Micro Mages Maker Review: A Tiny NES Platformer Grows a Level Editor

A tiny NES cartridge grows a level editor

Micro Mages Maker builds on Morphcat Games' well-regarded 2019 platformer Micro Mages, a genuinely NES-compatible, four-player co-op platformer originally sold on real cartridges. This new package bundles the original game and its Micro Mages: Second Quest DLC with 20 freshly designed levels and, most notably, a full level editor that lets players build their own towers of traps and enemies from scratch. One reviewer's response sums up the reaction running through the whole sample: "The main thing I checked real quick out of curiosity is if you can export to .nes files. YES YOU CAN! This is gonna be soooo much fun!" For a developer to ship a modern level editor that outputs genuine, hardware-constrained ROM files rather than a proprietary in-engine format is a small technical achievement, and it's clearly the feature reviewers are most excited about.

Still a tight, catchy co-op platformer underneath

Before even touching the editor, Micro Mages Maker is worth noting simply as a re-delivery of a well-loved game. One reviewer, who reviewed the original Micro Mages back in 2022, says "most of my initial thoughts are maintained here; it is the very definition of a quality platformer with tight controls and catchy 8-bit music that is short, catchy and doesn't overstay its welcome." The co-op structure remains intact and central to the experience: up to four players can shoot, wall-jump, and fight through towers full of goblins and bosses, with a forgiving "ghost" mechanic that lets a downed player keep helping teammates by freezing enemies rather than sitting out entirely. It's the kind of local co-op design philosophy that's become rarer as couch multiplayer has faded from the mainstream, and reviewers clearly still value it.

The editor itself earns real, specific praise

Several reviewers went beyond simply noting the editor exists to describe actually using it. One says they built "two full-size levels in about 12 hours of playtime," calling the tool "fairly intuitive" with inputs that "work fine with both controller and mouse/keyboard." Another reviewer recommends the editor specifically as a way "to learn level design," crediting the game's simple tiling system and consistent art style with making it "really hard to make a bad-looking level" even for a first-time designer. New enemy types built for the editor, including Tele Bubble Goats and Jumpy Goblins, give level designers fresh tools beyond what the original game offered, and a Spanish-language reviewer specifically praised being able to build and play custom levels with friends as realizing something they'd wanted "since childhood" from a retro-style game.

Where the social layer falls short

The most substantive criticism in the review sample targets what's missing around the level-sharing feature rather than the editor itself. One detailed 1.0.6-update review states plainly: "if you're a competitive player like me, you're going to be let down that there are no global statistics shared. You can share and play other levels, but you can only see your own stats. You can't rate maps you've played either." For a game whose core pitch beyond the base platformer is a community-driven library of user-made levels, the absence of any rating or leaderboard system is a real gap — there's no way for players to surface the best community levels or compare how they're doing against anyone else. The same reviewer also flagged a specific compatibility issue with the "@Novasplore Games fan" feature not working correctly depending on platform choice.

A smaller, but real, control complaint

A separate, more mechanical complaint comes from a reviewer who specifically wanted to remap keyboard controls for the second, third, and fourth local co-op players and found no way to do so. For a game built explicitly around local multiplayer — and one that markets four-player co-op prominently — the inability to customize keyboard bindings for guest players is a narrow but legitimate friction point, particularly for anyone trying to set up a couch co-op session on a single keyboard rather than with controllers.

A developer who patches fast

Morphcat Games' response to early feedback has been notably quick: one reviewer specifically credits the team with fixing "one graphical glitch and one functional bug" within the first 24 hours of release, and the game's own patch history shows six updates (1.0.3 through 1.0.8) landing in the weeks following launch. That's a solid signal for a small, niche title like this one — the kind of active post-launch support that matters more, not less, for a product built around a level editor and community content, where bugs in the sharing or building tools directly undercut the entire pitch.

Is a bundled platformer-plus-editor worth $15.49

At $15.49, Micro Mages Maker asks a real premium over what a standalone "20 new levels" pack might otherwise cost, and that premium only makes sense if the level editor and its NES-ROM-export feature genuinely appeal to you. For existing Micro Mages fans, or anyone curious about hands-on retro game design constraints, the value case is strong: a complete platformer, its DLC, 20 handcrafted new levels, and a genuinely capable creation tool. For players purely looking for a new co-op platformer to play through once, it's a harder sell at this price, especially with the missing rating and leaderboard systems limiting how much of the editor's community potential is actually realized yet.

Verdict

Micro Mages Maker succeeds most clearly as a love letter to hands-on retro game design: a real, ROM-exporting level editor bolted onto a platformer that was already tightly designed and fun in co-op. Its missing social features around level-sharing and a narrow but real keyboard-remapping gap keep it from feeling fully finished, but a fast post-launch patching cadence and a genuinely enthusiastic, entirely positive small review sample suggest Morphcat Games has built something worth the niche audience's time and money.