When we inevitably get a remake of Super Paper Mario, I look forward to seeing if they keep in the "I go on message boards to complain about games I've never played" line.
SPM feels very... evitable to me. It's in a weird spot of having sold very well with a decent chunk of pretty dedicated fans, yet no one's ever really made much noise about getting a remaster. It's also only three years older than TTYD, so it's not really too recent for people to be asking for it.
As for the "come play" the fact these guys attack you make it pretty clear their intentions are anything but friendly flirting regardless of if they removed that line or not. But well that is still something you understand as wrong.
If it was just "come play", Goombella rejects them, and they sulk away, I could've understood keeping it a little better. But
physically attacking her after an invitation with a very sexual undertone instead leaves me to ponder their intentions had they won the fight, and... every believable option is extraordinarily icky and not something I'd prefer to think about.
I don't view it as "this is offensive" so much as "this is disgusting". Obviously the catcallers are painted as losers and Rogueport is intentionally sketchy and crime-ridden on purpose, but I think Rougeport's vibe is more played for laughs due to the general absurdity of it as a setting for a Mario game rather than actually trying to skeeve you out or take itself seriously. Pulling that off requires walking a fine line of portraying messed up stuff without actually making people uncomfortable. Everyone's level of tolerance before things cross over into uncomfortable is different, but I think having unapologetically rapey NPCs pushes it too far regardless of how much of a joke the game makes out of said characters.
By contrast, Dupree's just a women-obsessed weirdo who genuinely believes himself to be charming, and he also happens to understand the concept of consent and the word "no". That's a lot more palatable to keep around and a lot easier to find funny. The problem with the Goombas is that the dialogue
has to end in them picking a fight, which makes it basically impossible to keep the catcalling in without the fight feeling like attempted sexual assault.
Yeah I think they use airhead all over the place in the original translation.
Looking through a text dump, just twice.
Regarding Airhead vs. Lunkhead, I rarely hear the first IRL and never hear the second. Lunkhead kinda sounds like a funny word Bowser made up to me as a result, and I was a bit surprised to learn it's not.
There's nothing inherently more funny about the word airhead to me, but maybe that's a regional/age thing. Regardless, I personally have no problems with the change.