Whether you grew up playing Mario and friends in the 1980s, ’90s, or even the 2000s, Super Mario Maker presents you with a visual aesthetic that will no doubt seem delightfully familiar.

So I can recreate my favorite 8-bit memories? In another sense, it eliminates the dreaded tutorial mode by encouraging you to–if I may dust off this old jewel of an idiom– build with the bricks you’re given. This both incentivizes play and doles out Super Mario Makers‘ massive offerings without ever overwhelming the player. By playing a little every day for a week, you unlock a wealth of content at a very manageable, deliberate pace.

Play around in creation mode for five minutes or so, and you’ll get an alert telling you when new goodies will be made available. On day one, you’re given a limited palette of blocks, enemies, and other elements. Wait it gives you all the building blocks to make Super Mario levels? That sounds a little… overwhelming. Want to make an 8-bit ghost house? Sure! An underwater level full of Thwomps and Goombas? Go ahead! Flying Piranha Plants? A Lakitu that tosses coins? A mushroom-spouting pipe? Knock yourself out, you glorious lunatic! Better yet, you can change on the fly with a simple tap on the GamePad, and even bring totally anachronistic worlds to life. 3-style sprites, as 16-bit era standout Super Mario World, or as the more modern, high-poly incarnation, New Super Mario Bros., complete with appropriate power-ups, enemies, and sounds. You can skin your creations in the original’s iconic low-fi glory, the still gorgeous Super Mario Bros. More than anything, it’s an expansive suite of tools designed to help you–as the title implies–make your own Super Mario levels. Whether you spent your 8-bit youth planning out presumptive jump puzzles on graph paper or are presently helping your own kids build extravagant platformers in Minecraft, Super Mario Makeris a full realization of your game design dreams. With its blend of one of gaming’s most iconic properties and the sort of creative freedom usually only reserved for sandbox titles, it’s both a retro throwback and a new school virtual toolkit. Launching next week, Nintendo’s Super Mario Maker is poised to make quite the impression on gamers young and old.

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