Team 0%

Team 0% is a community project with the aim to ensure that every user-made course in Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Maker 2 has been completed by at least one person other than the original uploader.

The project completed all courses in Super Mario Maker before the scheduled shutdown of the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS online servers in April 2024. As of April 2024, the project's goal is to clear all uncleared courses in Super Mario Maker 2 created before the shutdown of the online servers of the game.

Background
Super Mario Maker is a 2015 video game for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS wherein players can create and play platformer levels known in-game as "courses" using mechanics from various entries in the Super Mario series. These courses could then be published for others to play, as long as the course's creator was able to verify the course by first completing it themselves.

History
Team 0% began in 2017 when a player compiled a spreadsheet of courses uploaded in 2015 with a zero percent clear rate (meaning nobody online had cleared the course) in Super Mario Maker and shared it on Reddit. Players online then created a Discord server dedicated to clearing all courses on the spreadsheet. In March 2021, Nintendo permanently suspended new uploads to Super Mario Maker, fixing the number of courses in place and thereby making it possible to clear every course. Attention from streamers continued to grow the project's popularity, and by February 2023, there were 41,113 uncleared courses.

In October 2023, Nintendo announced the closure of their online services for the Wii U and 3DS, including Super Mario Maker, meaning the courses would no longer be accessible after the deadline of April 8, 2024. Four weeks after the shutdown announcement, the team had cleared 7,384 more courses, with fewer than 25,000 courses remaining. By March 5, 2024, 178 courses remained.

On March 15, 2024, the last course, titled "The Last Dance", was cleared by the user Yamada_SMM2. It was believed that another course, "Trimming the Herbs", remained, and it was attempted over 280,000 times. A week later, the creator of that course revealed that it was uploaded using a tool-assisted superplay, excluding it from being a "legitimate course". Despite this, the level was cleared on April 5, 2024 by sanyx91smm2.

In response to Team 0%'s success, a developer of Super Mario Maker, Takashi Tezuka said "That's actually pretty cool" and told Ars Technica he would tell the team about the project.

As of April 2024, Team 0% plans to continue clearing all courses in Super Mario Maker 2.

Rules
Courses considered necessary for clearing are humanly possible courses. Courses uploaded using cheats that are impossible or not uploaded legitimately were excluded. Similarly, courses that were possible with glitches that were later patched in software updates of the game and can’t be beaten in an unintended way were not counted as clearable. Most of these had been deleted by Nintendo.

For a course to be considered "cleared", the course must be cleared legitimately without cheats or external tools. They cannot be cleared by the creator of the course, as the game does not recognize that as a course being cleared.