Nintendo’s new Paper Mario remaster doesn’t mess with perfection
polygon.comPaper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door originally launched on GameCube in 2004 to widespread acclaim, and the upcoming Nintendo Switch rerelease won’t mess with perfection. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems’ remaster of the landmark role-playing game — which also represented the Paper Mario series at its peak — will instead give Mario fans a better-looking version of the original game, with a few welcome tweaks. It will also give the massive Switch audience a chance to experience this classic Nintendo game for the first time.
Unlike the major graphical overhaul of Super Mario RPG, released on Switch last year, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door will look more like your memories of the GameCube original, based on a hands-off demo that Nintendo showed to Polygon last week. Characters like Mario, Peach, and Bowser are still rendered as flattened, 2D paper cutouts, and the game’s world is still constructed with chunky cardboard objects. But everything looks sharper. Stages are bathed in warm, realistic lighting, and characters cast shadows and reflect realistically in pools of water. There’s updated music as well, along with streamlined controls and menus. That’s all well and good for Switch players, but fans of the GameCube original also get a few new toys to play with.
For newcomers, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door sends Mario and a handful of his buddies on an adventure to — what else? — rescue Princess Peach. Her kidnappers here are a group of aliens known as the X-Nauts, who are led by the evil Lord Crump. Mario enlists allies like Goombella the archaeologist Goomba, a shy Koopa named Koops, and a voluptuous cloud spirit known as Madame Flurrie throughout his journey.
Outside of combat, which takes place mostly in arenas presented like stage plays (complete with a fickle audience), players explore overworld and underground areas in a side-scrolling style. These sections are filled with hidden power-ups and collectibles to find, and environmental challenges and
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