A New Adventure Unfolds! (Paper Mario series in review)

     Back in the Super Nintendo era, Square Soft, creators of the Final Fantasy series, teamed up with Nintendo to create a Role-Playing Game (RPG) based on their most famous property, Super Mario Bros. The aptly titled Super Mario RPG was released in 1996 as the final Mario game to be released on the SNES, and it sold like hot cakes. People loved this game, and to this day, it's held in high regard in the ranks of RPG fans as well as casual players alike. When the Nintendo 64 came out, Nintendo wanted to duplicate the magic of that title, but Square either wasn't able to work on it for whatever reason, or they just weren't interested in making a sequel at the time. Nintendo wanted a game that could fill the hole left by the beautiful mix of platforming and RPG mechanics, and to do this, they turned to Intelligent Systems, an internal Nintendo studio which created the Fire Emblem franchise, which wouldn't come to the West in any form until 2002 when Marth and Roy would appear in Super Smash Bros. Melee. The original idea was to create a spiritual successor to Super Mario RPG, but Intelligent had some big ideas for the story and setting, leaning into the goofy roots of the predecessor, while also having fewer out-of-canon characters. They eventually settled on a little game known as Paper Mario.

A Paper Story that's Anything but Flat!

    Paper Mario starts off on a really big note. Bowser has come to Peach's castle to kidnap her yet again, but this time with a new twist when Bowser steals a mystical artifact, called the Star Rod. This magic wand gives Bowser so much power that even Mario can't beat him! Bowser defeats Mario for maybe the first time and not only kidnaps Peach, but takes her whole castle. Bowser has somehow planted a flying contraption under Peach's, and it lifts into space, taking some toads and the Princess with it. As an intro section, it's really well done, definitely taking some cues from Mario RPG where you fight Bowser at the very beginning until something goes wrong, but this time Bowser is still the main villain of the game. It's up to Mario to save the Star Spirits to counteract the power of the Star Rod, and eventually save the princess like always. Along the way he meets all kinds of different characters to act as his companions, such as a little goomba boy with a hat, a Boo with a flower in her "hair" named Bow, and a Parakoopa who happens to be a mailman, just to name a few. It's weird and kind of goofy, but that goes along with the game as a whole. The characters in this world are still Mario characters, though this is a version of the Mushroom Kingdom that's different than most others, surrounded by all kinds of unfamiliar locations, similar to how Super Mario RPG was laid out. This game is full of weird slapstick moments, lending to the idea that this could be taking place in a different universe where Bowser could be a stand up comedian, especially in some of the future games in the series. As you can tell from all of the different Nintendo properties, they give sequels to the formulas and ideas that work and sell really well, as was the case here. For the second game in the franchise, they took the basic formula of the first, tweaked it, and took it to a new area.

We're not in Mushroom Kingdom anymore!

    In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the story is even more unusual in terms of the normal conventions being twisted. Peach is sailing around the world for some reason and comes across a magical treasure map leading to "the Crystal Stars," which act as keys to an ancient wonder known as "the Thousand Year Door." Peach writes Mario a letter to tell him about this development as well as ask for his help. Mario heads off to help Peach, but upon arrival in Rogueport, the princess has already been kidnapped, but not by Bowser this time! There's a shadow organization that seeks to unlock the Thousand Year Door and they need Peach to do that. In order to save her, Mario needs to travel around the lands surrounding Rogueport to find the Crystal Stars. It's the same kind of thing as the original game, though this time the stars that you collect don't have personalities, and you have different partners. The biggest improvement came with the jump from Nintendo 64 to Gamecube, which made the paper characters all have sharper edges, as well as allowed for more impressive 3D effects. The platforming elements really lean into the paper aesthetic as it allows Mario to turn sideways to slide through bars, roll himself into a tube, and even turn into a paper plane and boat. This game is also weird because it introduces all kinds of non-traditional Mario characters into the mix. One of your party members, Vivian, is a Shadow Siren, a creature made out of shadows who can sink into the ground, in a similar vein to Bow from Paper Mario. Characters such as Grubba, Rawk Hawk, and Madame Flurry, in addition to Cortez, the ghost of a Pirate captain that possesses his ship are pretty interesting stand outs, especially when you consider that they're interacting with Mario. This game is also a bit of a downer at times. There's a moment when we see a sailor Bob-Omb on his death bed and you have to bring him his last request. He ends up being fine, but it's weird to see a twist like this in a Mario game. I suppose Rosalina's backstory contains some elements of death in Super Mario Galaxy, but that wouldn't come out until 2007, three years after Thousand Year Door. This sequel is the last true Paper Mario game in a lot of fans' minds, as the games after this one started doing even weirder stuff, namely, changing the entire gameplay mechanic.

Breaking what didn't need Fixing

    When they announced a new Paper Mario game for the Wii, the next console that Nintendo would release after the Gamecube, I got extremely excited. They announced that it was going to be a 2.5D platformer with extremely light RPG mechanics, and I was definitely curious, but the vocal majority was not looking forward to it. Super Paper Mario was a weird gem that a lot of people overlooked, but actually it ended up being one of the most well executed stories out of any Mario game. There were a lot of innovative ideas gameplay-wise in this game, but people wanted an RPG, so Nintendo gave the fans what they wanted with their next title. Paper Mario: Sticker Star is the perfect game in the franchise. I'm kidding, this is actually the most hated game in the series for many reasons, mostly because of the weird item and move system in it. If you wanted to jump on an enemy, you had to use a sticker to jump, same with any other action. This was a universally hated system and led to many times players would fight a boss and run out of stickers because they didn't know what item or attack the boss would be weak to. In addition, there were no partner characters anymore, which was a staple for the series as a whole at this point. It was a bad move for everyone involved, but they did begin to course correct in their next game, Paper Mario: Color Splash. 

    Color Splash had a similar combat system to Sticker Star, but made it far easier and less frustrating to get the different cards that you'd need to attack. This game is far more humorous than some of the previous games in the franchise, and because of that, it was pretty well received, or would have been if it wasn't for a system that didn't do well (Nintendo Wii U), anyways. 2020's Paper Mario: The Origami King is probably the closest in terms of tone from The Thousand Year Door, though the combat is definitely still different (and not for the better). The story is really funny overall, the partners return to some extent and are all really likable. The darker tones also return to this game in some really tragic sections, including one where a character actually dies and another has to deal with their grief. It was a really unexpected series of events, but it, along with some genuinely interesting settings, made for a great game overall (as long as you don't mind the weird and sometimes off-paced ring combat system).

    I truly hope that Paper Mario as a series and brand will continue along the path to recovery, and though I would love to see another game in the style of the second title, I'm interested to see where the series will go next. Many people have been yearning for a remaster of the second game and while that would be amazing, as I love that game, I'm not sure if we'll ever see that happen. We have seen a lot of remasters and remakes of different Mario and Luigi RPGs coming out recently, but I'd love to see the same attention to detail come to Paper Mario.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I really appreciate you and I hope you're all doing well! What do you think about the series as a whole? Do you have a favorite one? If you do, why is it the second? I was intentionally vague about the games other than the first two, as I may write more about them in the future. I hope you all have a good week and I'll talk to you again next Friday!