2015 Omegathon Finale
The 2015 Omegathon Finale was a punishing level designed by Nintendo in Super Mario Maker.

After nearly an hour of grueling trial and error between the top two Omeganauts during this year’s PAX Prime Omegathon, Ryan “Lysander” Anderson finally beat the final round. No, it wasn’t Dark Souls II or Bloodborne; it was a custom level of the new Super Mario Maker, and Mario fans have been mercilessly mocking both the winner and the runner up for their lack of basic skills in a 20-year-old game franchise.

When GeekWire’s coverage of the Omegathon finale was posted to reddit yesterday, Mario fans didn’t hold back in criticizing Lysander and the runner up, Charles “Mighty” Middleton.

“They literally [picked] the worst Mario players on earth to showcase this game,” redditor kupovi said.

“Always amusing to see ‘hardcore gamers’ spanked by a ‘casual Nintendo game’…” Kratos4Ever said.

Ayloe enjoyed watching the final round, but was “literally screaming at my screen” during parts of the match.

Others stood up for the finalists, noting that Mario can be difficult for those unfamiliar with platformers.

“Some people are too young to have played [Mario and other platformers] when they were released and have no interest in them now,” said Killboypowerhed.

Mighty attributed his poor performance to “nerves and stress.” He also claims the level might not have been as easy to play as it looked. “I’ve played the Mario platform series,” Mighty told GeekWire contributor Tim Ellis. “The catch is that Mario Maker seems to conform to some rules of Mario, but not always all of them.”

However, some Mario fans were just mad that the franchise has lost some of its appeal to gamers over the years.

“I watched/played a lot of Mario Maker at PAX and jesus christ some of the people who were playing were apparently born directly into solitary confinement, after 25 years released, given a PAX badge, and dropped off in front of the convention center,” TheBrianJ wrote. He continued …

One guy was in a level and came to a door. He tried entering it, but nothing happened. So he pressed up a few more times, only for nothing to happen. A rational mind would go “Okay, it’s not working, better move on.” Instead he stood in front of this door for like a half minute, slamming the up button harder and harder and growing increasingly frustrated that it didn’t work because apparently he was expecting that one of those times the ghost of Satoru Iwata would fly out of the door and say “YOU DID IT MAN YOU SAW THROUGH ALL THE BS NOW YOU ARE THE TRUE HERO.”

You can watch the full hour of the two finalists struggling through the custom Mario level (with plenty of NSFW language thrown in) over on Twitch. (We would have embedded the video, but Twitch doesn’t let us turn off autoplay.)

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