The UPDATED History of Nintendo’s Paper Mario

Before getting into Paper Mario for what the series has become today, we first have to talk about Super Mario RPG for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Super Mario RPG was developed in 1996 by the video game company Square, and was officially published by Nintendo. It was produced by the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto; creator of Mario and other Nintendo icons like Donkey Kong & The Legend of Zelda. The companies began development in mid 1994 and had already finished a prototype by the summer of 1995. It was announced shortly after at the Jump Festa in Japan, welcomed with a positive and excited reception.

Super Mario RPG marked the first RPG for the Mario Franchise, inspired heavily by Square's Final Fantasy. The game featured a story packed with adventure, turn-based fighting and also for the first time- a 3D environment for the famous plumber. This opened the doors to brand new ways for developers to create a more captivating and aesthetically pleasing game which would go on to change the gaming industry forever.

On May 13, 1996 the game was released in North America as Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars and became an instant classic and success. Over 2 million copies were sold worldwide.

Unsurprisingly, Nintendo had plans to release a sequel of the game on their newest console at the time; the Nintendo 64. Square had moved on from their partnership with Nintendo so they instead partnered with Intelligent Systems to make Super Mario RPG 2- later re-named Paper Mario.

The game kept its turn-based fighting style and engaging story but switched its visual style to a paper 2D/3D mix of a universe, becoming the well-known and commercial success that it still is today. It hit 1.37 million in sales worldwide.

The game is set in a paper-based version of the famous Mushroom Kingdom where Mario is watching a play in the castle of his beloved Princess Peach. Bowser interrupts by stealing the seven ‘Star Spirits’ and kidnapping the Princess along with her castle altogether, and so follows the story of Mario as he explores the narrative in unfamiliar dimensions.

Shortly after the release of Paper Mario, the sequel followed in 2004 dubbed The Thousand-Year Door (originally going to be titled Paper Mario 2). The artwork for the game was updated with sharper quality graphics and more bolded outlines- something that wasn’t originally planned as some developers wanted to keep Marios N64 look but later decided against to keep a fresh appeal.

Again the game was an international success, selling 2.25 million copies worldwide.

The Thousand-Year Door takes place on a cursed island somewhere by the Mushroom Kingdom. Princess Peach purchases an old treasure map on the island from a shady looking character before telling Mario about it and then soon after being kidnapped by a villain once again.

The game kept its mechanics from its predecessors as well as added in a bunch of new techniques and abilities for paper Mario to use like super guard or the plane, boat, and tube mode which allowed players to solve puzzles and navigate the world in brand new ways. The graphics were also again updated, this time more noticeably in the scenery of the game.

In 2007, Nintendo released Super Paper Mario for the Wii system, originally planned for the Nintendo GameCube. This was both the first series of Mario games released on the new platform as well as the first time the mechanics allowed players to switch between the second and third dimensions. Moving on from traditional RPG battling, the developers went for more action platforming. This was a pretty big change and reviews mixed differently with fans as it removed signature aspects from the series.

In this story the Princess, Mario's brother Luigi, and Bowser himself are kidnapped by Count Bleck, an antagonist who controls a book of power called the Dark Prognosticus. He forcibly weds Peach and Bowser, which manifests the Chaos Heart to open up the Void which will inevitably grow large enough to destroy everything in existence. Mario's goal in this tale is to collect the eight 'Pure Hearts' which should stop the Chaos Heart and prevent the destruction of the world.

This entry introduced the flicking gimmick, a new ability for Mario that lets him flip in and out of 2D and 3D mode and is also a side-scrolling game unlike the other entries. It was not received as well as the previous titles in the series, although the Wii remote allowed players to game in a more traditional way by holding it horizontally.

Fun Facts: This is the only game in the series that does not feature Kammy Koopa or Kamek.

It hit 4.23 million in sales worldwide

On top of being able to visually see your screen in 3D with Nintendo’s revolutionary 3D handheld console technology, Paper Mario was brought to life in a whole new way with Paper Mario: Sticker Star, released in November of 2012 for the 3DS.

During a festival in the Mushroom Kingdom called the Sticker Fest, Bowser crashes the party and attempts to steal power from the Sticker Comet, a comet that appears to the residents of the kingdom during the festival time for them to make hopeful wishes upon. After touching the comet, it bursts and scatters the six 'Royal Stickers' across the kingdom. Mario must now- with the help of the royal stickers- find Bowser who has run off with the Princess yet again and strip the power Bowser has gained from getting his hands one of the stickers himself.

The main factor of Sticker Star's narrative is the use of stickers which give Mario various abilities throughout the game. Mario collects stickers that are found around the paper world. The 3D graphics were praised for its useful depth perception while players run through the story.

Sticker Star brought back action RPG battles (along with a majority of the original development team) which brought a lot of disconnected fans back into the series. It made 2.43 million worldwide.

The latest release in the series- Paper Mario: Color Splash was released for the Wii U in 2016. It was the final Mario game to be released for the console.

Mario and Princess Peach sail to Port Prisma, only to find it abandoned and filled with areas drained of their color. Huey the paint-can guy that they encounter on the island asks for Mario's help in retrieving the big 'Paint Stars' which were the main sources of color for the entire island- stolen by Bowser and his troops. While Mario begins his search, Peach is (surprise, surprise) kidnapped by Bowser, who has transformed with the help of toxic paint into Black Bowser; a more sinister version of his regular self.

The game clearly took advantage of the Nintendo's Wii U hardware by using the touchscreen and GamePad to implement a flicking card-based battle system. The artists who worked on this game went one step ahead and heavily focused on making the paper in the game look as realistic as possible (along with all the other attention to detail) while maintaining a simplistic paper-world aesthetic. Despite these positive changes, the new combat system and overall lack of variety in character utilization were the games downfall amongst critics. Surprisingly, the game only sold 0.186 million copies worldwide.

And finally- set to be released in July 17 2020, the newest addition to the series titled Paper Mario: The Origami King will be set in the Mushroom Kingdom. Here Mario is up against an evil army of origami characters known as the Folded Soldiers, ruled by King Olly who plans to over take the entire Mushroom Kingdom.

The Origami King will bring back the action RPG style of earlier Paper Mario games which has fans extremely excited for this release.

More details on this entry are to come.

Thanks for reading!