Post Script

Does Paper Mario really need to revert to its RPG trappings?

We managed to get through the review without mentioning it, but can keep quiet no longer. A shadow has been hanging over the Paper Mario series for 16 years. For a not-insignificant number of Nintendo fans, GameCube entry The Thousand-Year Door remains the yardstick by which all games in the series continue to be judged. And The Origami King is unlikely to quieten the clamour from a not-insignificant number of that audience for a more conventional follow-up. Or, heck, even a remaster. While we dare say Intelligent Systems has delivered the best Paper Mario

game since then, we’re not quite prepared for the angry letters that would no doubt accompany any suggestion that it has the older game beat. Besides, it’s been a while since we played it, and have you seen how much secondhand copies cost these days?

Its unavailability, of course, is a big part of the reason why people still clamour for a more traditional followup. There’s the nostalgia factor, too, of course – do people really want another Thousand-Year Door or do they want to feel like they did at a happier, more innocent time?

In truth, we’re beginning to suspect there are reasons why it hasn’t reappeared in some form, whether it be a deluxe HD edition or as part of Nintendo’s Virtual Console service. Have certain narrative elements aged badly? Perhaps. Or maybe it’s more that its combination of turn-based battles with realtime action elements has been reused many times over since then, not least by Nintendo itself.

Yet if the idea was that the Mario & Luigi series would continue on that same path while Paper Mario

reinvented itself with each new entry, that’s scant consolation, particularly so now this other much-loved series seems to be over, with its developer sadly declared bankrupt late last year. And so the desire to return to a more orthodox RPG style is only natural. Indeed, it says much about the affection in which the first two Paper Mario games are held – and how widespread the sentiment is that the series hasn’t managed to live up to them since – that indie developers are starting to make this particular niche their own. Released last year on PC and ported to consoles a few months ago, Moonsprout Games’ Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling has clearly taken inspiration from The Thousand-Year Door, not least in its party mechanics and battle minigames. And just this month we heard from Adam Robinson-Yu, although his Untitled Paper RPG – again, fuelled by the desire to recapture the essence of those earlier Paper Mario games – appears now to be in development limbo.

At the same time, it’s perhaps easy to get too hung up on the type of game Paper Mario hasn’t been for 16 years and four games now. Besides, even if it could be classed as an RPG for its first two entries, it has never been a series bogged down in genre convention. Since the beginning, Paper Mario has begged the question: when is an RPG not an RPG? Even those first two games sought to subtly reinvent existing tropes rather than lean heavily on random encounters and incremental stat upgrades. And setting aside battle mechanics (and ignoring Super Paper Mario’s leap into a different kind of caper entirely), the other entries have plenty in common. Each one takes an irreverent sideways look at Mario and friends, with self-referential gags that dig deeper into the strange foundations that underpin his platforming adventures. They all invite him to slow down and puzzle his way through problems rather than leaping on or over them. And, one way or another, each embraces the theatricality of turn-based combat. Whether you’ve got an audience or not, it’s all about putting on a show.

Nintendo’s desire to make the genre more broadly appealing – essentially to build an RPG without the numbers game – hasn’t always been successful. Sticker Star’s single-use items and prescriptive approach to certain fights occasionally became laborious, while Color Splash didn’t offer enough incentive to take part in encounters. It’s an issue that The Origami King doesn’t entirely solve – through exploration you’ll earn the money you need to buy everything you could possibly want – though each battle is useful practice. Consider them instead as lessons in identifying familiar patterns more quickly, and you’ll recognise how much that pays off in the final third’s more exacting challenges. And though there are perhaps too many generic encounters, it would be untrue to say Intelligent Systems doesn’t throw in a few curveballs. And sure, we might sigh on bumping into a wandering Koopa Troopa, but who hasn’t done so during an RPG when you’re about to reach a plot trigger only to be held up by a random encounter? That’s one tradition to which Paper Mario still holds fast.

Granted, despite being told you’re excellent when you time a hammer blow perfectly or land a succession of jumps, there will be some who miss the confirmation that they’re getting incrementally more powerful with each set of grunts they stomp. But when those with rose-tinted memories of the GameCube era look back upon The Thousand-Year Door, we guarantee it’s not really the battles they’ll remember; rather, it’s marshalling an army of adorable critters in Boggly Woods, Rawk Hawk and the impromptu wrestling tournament, or the tragic tale of Admiral Bobbery (to which there’s a nottoo-distant analogue here). These are the best bits of any Paper Mario game, and we confidently predict that The Origami King’s scenarios will provide its players with the kind of fond memories some will be berating Nintendo for failing to live up to 16 years hence.

Even if it could be classed as an RPG for its first two entries, it has never been a series bogged down in genre convention