Super Mario Maker 3DS announced for December release during Nintendo Direct

Courses shared locally and not online with not all Wii U courses available to download.

Nintendo surprised fans during its latest Nintendo Direct broadcast with the announcement that Super Mario Maker is heading to 3DS on 2 December, 2016. The game is not a complete port, but shares much of the original's functionality.

One hundred original courses created by Nintendo will be included in the game, but courses created by users can only be shared locally and not online. Incomplete courses can also be shared locally, allowing multiple players to work on building a single course.

It was also revealed that some existing courses created on the Wii U version of the game will be available to play on 3DS, but not all of them.

Super Mario Maker was widely celebrated upon its release in late 2015. In our review we praised the game's "exquisite" tool set for creating 2D platforming levels in the classic Mario mould. "Super Mario Maker is the game the Wii U should have come packaged with," we wrote at the time.

"Despite lacklustre sales, Nintendo's console is a wonderful machine with great games, but its name and lack of suitable users for the chunky GamePad controller, held it back in the public eye. Mario Maker makes perfect use of that pad."

You can see footage of the 3DS version of Mario Maker in the video below, from the 3:40.