After 280,000 attempts, the final level of Super Mario Maker turns out to be a fake, and now players can start celebrating a victory they already achieved a week ago

Super Mario Maker players have finally done it - they've beaten every single legitimate level uploaded to the original game before the servers shut down. The catch is that they already achieved victory last week, and they're only now able to celebrate the accomplishment after the creator of the last level standing came forward to reveal that it was a fake.

Up until today, the last level standing seemed to be Trimming the Herbs, an absurdly difficult stage that's just a few seconds long but requires near-inhuman precision to complete. Well, actually, it took more than "near" inhuman skills. Ahoyo, the original creator of the level, revealed today that it was uploaded with tool-assisted speedrun techniques that let him clear the stage and upload it without actually proving that a human could beat it. 

WE DID IT! SUPER MARIO MAKER 1 IS COMPLETED! 'The Last Dance' was the final level, beaten by @Yamada_SMM2. Much love to everyone who supported us on this journey. GG!We kindly ask you not to harass anyone over the situation. ... https://t.co/GNZfTzCrkYMarch 22, 2024

Some members of Team 0%, the group working to beat all the Super Mario Maker levels before servers shut down on April 8, already suspected that the level might have been uploaded through some illegitimate means. But prominent members of the group pretty quickly dismissed that idea, especially since the means to create a TAS for Wii U seemingly didn't exist.

Except, those tools actually did exist. "Someone had messaged me about a TAS they were working on for the Wii U," Ahoyo says in a message posted to the Team 0% Discord. "In a video they sent, it seemed to me like they had it working, but they told me they were abandoning the project. The TAS was replicated by my friend after two days of building." And thus, Trimming the Herbs was uploaded through this tool.

"I’m sorry for the drama it caused within the community, and I regret the ordeal, but at least it was interesting," Ahoyo says. "However in the end the