This thread is meant to collect unique, inspiring level gimmicks. If you ever ponder over what gimmick to use in your custom level, scroll through this thread! And if you have any creative gimmicks to post about here, feel free to post them here!

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RULES:

_^1. Only post gimmicks that are currently implementable into NSMBDS, or would be easy to code with the knowledge we have today.
_^2. Preferably post gimmicks that aren't overused - both in NSMBDS hacks and in official 2D Mario games. Also avoid "gimmicks" like tedious mazes and requiring a power-up to progress. Make sure the gimmick is unique and fun.

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Okay, now for my two cents:
• Have the player choose between a path to the left where a Mini Mushroom (provided at start) is needed to progress and a path to the right where the Blue Shell (also provided at start) is required. Neither path features a way to turn into any other power-up state (but there are a few instakill hazards), and the camera is positioned in such a way a power-up spawned from the Touch Screen will be blocked by a solid out-of-bounds floor above Mario. Dying in this course isn't a problem, as it's a short stage because of its puzzle-like nature, so there aren't any checkpoints. Both paths lead to a warp pipe that takes you to the final room with the flagpole.
• A rickshaw lift (the ferris wheel platforms in vanilla W2-Tower) that party passes through a wall, so you can get pushed off into whatever hazard you want to place underneath it. Seen this in Super Mario Castle 2.
• Take a tile that blends in with the ground (without causing any cutoffness if it's absent from the ground) and give it a breakable brick behaviour. Now make it so that the player wants to Ground Pound this specific tile (with an arrow sign pointing downwards e.g.). Doing so will then destroy the ground tile, revealing a warp to an underground bonus room with a Star Coin and perhaps a 1-Up farm.
• Make a water level with ? Switches on the bottom that raise the water, and ? Switches at the top that lower the water. The player must use the switches to reach otherwise-unreachable places and to manipulate enemies. Based on Super Mario 64's Wet-Dry World.

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Have you seen any interesting gimmicks in a game you played lately, or have you got your own idea for a unique gimmick? Or do you just want to give feedback on the listed gimmicks? Feel free to post!

Simply make crystal taps in the jyotyu tileset, add a zone for collision and a sprite 168 that activates/desactivates the water when the player is in the hitbox.

Another idea: Making a switch that can change the theme of the level. To do this, make two (nearly) identical areas with diferent tilesets, add ? or ! switches and add a warp triggered by the switch around the it. The warp will teleports the player to an entrance at the same place as his "previous" location.

That would indeed make it even more like WDW! Also, +1 for knowing the name of the crystal taps! I thought few people knew their real name!OOOH, I can see this being used in a level with a time travel theme! Press the switch and be warped from the volcanic past to the electric future and vice versa! Or use them in an underground level. You start in a version of the level with fully black backgrounds and a darker tileset. Banned-user-dark grey warp pipes adorn the ceiling. At a certain point, there's nothing ahead of you anymore, except a wall of invisible solid tiles Mario cannot Wall Kick off. There's a ? Switch with above it a picture on the wall depicting a lightbulb with a downwards-pointing arrow below it. A circle of light surrounds the picture (the picture and surrounding light use up 2-6 tiles). You press the switch and the warp spawns, taking you to a version of the course with an overall more yellowish and lighter tileset, plus the warp pipes are light grey now, with a yellow highlight across the cap of the pipe. The pipes are meant to represent lights here, and the ? Switches are lightswitches. This version has non-scrolling underground BGs (so decoration tiles meant to look like they're part of the background won't look off) and the unused sunset lighting. You can now proceed until you come across a part of the wall with holes in it with red eyes lurking into the stage. Mario will once again be blocked by an invisible wall (he's too afraid of the eyes seeing him) until he presses another ? Switch, taking him back to the dark version. The eyes cannot see him now, and he can safely proceed. Only problem would be that coins collected in one version will still be there in the other version. But hey, SM64's Tiny-Huge Island had that discontinuity too!

Also, collapsed ghost house stairs make you slide off them automatically, so they could have some use in an automatic level!

Started playing NewerDS today and I like the gameplay. Especially how Mario and Luigi have separate physics. There's also one gimmick that could be used in many creative ways, found in Newer's W1-2: you know the rolling woodlogs, right? Rolling cylinders is what the sprite actor database calls them, IIRC. Newer has them stacked on top of each other, so that the player can either platform up them or wait to fall off and take alternate paths. Some uses I have thought up:
• In a bonus room, the rolling cylinders are stacked on top of each other in a vertical shaft. After passing through the Red Ring at the top, the player must collect all 8 Red Coins (to make this more challenging, use moving coins like in Newer) by falling off a cylinder onto the one below, and so on, until all 8 Reds are collected (or the player failed to do so);
• If a rolling cylinder rolls too much, actors like Paratroopas might fall off and pass behind the cylinder. Carefully plan a route for a Spike Ball following you to fall off or remain on the cylinder, to guide it into some wood blocks, revealing the previously-inaccessible path to a Star Coin (and a pit beyond the Star Coin, so that the Spike Ball can't bother the player anymore).

I might edit my post should I come up with more ideas.

EDIT BARELY A MINUTE LATER: You could also place a warp pipe in a wall in such a way that just before the player falls off the rolling cylinder, they enter the warp pipe.

Another one I've thought up (I first wanted to post a gimmick with line-guided platforms and Snek Snake Blocks, but that wouldn't work, as wherever the Snake Block intersects with the platform, it would eat the platform's tiles it passes through. It does so too in SMW, eating tiles it passes through. There's a reason SMW haxxorz call the Snake Block the "creating/eating block"): use a long tilting purple mushroom platform to lift a Bob-Omb from a pipe spawner onto a semisolid, from where it'll walk through a hole in the wall (which the player can't go through because a semisolid wall blocks the hole) and reach the player, who can then take it to some wooden blocks blocking off a hallway several mushroom platforms below that the player must traverse to progress, and use the Bob-Omb to blow up the wooden blocks, enabling progress. If the player fails, they can take a Spin Block back to the top.

Gimmick Tip™: emulate the in-level Mystery Boxes from Super Mario 3D Land!

How to:

Make a tileset with 4 tiles making up the purple Mystery Box. These tiles are merely for decoration, and are fully non-solid. In the same place as the tiles, place a warp sprite/actor that takes the player to the bonus room. The entirety of the bonus room is enveloped by a warp sprite/actor, but upon entering the room, an event triggers that despawns the warp for 10 IRL seconds. (You spawn above a reverse semisolid (solid-on-bottom), in an area not covered by the warp.) In here, put some multicoin blocks or a Red Ring, fully fill the room with coins upon pressing a P-Switch (looking at you, Yellow Switch Palace) or maybe even put a Moneybag or a Star Coin in the room! Then, after 10 IRL seconds, the timer expires and the player gets sent back to the main course by the warp. The warp to the bonus room and the Mystery Box tiles have been removed upon returning to the main course.

Side note: the Mystery Box song sounds quite simple, so easy to port to DS? Otherwise one could still use the NSMBDS Toad House song, which is a remix of the main Mario theme, a song of which another remix is used in SM3DL for the retro sprite platform courses and the Gold Mystery Boxes.

Another gimmick I came up with: using two or more parallel Snake Blocks so the player will have to traverse an ever-advancing tunnel. Stay behind or go too fast and you'll die. For moar challenge, try to collect all coins in the course without dying. Some of them are placed outside of the tunnel, so tricky jumps are needed. The Star Coins are all on the beaten path, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're easy to collect! Strategically placed among blocks, they require carefully planned jumps to obtain. The Snake Blocks will go up occasionally, forcing the player to use their Wall Kick skills. Possible enemies include Amps, Paratroopas (the ones that fly back-and-forth), Bullet Bills (for Tile God's sake, NO BANZAI BILLS), Flame Chomps and Grounded Piranha Plants/Venus Fire Traps (not the giant ones, or I'll fight you IRL. My chainsaw is ready). There's also a screen-scrolling pipe you have to enter to arrive higher-up in the course when the Snake Blocks are too far apart to climb using Wall Kicks. From the pipe's destination, the player will have to wait (don't worry, there's a multicoin block to kill time) until the Snake Blocks start to move horizontally again, which happens when they reach the height of the pipe's destination. This is a gimmick for a late-game course.

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Snake Blocks are very versatile when it comes to implementing them as gimmicks. Any ideas for Snake Block gimmicks you have? (You can still post other gimmicks here. Just want to read how creative you are with Snek Bloks.)

An acquaintance and I were discussing how Nintendo is too anxious to use power-ups as level gimmicks because they don't want to pull a Tubular again. He mentioned a good gimmick is the ice blocks with coins and Munchers you can melt with the Fire Flower and I mentioned the Blue-Shell-or-Mini-Mushroom gimmick from the OP, which he found a good gimmick. Then it derailed into overall Mario gimmick discussion. So here are some new gimmicks!

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Make a course require the Mega Mushroom to complete. With a code hack that places the player's current power-up in the inventory when they turn Mega, the player wouldn't even have to lose their current power-up. As Mega Mario/Luigi, the player can now reach a ?-Switch on the ceiling, which then turns a wall of unbreakable blocks into wood blocks, which the Mega player can then shred through. Given that only the first column of the wall extends fully to the floor and the rest of the wall extends to three tiles above the floor, the player won't be locked out of completing the course if they shrink back to Super size.

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Make an underwater course with a "let Mini player through bottom" tile ceiling on top of the surface of the water. Only a Mini player can take the cheesy Jesus route, which also leads to some connected mini warp pipes leading to one or two of the course's Star Coins. If the player isn't Mini, they will have to take the swimming route, instead.

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Bonus room idea: have a Snow Spike at the start. It throws its snowball, then gets killed by getting squished by a moving stone block. You have to guide its snowball past various obstacles using !-Switches and red block outlines, P-Switches and coins, ?-Switches destroying obstructing blocks, rising/lowering mushroom platforms, tilting mushroom platforms, swelling ground, Platform Blocks or seesaws. The longer you can keep the snowball rolling, the more enemies it plows through and the more kill-chain 1-Ups you get.