Mar 182024
It’s a good time to be a fan of Mario RPGs, which isn’t something we’ve been able to say in a long time.
Not only did Super Mario RPG get remade last year, but a remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is due out on May 23.
I’m excited for that remake because I love Thousand-Year Door and think the remake looks beautiful, but I also can’t help but hope that this could lead to a revival of the Paper Mario series in general.
It’s no secret that I’ve been… critical… of the direction Paper Mario took starting with Sticker Star. (Heck, my reaction to Color Splash’s announcement made it into one of Arlo’s videos, and even though I enjoyed Color Splash more than Sticker Star, I still wasn’t exactly thrilled with it.) But with Thousand-Year Door coming to a new audience, things might finally change.
I haven’t played Origami King yet, and I do intend to, to see if the story is as big an improvement over Color Splash as people say. But one of the most perplexing things we’ve discussed in regards to Paper Mario is the Origami King interview in which the producer suggested RPGs are too hardcore for a casual audience.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is not a “hardcore” game. Turn-based RPG combat is not inherently harder to understand than what they did in the later Paper Mario games. It’s an argument that never made sense to me, and I hope this new remake will prove it wrong.
If Super Mario RPG and Thousand-Year Door both do well, it might prove that it isn’t just a small hardcore audience clamoring for Mario RPGs after all.
And then… will we finally get a new Paper Mario in the old style after all?
That’s something I’d stopped hoping for. I’d given up and let Bug Fables fill the void Paper Mario left behind. I’d resigned myself to the fact that Paper Mario would never be an RPG series again.
But anything is on the table now.
This is more than just a simple port. It suggests they have actual faith that classic Paper Mario is worth paying attention to. Of course, I’d be happy to see the original Paper Mario and Super Paper Mario get remakes as well, but the possibility of a new classic-style Paper Mario game is now at the top of my list. If such a game was announced as a launch title for the next Nintendo console, that’s something that would get me there day one.
Do you think we’ll see a new Paper Mario game in the style of the originals?
I don’t have much hope of them going back to the old style, but it’s nice seeing this game come out. I’m just not sure how well remasters sell these days, since I still technically have the disc and console to play the original… though it’d be nice to not have to dig through and figure out which memory card to use hahaha
But dream your dream!
Hah, yes, convenience is good. But there’s also a new audience who never had a chance to play the original, and it looks like enough of an upgrade that some people will probably pick it up just for that.