6 and

1/2 years team 0% had at last achieved

their goal but unfortunately what should

have been a beautiful moment was now

spoiled instead of an epic climax where

legendary Gamers were racing

head-to-head to beat the final stage

with one hero emerging as Victoria it

was all over with a whimper no Fanfare

no hype no enthusiasm all because of the

confession of a cheater who had led the

community on for almost 7 years in this

video we will take a look at what

happened to the final Mario Maker stage

called trimming the herbs and this

situation is interesting because as with

a lot of cheaters this one probably

should have been exposed years earlier

but the Creator was a quote unquote good

player who had built trust in the

community and it was exactly this trust

that let them get away with it for so

long I really hope you

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today in theory it should be very

difficult to upload a fake Mario Maker

level this is because you need to First

Clear it yourself before Nintendo will

let you upload it it is only after

beating it yourself you get the option

to share it with the world this is part

of where the competitive side of Mario

Maker comes out some players will spend

hundreds or even thousands of hours

creating and trying to Beat the Hardest

Level they possibly can being able to

upload a difficult stage is a badge of

honor and it's an invitation to other

players to try and match your skill in

practice however plenty of levels that

are flat out impossible to beat end up

being uploaded because of hackers I'm

not a hacker myself so I don't know

these specifics but hacking allows you

to upload a level without beating it

first or by by beating it in some way

that isn't possible after you upload it

thankfully this doesn't end up causing

too many problems because if a level is

impossible to beat any good player can

immediately tell for example if the end

is completely blocked off and there is

literally no way to reach it you can

safely assume this level was hacked the

best players have a good sense of what

is or isn't possible so whenever these

impossible levels come up they are

simply disregarded and players aren't

expected to clear them when it came to

trimming the herbs however it was a

perfect storm that allowed this

particular level to remain undetected as

fake right until the very end this meant

that team 0% still had this level as one

that needed to be cleared if they were

to achieve their goal the creator of

trimming the herbs was a player by the

name of a hoyo and this person was a

very active player and a very active

member of the Mario Maker Community

throughout 2017 a hoyo would stream

hundreds of hours trying to create and

clear levels the most famous of which

was a level by the name of bombs 5 at

the time it would have been considered

one of if not the hardest levels ever

made a hoyo claimed to have spent

thousands of hours on this one level

alone and because of the fact that he

streamed a lot of his attempts he proved

that he was a really good player he

wasn't just a good player either he was

a great contributor to the community in

2017 he created and hosted a level

design competition called pog champ this

was a competition to find and highlight

difficult or interesting levels as part

of that competition he even submitted

his own level called trimming the herbs

the level was relatively short at only

12 seconds long but it was extremely

difficult I'm not going to do a full

breakdown of just how difficult trimming

the herbs is but I will link to a great

breakdown video by the beast in the

description if you are really interested

the important thing to know is that it

required an insane amount of frame

perfect input to clear a hoyo also

uploaded a clear video of him beating

the level which showed exactly how it

was done this video is super important

because it proved that it wasn't a

hacked upload the level really was

beaten while trimming the herbs was in

ly difficult at the time no one really

battered an eye this is because no one

knew just how difficult it was if you

truly want to know how harder level is

to beat you need a very good player to

spend a considerable amount of time

trying to beat it and at the time no one

played trimming the herbs the

unfortunate fact is that trimming the

herbs is not a fun level to play and the

beginning is so stupidly difficult that

no one can get through 3 seconds of it

therefore if anyone did play it they'd

play it for a very short amount of time

get frustrated and then quit so while

people knew it was hard it wasn't until

years later in 2024 when team 0% needed

to beat it that we saw very good players

actually take it seriously it was at

this point the true difficulty became

apparent in February 2024 one of the top

current players Yoshi invested dozens of

hours into trimming the herbs and after

playing the level for a decent amount of

time he explained in a Twitter post that

he had come to the conclusion that it

was likely cheated the level was simply

too hard especially for a player all the

way back in 2017 over the past 7 years

Mario Maker players have gotten

considerably better and this is also

true for any other game whether it's a

challenge game like Mario maker or a

speedrunning game a top player from

today would dismantle any player from

2017 there really isn't a believable

reason why a hoyo should have been able

to create and clear a level so

challenging back then but there was even

more to the story because there was

another giant red flag that indicated a

hoyo may have been cheating

remember before how I mentioned a hoyo

had spent years trying to clear a level

on stream this was the level he called

bombs 5 well he never did end up beating

bombs 5 and in 2017 he stopped streaming

his attempts then in 2021 when Nintendo

announced they would stop accepting new

level uploads to their servers a hoyo

mysteriously appeared again and uploaded

bombs 5 he claimed that he had beaten it

years earlier but just didn't feel like

uploading it he even included another

clear video again demonstrating that the

level was intact but there was a problem

with the video a hoyo uploaded and this

problem was noticed about a month later

the actual level itself in his bombs 5

clear video was ever so slightly

different to the level that a hoyo

uploaded to the Nintendo server we are

talking tiny differences that barely

make any difference whatsoever in his

own clear video there is a muncher here

near the end of the stage but in the

actual level that was uploaded this had

been replaced with spikes so this means

that a hoyo beat the stage twice once to

beat the level he uploaded and once to

beat the level for his clear video this

obviously makes no sense he spent

hundreds maybe even thousands of hours

on stream trying to beat it and couldn't

then magically after he stopped attempts

he did it not once but twice and for no

discernable reason other than to make

minor cosmetic changes to the level when

this was discovered some people

naturally assumed that a hoyo was

cheating in some way but they didn't

know how and without any solid proof

nothing really came of it remember in

2021 when bombs 5 was uploaded no one

was thinking about trimming the herbs no

one knew just how improbable trimming

the herbs was because no one had played

it so at this time they still weren't

able to properly connect the dots

however in early 2024 people started to

piece everything together which brings

us back to Yoshi in his Twitter post he

explained that he thought trimming the

herbs was cheated for to main reasons

one the level was too hard for a player

in 2017 and two that same player had

another extremely suspicious level bombs

5 in mid-march trimming the herbs became

the last unbeaten level and it started

to get a lot more attention by this

point many top players had now sunk a

decent amount of time into trimming the

herbs and everyone was still coming up

short another top player and YouTuber

the Riley C uploaded a video speculating

that a hoyo was cheating in some way he

stressed that Not only was trimming the

herbs too hard but oh hoyo had beaten it

far too quickly so in one month he went

from not hitting the third piranha plant

to getting consistent enough to beat the

full level given his limited time that

we established just a second ago this is

again highly suspicious opinions were

mixed however in a video defending a

hoyo YouTuber Grand puar said that in

2017 when trimming the herbs was

uploaded no one had the technology to

cheat in this way and therefore he

simply couldn't be cheating because

remember a hoyo had a video of himself

allegedly beating the level the only

feasible way to cheat with a video like

this was by using tools to give

automated inputs to the game I.E a tool

assisted speedrun or test cu the clear

video have been tasked um listen listen

listen the thing with why the clear

video wasn't tasked chat in 2017 we just

didn't have the ability to do that on

the Wii U that's the number one reason

we just simply didn't have the ability

to do that on the Wii U secondly this

player has proven themselves over and

over and over again like we don't need

to

do this to everybody you know what I

mean like we don't need to do this I

understand Carl job's videos are fun

like we got to call it out like this is

a legit one it's a legit video it's it's

been enough this man has enough street

cred that I I'm fully confident about it

and I'm also fully confident that it's

going to get clear the A Hoo situation

was interesting because it highlighted

again just how much people value their

own perceived trustworthiness of a

person the reality is is that trimming

the herbs probably was too hard of a

level for 2017 and the fact that oh hoyo

uploaded a different clear video for

bombs 5 was insane there is no

reasonable logical explanation that is

more likely than he is simply cheating

in some way but people will Overlook

that if they think you're a good player

this is what continues to fascinate me

and it's why I will continue to preach

that being a really good player doesn't

make a person any less likely to cheat

this back and forth speculation didn't

end up lasting long as on the 23rd of

March a hoyo confessed that he did in

fact use external tools to clear his

levels he had built a device that could

feed input straight into the Wii U so it

wasn't Tim beating the levels in his

videos it was a computer that was

playing the Wii U for him this entire

situation is really unfortunate because

the reality is that there was nothing

special about trimming the herbs other

than the fact that it was way too hard

and Super Mario Maker isn't the kind of

game where uploading a cheated level is

a huge crime according to a hoo was

planning on unveiling the truth almost

immediately after uploading it but after

no one played it or cared about the

level he chose not to if he had told the

truth earlier Not only would no one have

thought it was a bad thing people would

have thought the device he built was

really creative and interesting a hoo's

fake level only became a problem because

it ended up being the last level

unbeaten by team 0% news articles were

being written about it everyone was

talking about trimming the herbs and the

hype surrounding it was huge the irony

is that a hoyo chose the perfect time to

confess to cause the maximum amount of

damage if he had confessed just 2 weeks

earlier or any time in the past 7 years

it would have been removed from Team 0%

list and therefore when they beat the

level the last Dan which was the actual

final level that would have been the end

and everyone would have celebrated and

enjoyed that moment together if he never

confessed or at least waited until after

the server shut down some people would

have still thought it was cheated but

people would have tried to beat it and

in fact it was beaten by the player SX

several days before these service shut

down and while many people still did

celebrate this achievement even though

they knew it was a cheated level if a

hoyo had never confessed this moment

would have been much bigger and much

more magical than it was at the very

least the community would have had an

amazing moment to celebrate as it

happened instead of just retroactively

realizing they had been successful at

some point in the past the climax of 6

and 1/2 years of hard work by team 0%

and thousands of people was a

effectively ruined by a single person

because they couldn't be bothered being

truthful about their actions which just

goes to show how damaging small lies can

be when there are many other people

involved 6 years is a long time to work

on something and the community really

did deserve to have that big payoff at

the end those special moments are what

speedr Runners strive for and it's a

huge shame this Amazing Project ended in

the manner it did but still they did

ultimately achieve their goal so a big

congrats to team 0% for doing The

Impossible and beating every single

level in Super Mario maker and while the

ending was a bit sour what they have

achieved is still something to be proud

of a big thanks to Yosi for helping me

learn more about Mario maker and a

special thanks to the Riley SE for

helping me learn about this whole

situation if you enjoy Mario Maker

content please go and subscribe to his

channel thank you so much for watching

you Legends I hope you're having a

fantastic day and I will see you in the

next video

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