Umihara Kawase Maker

[Princess Rescuer]

How popular would a Mario Maker esque Umihara Kawase Maker be?

Well let's see: it would be an entirely user-generated game based on a series with a miniscule fan base, not to mention published by a publisher who probably isn't doing to well, given that they've chosen to publish such a game. Content would be sparse, sales would be low, and servers would be shut down, leaving would-be buyers with a dead-weight copy on their hands.

Releasing the Trilogy along with it and having an online level-creating mode would be a better choice. Let's face it- no matter how much we prefer Umihara to Mario, Umihara isn't Mario. Umihara can't rely on huge, multinational fanbases of customers who know the games and mechanics in and out. Mario Maker can get away with not including the original games because they're already available in a number of different places, such as the Wii U's VC. If I want to play the Umihara games for reference, where can I go besides the Vita, PC, or old import consoles? They're not as widespread as the Mario games are. Plus, including three games and an editor are two selling points that would rub off on each other and make the package more appealing. New players could get cracking on the time-tested trilogy while veterans could put their knowledge into creating interesting levels. New players could start with Sayonara, then go to Original, then go to Shun, and finally try out the no doubt romhacky user-generated levels to put their old hand skills to the test. It would be an interesting tier system that keeps players going. The whole package, when included with a Trilogy release (on the PS4) would be well worth $40 as well as a Playstation Plus subscription. And even if you're an outsider and one of those four parts doesn't appeal to you, it would still broaden the series' appeal to the aforementioned outsiders a bit and give the veterans who have had the same three games for over two decades something new, with little extra effort on the part of the developers.

[Princess Rescuer]

Also, the fact that the Maker portion of the game would have all three games easily switched between with new graphics for elements not in previous ones goes without saying. Also like Mario Maker, levels have to be completed by their creators before qualifying for an upload. Again, goes without saying. If the developers played Mario Maker and the Umihara Kawase trilogy, I'm sure they'd figure it out.

[Alc]

Building a flexible, intuitive level editor and putting the online infrastructure in place for levels to be shared is not a "little extra effort on the part of the developers", it's a huge undertaking and as much as I'd love to see it, I can't imagine there's even a remote possibility of it happening.

Then again, they did add VR support to Sayonara on Steam for some reason (?) so who knows. Sounds like in doing so they broke Durante's resolution fix, unfortunately, which is a shame as that game looks atrocious on a big screen.

[Princess Rescuer]

I mentioned in the first post all the downsides of releasing a maker for an obscure series without three games' worth of price-justifying content.

Also, while making romhacks of Umihara games is difficult, I'm sure the developers who have been working on the games for years would know how to make it happen.

But yeah, you're right. It would be a lot easier and hassle free to endlessly re-release the three current versions on one disc/cartridge and not bother with the "maker" part. Or just have it be as much of an optional bonus feature as possible. I had no expectations of a Mario Maker- level hit to begin with. It would just be nice to have more imitators/levels to play.

[Alc]

I doubt they'd have to make ROM/ISO hacks if they wanted to make a level editor - given the recent Steam releases of the games they probably have a fresh source code base to work on.

I wouldn't hold out much hope for a physical release of the games on any current console platform though... but a man can dream.