Paper Mario

Format: N64
Published by: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo
Based on: Mario, Mario, Mario

Genre: RPG/Adventure
Media: Cartridge
Date: 5 February 2001

If you were to ask a cross-section of random gamers what they consider the most tired, over-exploited property in gaming, they'd probably give you an answer along the lines of "Megaman" or "Street Fighter" or, god bless 'em, "Army Men." But they'd be wrong. That's because the single most over-exposed and whored-out video game character on earth is none other than Mario Mario, the plucky little pot-bellied plumber who single-handedly moved more Nintendo 64 units in the 1996 Christmas season than Nintendo deserved to sell over the course of the system's life. From gummy snacks to tennis games to prophylactics, Mario's image is everywhere. OK, I'm lying about the prophylactics, but just you wait - Nintendo needs that little hopping token of cartoonish bigotry like they need air and water. No doubt the title "Mario is Missing" sends a reflexive chill down Howard Lincoln's spine whenever he hears it.

But strangely, no one ever thinks of Mario when the topic of shameless overexposure comes up. That's because everyone loves Mario and his equally plucky creator, Shigeru Miyamoto (who apparently is more perfect than Jesus, to judge by the fawning, obsequious tone which permeates every interview with the man I've ever read by myriad journalists-turned-fanboys). It's also because, unlike games such as Street Fighter, there's an appreciable difference from one Mario game to the next. The day Mario's next sequel could only be described with the term "incremental upgrade" is the day people begin urinating on Nintendo headquarters from a great height. Although after seeing Super Mario Advance (aka Super Mario Bros. 2 DX) in action I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea for those crazy cats in Redmond to stock up on umbrellas. You know, just in case.

Paper Mario is the latest example of Nintendo's most enduring shill getting away with something that no other gaming property could ever pull off. Look at the dissent and cynicism with which Rockman.EXE (aka Megaman Battle Network) has been greeted, despite the fact that the two games are ultimately just different implementations of the same idea. Even the venerable Pac-Man couldn't oull off something like Paper Mario: a self-referential RPG based around tokens and icons from 20 years of series history. It probably helps that Paper Mario was designed by Intelligent Systems, which (despite what certain gaming magazine reviewers would have you believe) has a long-standing history of making Nintendo games to drool over. But let's not kid ourselves - the number of Americans who would play Paper Mario because it was spawned by the creators of Fire Emblem could be counted on one hand... a four-fingered cartoon hand which had been mangled in a combine harvester at that. No, people bought/buy/will buy this game for the simple fact that it features American's favorite stereotypical Italian charicature this side of The Sopranos.

Upon buying, opening, activating and playing Paper Mario, a few very basic facts become apparent:

  1. Nintendo is incredibly stupid for not pushing the N64 as an RPG machine, because the system is suited perfectly to the genre.
  2. Traditional RPGs have become really freaking tiresome.
  3. It's all Square's fault that Super Mario RPG was so darned boring.
  4. Mario is soooo kawaaaiiiii ^____^

Conveniently, four points are enough to write a review around. So let's tackle those bad boys in the order in which they appear and pretend I'm saying something new and worthwhile about this game even though it has already suffered through a few hundred more incisive and insightful critiques by everyone else.

1. Nintendo is incredibly stupid for not pushing the N64 as an RPG machine, because the format is suited perfectly to the genre.

Well, perhaps "perfectly suited" is an overstatement. After all, with but 64 MB of storage space, where would you cram Final Fantasy IX's 2 GB of FMVs featuring Zidane standing around looking stupid and Garnet showing off her butt? And how on earth could you store Dragon Warrior VII's alleged 17,000 pages of text? But for simpler games like Paper Mario, the cart is all good. And by simple, I mean "simple." The story here can be boiled down to two words: "Save princess." Of course, there's a little more to it than that or else it would be a pretty dismal adventure - you have to rescue seven star spirits and learn to restore Mario's alpha male dominance by negating Bowser's new, magical phallic object - but really it ultimately boils down to nothing more than "Save princess." Even a tepid torture tool like Beyond the Beyond can only be distilled to 4 words ("Turn off system immediately"), making Mario RPG the apotheosis of minimalism. Heck, even Pong (which reduces to "Avoid missing ball for high score") can't claim such a distinction.

But this very quality of basicness works in Paper Mario's favor - not only does it make for a game that looks phenomenal despite the always-annoying handicaps of the N64 hardware, it also means that it moves about at a frightful pace. That's frightful as in "frightfully fast" - after 5 years of sitting idly though throbbing PSX BIOS bass tones and spinning McDohls and endlessly panning cameras during battle load screens, to move about snappily in Paper Mario is so shocking and unusual that the game should come with a safety warning for those with weak hearts. Or at least for those who haven't had the good sense to keep their 8- and 16-bit games dusted off to remind themselves what games were like before the invention of the CD loading screen.

As for the game's oh-so-marvy appearance, the texture and polygon limitations of the N64 are neatly sidestepped by the fact that Paper Mario adheres to the traditional 3/4-down perspective of the genre, meaning you'll never see the camera dominated Turok-style by a single polygon block with an 8-pixel texture smeared across your 32-inch TV screen as you do in FPS or behind-the-shoulder perspective games. The flat nature of the graphics also allowed the creators to do some clever things with very limited sprite animation, reminiscent in many ways of Yoshi's Island. Of course, there will be plenty of gamers who laugh at the game or refuse to buy it because it shoots for unique aesthetic charm and consistency rather than technical whizziness; but that's OK, because those people are stupid.

Really, if Nintendo hadn't crammed their heads up their butts when they designed the N64 and their cartridge licensing model, and if most RPG developers hadn't devised their own personal rectal self-exams by insisting on inundating gamers with enough FMVs to choke a horse, the N64 would probably be the world's premiere RPG system right now. Yeah, it's a weird thought for me too.

2. Traditional RPGs have become really freaking tiresome.

Paper Mario capped off for me a year of growing dissatisfaction with the amazing stagnation which has settled in upon the RPG genre like some sort of turn-based incubus. When the most interesting examples of the field are games which barely qualify as RPGs - Vagrant Story, Threads of Fate, Chrono Cross - and the only traditionally-styled games that don't become boring within an hour are those which wallow in nostalgia and sheer cliche - Skies of Arcadia, Lunar 2, Final Fantasy IX - it's time for the entire category to receive a swift kick in the arse. Which is exactly what Paper Mario is, albeit an adorable and cuddly kick to the arse (see point 4).

Paper Mario hovers over a strange borderline between "adventure" and "RPG." Gamers have to deal with more statistics than seen in a true adventure game like Zelda and wade through turn-based battles, but at the same time there's never a sense of the nitpicky finickiness which typifies your average RPG. Battles may be dodged easiy or even negated with the proper power-ups, and the battle party consists of two characters at a time. Instead of juggling statistics (power-ups are granted for every 100 star points collected, and players may select their choice of stat boost) Mario is equipped with a plethora of skill badges which lend a huge variety of options for customization to the game - rather like the Junction system from Final Fantasy VIII, but without the need to swap skills every five minutes when the party switches members. Walking about the world map is remarkably similar to exploring a traditional Mario game as you can run and jump and even land on enemies' heads for a first-strike advantage. Technically, Paper Mario falls under the auspices of the RPG genre, but really it's something much more interesting and far less by-the-numbers. Which brings us to point three...

3. It's all Square's fault that Super Mario RPG was so darned boring.

Apparently I'm the only gamer on earth who found Super Mario RPG for SNES to be rather lacklustre. Not bad by any means, just a bit on the easy and unpolished side (which is ironic, since the plasticky prerendered look given to the game made everything look like it had been spit-shined).

Granted, Paper Mario is on the easy side as well (I still have no idea what the Game Over screen looks like), but that can be attributed primarily to excellent game balance with numerous battles that offer challenge but which can be surmounted with proper planning and reactions. Mastering defensive blocking and offensive attack boosting - a more refined, varied and logical version of Mario RPG's button-pressing system - is tantamount to success. The badge system and Star helpers you earn throughout the game go a long way toward adding depth and customization to combat and exploration. Furthermore, this game has more sidequests than I can count, almost all of which are completely optional (the only good kind of sidequest). Trading games, quiz shows, fetch quests - these things are almost entirely relegated to the status of "at your discretion," allowing the game to be as face-paced as a person prefers. It's a testament to how well the game world is designed, and how well the dialogue is written, that despite my instense loathing of needless subquests it was no trouble whatsoever to spend extra time exploring newly-opened nooks and crannies or seeing what sort of favor Koopa Koot needed this time.

Effectively, Paper Mario is a Mario game with the trappings of an RPG. The creators of this game very clearly understand what makes Mario so gol-durned fun and exploited it to the full. There may be no auto-scrolling stages or full-screen running leaps onto a one-block platform, but practically every other element of the series is depicted in some fashion - pleasantly, the aesthetic seems to draw heavily from Yoshi's Island (note where Mario lands after the opening sequece) and SMB2, my personal favorites in the series.

In comparison, Super Mario RPG was like a Square RPG that had Mario characters inserted as an afterthought. Not that Square RPGs are bad or anything, but there were some questionable design decisions involved - who actually wanted to use a giant marshmallow or clumsy marionette when Princess Peach or Bowser could join the party instead? How am I supposed to please Frogfucious if I know jack-crap about about music theory? And why oh why is there an enormous Viking woman whose entire body jiggles when she attacks? Fortunately, Square is off elsewhere trying to create ever-tackier costumes for its lead characters, meaning that Paper Mario was designed by people who understand what makes the world love him so unconditionally - even if he does have the glassy-eyed stare of the dead in this outing.

4. Mario is soooo kawaaaiiiii ^____^

If anyone else adopted the cornea-free, blank stare sported by Mario for this game, I'd be making unflattering comparisons to a brain-damaged pigeon (or at least opium addicts). But for some reason the magical crack cocaine that permeates everything Mario touches has the ability to warp our minds so that Mario's bizarrely-proportioned body and silent, soulless demeanor seem... adorable.

In fact, every stinking thing in this game is just so cute that it threatens diabetic shock. Luckily, the Japanese approach to cute isn't nearly so bouncy and sugary as the American or European concept of the word, so there are no Rayman-style over-animated sprites to be found. In fact, over-animation is a concept completely foreign to this game; instead, motion is minimal and generally involves the juxtaposition of 2D objects (i.e., characters and enemies) in a world with depth, giving the sensation of. Ich bien ein Flatlander!

To wit: Nintendo can continue to churn out as many Mario-based games as they want, provided they promise to maintain the quality and appeal of this game. But if we get stuck with another Yoshi's Story, Nintendo and I are going to have words.

Assisted Living

One of the main reasons Paper Mario plays like a Mario game squeezed into a pseudo-RPG format rather than an RPG masquerading as a Mario game is simple: Mario's party (no relation to Mario Party, which is much less interesting than Paper Mario) consists entirely of traditional Mario series characters. Yes, Paper Mario actually adds a civil element to the world by revealing that not every turtle and walking mushroom hates Mario, merely the ones who have been corrupted by Bowser - good representatives of nearly every Mario creature race will join the cause, lending their skills to the fray. Shades of grey in a Mario game? Glory be, I've seen it all.

Goombario

A young mushroom who idolizes Mario (despite the fact that Mario regularly eats mushrooms as power-ups), Goombario is the first and actually the most interesting party member to join up. His battle skills are weak - useless, in fact, against spiked enemies - but he has an amusing rejoinder to impart about every situation in the game through his Gossip skill. Think of him as a youthful version of Final Fantasy VIII's tutorial.

Bombette

A female (you can tell, 'cause she's pink) Bomb-Bomb who joins up and finally resolves the question: are Bomb-Bombs really suicide troops? (hint: no).

Parakarry

A mailman on the brink of going postal. He'll carry Mario across short gaps, but mostly he just loses letters. An absent-minded turtle as a letter carrier? It explains so much.

Bow

Possibly the coolest character in the game. What she lacks in combat finesse - her somewhat weak attack is powered up in an annoying Mario Party-esque thumb-killing motion - she makes up for with sheer condescending attitude. Any ghost who laughs like Kodachi Kuno behind a folding fan upon winning is, frankly, awesome. Come to think of it, Lady Bow is the same color as Kodachi's leotard. Coincidence? Or did Kodachi's deadly cooking finally get the best of her?

Watt

The world's deadliest infant, whose electric attack is remarkably effective against most enemies. Luckily, Mario appears to have insulated gloves as Watt's secondary skill is to make hidden items appear when held by the plumber.

Sushie

A nattering nabob of a nanny, this fish is rarely useful in battle and would probably serve better as her namesake. Mmm... raw fish....

Lakilester

Quite possibly the world's first P-whipped cloud-riding turtle. A bit of a poindexter with an embarrassing name and a domineering girlfriend, Lakilester is surprisingly powerful for someone on the brink of getting mauled in a locker room.

Notably absent:

There are plenty of Shy Guys and Ninjis in the game, but none who join your party? I sense anti-SMB2 bigotry at work, and it ain't pretty. Let's picket Nintendo headquarters!