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Retro Super Paper Mario came out 15 years ago today

Mekanos

Mekanos

300 Years Of Gyudon
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480px-SuperPaperMarioBoxart.jpg


A turning point for the Mario series in many way, it's said that this weirder and more experimental game was a reason for the streamlining of the franchise brand into something more consistent and recognizable. What did you think of the game and how do you feel 15 years later?
 
I thought it was very mediocre back then, got it as a gift back in 2008. From music to gameplay. The story just isn’t as good to me as it is to others which sucks. I did like playing as Peach and Bowser. Seemed like the evolution from the last 2 games. But it was telling that as a kid, I never bother to finish the game, where it was a time I would finish every game I played, especially someone who loved the 2 prior Paper Mario games. Didn’t beat it till years later

but today I have an even lesser opinion of it cause I just think gameplay wise, it’s bad. And paper Mario games are known to sometimes not respect your time, but this is the worst offender. But it’s funny to see the outcome coming after where I really liked Origami King and Color Splash.

Strangely enough, another IS game that caused a shift in franchise was Radiant Dawn on Wii where I found it to
Be a great game gameplay wise, but did horribly in sales causing the series to be almost killed off until it got more streamlined and “sim”Focused lol. Three Houses was a step In the right direction, but the gameplay structure of Radiant Dawn is solely missed for me.

Note: never played Sticker Star.
 
DecoReturns said:
I thought it was very mediocre back then, got it as a gift back in 2008. From music to gameplay. The story just isn’t as good to me as it is to others which sucks. I did like playing as Peach and Bowser. Seemed like the evolution from the last 2 games. But it was telling that as a kid, I never bother to finish the game, where it was a time I would finish every game I played, especially someone who loved the 2 prior Paper Mario games. Didn’t beat it till years later

but today I have an even lesser opinion of it cause I just think gameplay wise, it’s bad. And paper Mario games are known to sometimes not respect your time, but this is the worst offender. But it’s funny to see the outcome coming after where I really liked Origami King and Color Splash.

Strangely enough, another IS game that caused a shift in franchise was Radiant Dawn on Wii where I found it to
Be a great game gameplay wise but did horribly in sales and caused the series to be almost killed off until it got more streamlined and “sim”
Focus lol. Three Houses was a step
In the right direction but the gameplay structure of Radiant Dawn is solely missed for me.

Note: never played Sticker Star.
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I feel similarly. I do like in a broad sense, the villains and story (mostly in chapter 8), but the art style and level design are definitely mediocre if not outright subpar at times. Mario being the only one who can flip also drags the pacing down a lot. I remember beating the game upon release and realizing afterwards I didn't really particularly enjoy most of it.

Dimentio is probably still my all time favorite Mario RPG villain, but he can't hold the game up by himself. And knowing that it was likely at least partially responsible for sanding down the edges on Mario spin-offs going forward, my opinion of it has lessened lol

Still, overall an interesting footnote in Mario history if nothing else.
 
I hope it gets remastered/ported. Contrary to the 2 posts above me, I think people who haven’t played it before would find it very interesting, especially amongst the current discourse around Paper Mario.
 
The death of the Paper Mario series and creativity for most branches of the Mario brand.

super-paper-mario-super-mario.gif


Partially joking; I like Color Splash and The Origami King regardless of the limits on original characters, but I don't really care for Super Paper Mario.

Interesting story! Gameplay drags.
Playing as Bowser and Peach for a lot of the campaign is neat! Locking the 3D flip to Mario so you have a reason to play as him is silly.
I like some of the original characters in personality! Not a fan of the blocky aesthetic.

I could go on.
 
I liked this game outside of some padding bits

But after Color Splash it's definitely my least liked one outside of the story.
 
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I think the script is pretty good: the overarching story is touching, and the individual chapters have the weird creativity in setting that the Paper Mario series is known for. However, when it comes to gameplay and level design, the game often verges on bland.

I replayed it less than two years ago and before I did so I caught myself trying to remember each chapter. I could remember most of their themes, but I couldn't for the life of me recall how they played. I guess that goes to show how Super Paper Mario never left a mark on me from a gameplay standpoint.
 
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I haven't played it since it released, but I remember enjoying it for what it was.

It's no TTYD, though...
 
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Super Paper Mario is the first game I truly binged. I beat the game over a weekend. That second day, I played for 10 hours, plus food and bathroom breaks. Ah, the things you can do when you're 11.

I...don't remember much of the actual game beyond the story. I want to try it again, but I haven't exactly been in a rush to do so, ya know? I'd jump at playing the original two first, or trying out Origami King.

In hindsight, while the story is good, the tone and world were pretty divorced from Mario. You could take out the Mario characters and still have almost all of the stuff that people love about the game and its story.
 
Ill always defend SPM. Not that it needs to bd defended as its not a disliked title,just a mildly controversial one. The best soundtrack, its not just some cool music playing in the backgrounds but the motifs are so good lol.

The best story (everyone agrees on this part) but in general the writing in spm is sharp as fuck, the best characters, some of the best humour, that ending...

I LOVE that you can play as Bowser, Luigi and Peach, legit its such a huge point it feels like nobody talks about it.
 
I really liked Super Paper Mario, the story is the most memorable in the series, and I really liked doing the 100 Sammer's Kingdom fights and the soundtrack is my favourite in the series.
 
When I was a kid I was disturbed by the relationship between Luigi and Dimentio.

Also, Mario fucking dies in this game.
 
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I loved this game and I’m sad we’ll never get another quite like it again. I’m hoping to finally replay it this year alongside Paper Mario and The Thousand Year Door.
 
Always heartbreaking to read opinions on this game online, I adored it as a kid and had no idea it was so hated.

There’s really nothing like it. The art style being so… abstract adds a lot. Characters are great and memorable, so much creativity

Second only to TTYD
 
A flawed masterpiece I feel. Such an interesting world and story and I loved mixing classic Mario gameplay with the Paper Mario formula, and getting to play as Luigi, Peach, and Bowser is huge. It's extremely divisive on all fronts, but I will always have a lot of love and nostalgia for the game.
 
I really enjoy it, flaws aside. The writing and humour is great, I like the aesthetic, I love the weird and sometime disturbing themes this game goes into. One of the NPCs casually talks about suicide for example, and a pet fish you release into a body of water grows into a killer with tiny skeletons in their habitat. My main problems with it are a) padding and b) THE CAVEMAN/PREHISTORIC CHAPTER. I have to steel myself for boredom every time I get to that part.
 
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This was my first Paper Mario game and the first game I rented from my public library back in like, 2010. It had quite a lot of hate online for not being like the two others so I figured I could play it first so I could only go up from there.

While it’s been over 10 years so I can’t make an in-depth analysis, the more I look back on this game the more fondly I think of it. I think it’s a perfect example of how fans of specific series can severly lack perspective and sound very spoiled online, in no world this game is bad. It’s basically this huge rollercoaster, every chapter introduces a new gameplay element or structure, lots of very unique scenarios, cool puzzles, throughly enjoyed it. Afterwards I played the other two games in the series, while I think the first one is the best I was a bit cold on TTYD since a lot of it is kind of rehash, you basically need to do a lot of back and forth and repetitive actions in that game before getting to the cool stuff. It’s pretty weak criticism to say that SPM is systematically inferior to those just because it’s not an RPG so it’s missing stuff like badges and partners.

I also feel like it deserves more credit in terms of its influence on the industry. I’m pretty sure that just about every other quirky indie game that mixes multiple genres and has a lot of fourth wall breaking moments owes a lot to Super Paper Mario
 
I wouldn't say SPM is inferior for not being a turn-based RPG with badges and partners, I'd say it's because for what it's trying to be, an RPG/platformer hybrid, it doesn't do a very good job at that either. A lot of really big blunders in terms of level design and limiting flipping to Mario makes the other characters borderline pointless. I genuinely don't think it's a very well made game outside of its presentation. It's by no means bad, but it's an actively unpleasant game to play at times - world 4 being a good example.

It has a lot of big ideas and it really aims for the stars but I just don't think it comes together into a package that is particularly satisfying.
 
I'm not this game's biggest fan. It's not the worst Mario game (or even the worst Paper Mario, hello Sticker Star), but it absolutely stands out to me for how weird it is and yet no aspect landed with me. The game design, art direction, and storytelling just did not jive with me at all. It's like the most fundamentally unappealing take on Mario that Ive seen. lol

Thing is I liked how PM64 and TTYD diverged from the typical Mario universe, but they still meshed well the familiar with the new concepts. I'm happy for the people that enjoyed this game though and don't mean to really rain on anyone's parade with the negativity.
 
I remember the day this came out. I picked up the game, played a bit, went to the arcade to play some DDR, then when I got home I had some of the worst diarerrea of my fucking life. Hard to believe that was 15 years ago. Luckily it pretty much subsided afterwards and I spent the next week playing the game a lot.

I like SPM quite a bit though. I realize it's kind of slow and easy for what it's trying to do, but it still largely retains enough of the RPG mechanics from the first two games while also having an incredible story that's right up there with tTYD's for me.
 
SPM is definitely good, and Intelligent Systems' ambition with an entirely new world and setting is admirable. Playing as Bowser and Peach is excellent and something more Mario spinoffs should do. However, I didn't find the gameplay as engaging as the first two games or even Origami King. Super tries to mix platforming and RPG elements but ends up not excelling at either. The 2D-3D mechanic is cool, but unbalanced with only Mario doing it and the visuals and level design suddenly become worse when you're in 3D. The story is unique and creative, but I still prefer the more Mario-like plots of the first two games; they took the weirdness too far in my opinion. The game is good for one playthrough but I don't come back to it often.

But, one thing SPM doesn't disappoint at all on is the music. I firmly believe this game has one of the top 10 Nintendo OSTs of all time and it is criminally underrated. Every track is extremely memorable, and stands out even in a series with consistently great soundtracks. Just listen to this stuff:







 
I replayed this shortly before Origami King and it's even worse than I had remembered. The level design in 2D is bland, turn it into 3D and you get visually unappealing corridors with nothing in them to do. The story and writing is really fun, but the gameplay itself is boring as fuck- which would be a problem for any game, but this one tries to be a platformer and when developing a platformer, the focus should always be on interesting gameplay mechanics and level design. With SPM it feels like they were focusing on everything but that, to the point where I had to force myself to keep playing just to experience the story (aka the one aspect the game excels in). It's better than Sticker Star (not by much, though), I'll give it that.
 
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I hated it.

I remember the boss fights being so easy that I thought I was doing them wrong.

Traded it in less than half way through.
 
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Mekanos said:
I wouldn't say SPM is inferior for not being a turn-based RPG with badges and partners, I'd say it's because for what it's trying to be, an RPG/platformer hybrid, it doesn't do a very good job at that either. A lot of really big blunders in terms of level design and limiting flipping to Mario makes the other characters borderline pointless. I genuinely don't think it's a very well made game outside of its presentation. It's by no means bad, but it's an actively unpleasant game to play at times - world 4 being a good example.

It has a lot of big ideas and it really aims for the stars but I just don't think it comes together into a package that is particularly satisfying.
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Fair enough but I was actually referring to the fanbase at large at the time. They were absolutely considering it bad while their arguments were limited to the fact that it wasn’t an RPG and it dropped a few series staples

I think it’s an adventure game before the RPG/platformer part. Had to search which one is chapter 4, that’s the space/shmup one, I remember enjoying it and thinking it was a nice change of pace. I really don’t mind a game trying to branch out in genre mixing like it did, each chapter was pretty surprising so you never knew what to expect. Of all games I played that gave out a similar vibe I think SPM has by far the most polish so to me it will always stand out.
 
I always remember how back on NeoGAF this was hyped as the "Second Coming of Jesus" lol.

Honestly, after 15 years I feel I need to replay it to have a proper opinion of it. The [negative] discourse surrounding it will have definitely coloured my views. I did enjoy it enough to beat the game back then at least.
 
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I played and enjoyed it at launch but honestly it never left a huge impression on me.
 
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Back in April 2008….I remember being excited for it, playing the first world or two, thinking it has a brilliant 2D/3D mechanic, then it just went nowhere and I ended up disliking it a lot and never finishing.

I don’t even know what kind of game this is. It’s a neat concept on paper (pun intended) that doesn’t do anything interesting. It’s not a good rpg. It’s not a good platformer. It’s not a good action-adventure. It doesn’t know what it wants to be.

The paper Mario series is not very good at all. It has to be one of Nintendo’s most consistently mediocre series. Even origami king had a very unfun battle mechanic that was essentially mechanically broken, and it holds back and otherwise beautiful, funny and ingenious RPG by forcing some weird unfun puzzle-battle mechanic.

The entire series can die for all I care. The Yoshi series is better, and has better games, even with incredible stinkers like New Yoshi’s Island, Yoshi’s Stoey, Topsy Turvy and that Yoshi DS shooting game that was a glorified tech demo. As awful as the Yoshi series has been, Yoshi’s Island, Yoshi’s Island DS, Wooly World, and Crafter World all stomp on Paper Mario.

Paper Mario 64 and TTYD are solid RPG’s, but I think people view them with rose tinted glasses still. They are solid but neither are amazing or classics.
 
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I have noticed how much of a disparity this game's advertising and the actual strength of the game is. Most advertisements focused on Mario's ability to flip the dimensions and various gameplay aspects (e.g. growing into a big pixel Mario), yet the thing that people remembered the most from this game is the story, which had a far smaller focus despite how much story this game packed. Given how there was a Club Nintendo poll whose results mentioned that story was being the least favourable aspect, I am inclined to say that perhaps it's a combination of mismatched marketing and how deviating this game is from many traditional Mario aspects.

Of course, I think Paper Mario had always been advertised for the gameplay twists (even The Thousand Year Door did this, with the paper transformations) so what they did with Super Paper Mario would basically be no different from this approach. That makes me wonder how differently this game's reception would turn out and the consequence of future games if Nintendo decided to emphasise the story in this game's marketing, instead of the gameplay.

Thank you for reading.
 
winstein said:
I have noticed how much of a disparity this game's advertising and the actual strength of the game is. Most advertisements focused on Mario's ability to flip the dimensions and various gameplay aspects (e.g. growing into a big pixel Mario), yet the thing that people remembered the most from this game is the story, which had a far smaller focus despite how much story this game packed. Given how there was a Club Nintendo poll whose results mentioned that story was being the least favourable aspect, I am inclined to say that perhaps it's a combination of mismatched marketing and how deviating this game is from many traditional Mario aspects.

Of course, I think Paper Mario had always been advertised for the gameplay twists (even The Thousand Year Door did this, with the paper transformations) so what they did with Super Paper Mario would basically be no different from this approach. That makes me wonder how differently this game's reception would turn out and the consequence of future games if Nintendo decided to emphasise the story in this game's marketing, instead of the gameplay.

Thank you for reading.
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I think this may be part of the reason why the game sold so well in comparison to the others in the series. It was the first Mario game released for the casual-focused Wii and Nintendo marketed it as a new Mario platformer with cool gimmicks. I’m guessing some of the crowd that got back into Mario with NSMB bought Super Paper Mario expecting something different than what they got.
 
winstein said:
I have noticed how much of a disparity this game's advertising and the actual strength of the game is. Most advertisements focused on Mario's ability to flip the dimensions and various gameplay aspects (e.g. growing into a big pixel Mario), yet the thing that people remembered the most from this game is the story, which had a far smaller focus despite how much story this game packed. Given how there was a Club Nintendo poll whose results mentioned that story was being the least favourable aspect, I am inclined to say that perhaps it's a combination of mismatched marketing and how deviating this game is from many traditional Mario aspects.

Of course, I think Paper Mario had always been advertised for the gameplay twists (even The Thousand Year Door did this, with the paper transformations) so what they did with Super Paper Mario would basically be no different from this approach. That makes me wonder how differently this game's reception would turn out and the consequence of future games if Nintendo decided to emphasise the story in this game's marketing, instead of the gameplay.

Thank you for reading.
Click to expand...

It's worth considering a couple things here too. Firstly this was the Wii's first Mario game to arrive, and Super Paper Mario at first glance looks like a 2D Mario game riffing on the classic Super Mario Bros. style. Also the Wii audience who all went into a frenzy buying Wii Sports wouldve been looking at this game so we are talking about a more casual mass audience.

It really seems like a total mismatch when what they got here wouldve been an incredibly text heavy game that did concepts that moved very far away from what Mario is and the game having its unsettling and sad moments. I can totally see how feedback to this game wouldn't have been kind on Club Nintendo.
 
Gartooth said:
It really seems like a total mismatch when what they got here wouldve been an incredibly text heavy game that did concepts that moved very far away from what Mario is and the game having its unsettling and sad moments. I can totally see how feedback to this game wouldn't have been kind on Club Nintendo.
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Come to think of it, I can imagine that if fans were not only aware that the future of the series hinges on the Club Nintendo survey, but also what kind of impact the future of the series would entail from it, they would have rallied to make sure the survey results are biased in their favour, rather than letting the results play out naturally. The discontent with Sticker Star is phenomenal for a Mario game, where on the Super Mario Wiki annual polls, this game tends to get a lot of top results in the "Fail Awards", so I would not be surprised if the grudge for that game would be held for decades given the pattern in those polls.

Thank you for reading.
 
winstein said:
Come to think of it, I can imagine that if fans were not only aware that the future of the series hinges on the Club Nintendo survey, but also what kind of impact the future of the series would entail from it, they would have rallied to make sure the survey results are biased in their favour, rather than letting the results play out naturally. The discontent with Sticker Star is phenomenal for a Mario game, where on the Super Mario Wiki annual polls, this game tends to get a lot of top results in the "Fail Awards", so I would not be surprised if the grudge for that game would be held for decades given the pattern in those polls.

Thank you for reading.
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Makes me think of the Smash Ballot and how multiple characters got into Ultimate on the back of really dedicated fans who organized campaigns and everything. I imagine if Nintendo ran a similar poll, asking "what sequels do you want?" or something, one of the top results would be a "a traditional follow-up to Thousand Year Door."
 
I liked super, the direction PM went after it (not wanting to be an RPG) is incredibly bizarre to me, they had a good blueprint for an adventure based PM but then they tried to meld together the adventure and RPG PMs successfully pissing off nearly everyone.
 
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Extremely underrated game. Story is great, art style is great (the cubist abstraction is good), the writing is great, the weird bullshit gimmicks that make people mad are super great. We'll probably never get another Mario title this boldly weird ever again. For shame.
 
Garlic said:
Extremely underrated game. Story is great, art style is great (the cubist abstraction is good), the writing is great, the weird bullshit gimmicks that make people mad are super great. We'll probably never get another Mario title this boldly weird ever again. For shame.
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This is probably the main thing I love about Super. Mario as a wage slave running in a giant hamster wheel. Mario wearing a kid's fish bowl in space (and said fish is released and turns into a carnivorous menace the further you get into the game). An entire level of the game gets deleted. The gang goes to hell. It's wonderful
 
I was not a fan of Paper Mario 2 (I know, I know), so I was really excited when they tried something new with Super.

Would have really like it if they just stuck with 2D gameplay, but they had to use that really pointless flipping mechanic.
 
I think Super is... not good.
Frankly, I'm not a fan of TTYD or Super thanks to the level design implemented in both that I'm glad was gone from both latest Paper Mario games. In SPM it's even more apparent because it's mostly a 2D game, but the constant "go right, wall, go left, key, go right, open wall, go right, obstacle, go left, go right, go left" is mind-nubbing. The way those two aforementioned games use wasting your time as a joke seems almost cruel. I like EarthBound's "wait three minutes" scene, but despise "I love you" mashing in TTYD or conveyor belt action in SPM because the level design already does that.
I think both of those games would be astounding if they only realized that both TTYD and SPM could be 10 hours shorter for a casual playthrough.
Although with Super, it would be tougher, because the 3D gimmick kinda does nothing, so the game relies solely on its story (the 8 bit land, literally Dante's Inferno, stuff like that)
 
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It's my favorite Paper Mario game. I will defend this game until the day I die. TTYD, IMO, is held on way too high on a pedestal when that game has way too much padding and loses steam halfway through. Paper Mario 64 got that particular formula right but having it be a lean and tight experience, which I felt TTYD just took it toooooooooo far. Don't get me wrong, I like TTYD, but I don't get the hype personally when Paper Mario 64 did it better.

Super Paper Mario, by the time it came out, I was already into Mario and Luigi RPG. A series which did the customization and battle system better than Paper Mario could dream of. So when Super came out, it was a breath of fresh air for me because I felt the series was trying to find its own way and let M & L be the proper follow up to SMRPG (which it actually was when you see who made those games).
 
Loved it!
I was expecting something like ttyd, but thankfully it ended being something’s different.
Now I can enjoy different paper Mario styles.
 
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