On Christmas Day, 2017, Jeff Maya uploaded a video onto his YouTube channel titled “Team 0% - 0/622 Level By Randy-.”
In the video, Jeff plays and beats a level of Super Mario Maker that had never been beaten before. Despite the video only being 2 minutes long, it became the start of a movement.
When Jeff, known on X as @jeffie_not, posted the first of his “Team 0%” videos, his original goal was to rally players across the world to try and clear every Super Mario Maker level from the game’s release year of 2015.
However, with a rapid influx of volunteers willing to step up to the task, the scope expanded. The project evolved into a quest to beat every single level in the game’s history.
Long after most players had moved on from the game, this community stuck around, determined to leave no level uncleared.
Super Mario Maker
Super Mario Maker was released for the Wii-U in September of 2015. The game allowed users to create and upload their own Mario levels, as well as play the levels uploaded by other users.
A version was later released on the 3DS, but without the ability to upload levels.
Despite the relative unpopularity of the Wii-U compared to other Nintendo consoles, the game struck a chord with audiences. Players were excited at the opportunity to finally take a crack at designing courses with some of the most iconic power-ups and enemies in all of gaming.
By the time Nintendo deleted the option for users to make new uploads in early 2021, 10.5 million levels were on the games servers.
By the time Team 0% went public on X with the mission to clear every level, more than 33,000 of these uploads still remained unbeaten.
Some of the levels were just normal creations that had gone untouched. Many of them, however, had a good reason for being uncleared after all these years.
In Super Mario Maker, anyone could upload a level, so long as they themselves could beat it first. Because of this, the game’s skill ceiling was insanely high.
The game’s hardest stages often tested just how difficult a level can be before it is legitimately humanly impossible.
Advanced techniques like shell jumping and ground pound canceling – which are virtually never asked of a player in a normal Mario game – were commonplace in these levels.
That tricky movement, alongside some of the most unforgiving level design creators could muster up, meant that the game’s unbeaten levels were not to be taken lightly.
But if there’s one thing online gaming communities love, it is ridiculously difficult challenges.
So, when Nintendo announced that the games servers would be permanently shut down on April 8th 2024, Team 0% got to work.
A community united
What followed Nintendo’s announcement of the game’s inevitable end was an influx of new players dedicated to the cause.
Team 0% gained online traction. Video essays were made covering the team’s story, and creators like TheRileyC posted themselves beating some of the games hardest levels, complete with breakdowns explaining just how hard the levels truly were.
Team 0%’s X account encouraged the movement by posting “daily countdowns” that kept track of the slowly whittling list of uncleared courses, as well as reposting players who posted their impressive clears.
As the days went by, more and more ridiculously difficult levels were beaten for the very first time. Players racked up hundreds of level clears all by themselves, with the record holder for most first clears going to SchwozW6803, who alone beat 4,736 levels.
By March 14th, only two levels remained.
The Last Dance, and an unexpected controversy
One of these two levels was, fittingly, titled “The Last Dance.”
The level is a gauntlet of demanding tricks and tight timing, with an end product that truly does look like a dance as both Mario and the different items he juggles throughout the level glide through the air in an elegant choreography.
Created by Japanese player そう, “The Last Dance” was beaten for the first time on March 15th, by Team 0% member Yamada.
Now, only “Trimming the Herbs” was Left.
“Trimming the Herbs” was unlike any level before it. The level required frame perfect input (1/60th of a second window) after frame perfect input as Mario bounces off of bombs and narrowly avoids spikes.
People would have ruled this level off as nigh-impossible, if it weren’t for the fact that, in order to upload a level to the Mario Maker servers, you have to show that you can beat it first.
So, if the creator can beat his own level, the community thought they should be able to as well.
But, in this case, the creator hadn’t beaten his own level.
Ahoyo, the levels creator, created Trimming the Herbs with the intention of using it as a showcase for his recently developed TAS tools for Mario Maker.
TAS stands for tool assisted speedrun, but generally refers to any use of computerized inputs to assist in gameplay.
When used correctly, TAS is actually a big help for a game’s community. They allow players to dissect their game and explore possibilities beyond what is humanly possible.
But in this case, the use of TAS allowed Ahoyo to make a level that, while physically possible, went far beyond anything even some of the world’s most skilled players could do; especially under such short notice.
The level was ruled off as impossible, and Team 0%’s quest came to a bittersweet end.
They had beaten every single level they could, technically accomplishing their goal, yet there would forever and always be an asterisk next to their victory.
And yet, on April 5th of 2024, Sanyx91SMM2 did the impossible, and beat Trimming the Herbs.
A level thought to be humanly impossible, completed just three days before the game’s servers shut down for good.
The Legacy
There is a bizarre trait in the gaming community – one that is not really found in any other field, and one that Team 0%’s mission showcases perfectly: a desire for completion.
Developers can make a game, can tell you what they want you to do, when they want you to be finished, but they can not make you do anything.
It is up to the players to decide when to put the controller down and walk away.
It is an awe-inspiring thing to see a community of people place their minds towards some impossible goal no one is asking them to achieve, and then seeing them achieve it anyway.
Along the way, strangers become teammates, heroes find their moment to shine, and a story unfolds, far beyond the control of any higher power.
Players can find meaning where developers never intended there to be any.
From speedruns of Super Mario Bros on the NES, to coinless runs of Super Mario Wonder on the Nintendo Switch, Mario has been the face of this movement of player expression for generations.
There is no telling what the next big challenge for the gaming community will be, but one thing is for sure. It’s in the hands of the players to decide.