Issue #39: Brick by Brick – May/June 2019 (Patreon)

Dust off your favorite hard hat, pull on your overalls and make sure your tool belt is hitched up around your waist: the return of Super Mario Maker is imminent.

The Wii U might have come and gone without making much of an impact on the video game industry overall, but the first Super Mario Maker was a shining star in the midst of a disappointing era for Nintendo. And it was such a simple idea! Take the classic 2D sidescrolling gameplay of the Super Mario Bros. series and grant control over the level design to the players directly. Who knows how many millions of hours were poured into the creation process by aspiring designers the world over, all trying to make the next truly great Mario stage – and how many millions more were invested by players who took on the challenge of trying to beat all the devious creations that were uploaded by others! Even now, four years later, with the Wii U firmly in the rear-view mirror and with the Miiverse service long since shut down, the original Maker is still vibrant and alive.

But, perhaps, a true migration of the playerbase will finally happen when Super Mario Maker 2 launches on the Switch this June. It's set to offer everything the first game did, plus much, much more! So we're celebrating by putting it in the most prominent spot possible for this edition of NF, as well as bringing you a central feature detailing the biggest new additions to Mario's toolbox that you can look forward to using very soon!

The fast-approaching release of Super Mario Maker 2 isn't the only big bullet point this time around, though, as Nintendo's been making headlines in several other areas recently, and we've done our level best to encapsulate them all in this edition as well. The incomparable Reggie Fils-Aime has stepped down as the President of Nintendo of America! We've got that in News. The brand-new Detective Pikachu movie is about to open on the big screen! Our Previews section leads with one last look for you before you buy your ticket. And Nintendo has surprisingly leapt back into the world of virtual reality, almost a quarter-century after the failure of the Virtual Boy! We present a retrospective on that old system in the Retro section and our review of the new Nintendo Labo VR Kit in Reviews.

All around, not too shabby of a magazine we've built for you all this time, piece by piece!

Digital subscribers, keep an eye on your inboxes – the PDF edition of this issue will appear there within the next 24 hours.

Print subscribers, your physical copies are in production now and should arrive in most of your mailboxes in the first half of May. As always, you should make sure your mailing address information here on Patreon is up to date to ensure as smooth and quick a delivery to your door as possible.

Thank you for your continued support of The Nintendo Force! Thanks to you all, we're now approaching our next major milestone: Issue #40! Works begins on it soon. (After I mow the yard, replace a few burned-out light bulbs and other real-world, day-to-day tasks that always fall by the wayside when I get into crunch mode to finish up these issues for you all. :p)

Until next time!

~ Lucas M. Thomas