Other: Recounting my Formative days, a Paper Mario original trilogy retrospective.
Hello folks,
I want to label this blog as other since it’s tech adjacent, but not quite in line with my brand of writing on thecurrent technical or security landscape. Instead, this is a longform video game review & retrospective. I wanted to take a moment to share my thoughts on playing (rather, wrapping up, pun intended) the original Paper Mario trilogy of games. These were video games I had played two decades ago which oddly as it sounds, helped shape me as a person and continue to do so even to this day. Feel free to wait for the next blog if that’s not your cup of joe. For the rest, be warned for there are game spoilers ahead.
One quick announcement before I begin. I’ll be starting up the podcast again in September with guest speakers. I’ll also be hosting a Cybersecurity presentation at my local library this fall. In the interest of maintaining my current knowledge and skills, I’ll be practicing with all the writing and speaking tools available within my close-knit network. I hope you look forward to interesting and new perspectives on The Reddmasq Poddcast, please feel free to give it a listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts or on my personal website at masq31.dev. On with the retrospective.
Like many others recently, I started this recollection of my childhood gaming days with Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Remake released back in May on the Nintendo Switch system.
A theme I’ll touch on in this post is the fact that each game of the series is immersive and their worlds alive well outside the traditional Mario formula of yesteryear. The fact that this was an RPG meant that you as the player were meant to feel a connection to the story, characters, and world around you. As you explore the dark sides of Rogueport to understand how you’re not as welcome as many of Mario’s other grand adventures. The characters depicted have heavy nostalgia on reflections to the aspirations and strife we all face growing up. The way it’s executed in this game and the remake is playful in both style and substance. From the Bushy Bob-omb to the Smart Schoolgirl Goomba, the connection these characters had to a past and now present reflection of self are deep, heartfelt and fundamental to many gamers in a coming of age sort of way. We’ve changed like the Mario series has, and yet we remember the history and legacy that brought us here, no matter how awkward or clumsy.
The game added a plethora of new features for quality of life. The execution of these debatably essential changes I’d noticed through my time playing an aged game felt right. The game itself was something I began to feel, well, passionate about? Sure I’m a programmer and student at heart, but at my core I tell others that I am still a gamer. The fact that the game’s new translation acknowledges and handles masterfully key issues like gender inequality speaks volumes to me. This attention to detail in the translation script really helps set the modern tone for older gamers like myself who think and knew better and now get a proper chance to share their favorite game with others.
[Warning, the clip above has bad a bad audio recording, please mute before playing.]
I felt great playing this remake. I cleared both super bosses, I grinded in the twilight town woods for around 12 hours to get enough charge badges to 1 shot prince mush. I later learned that badge duping was a glitch discovered by the community. Does that made all that time spent grinding wasted? Was it wasted if I enjoyed the process, the grind? Despite all the game’s setbacks and old school design philosophy, I felt connected again.
I couldn’t make myself stop there. I had to explore more of these memories. I found through searching online a fan mod to enhance the original Paper Mario in a way that brought its game systems in line with The Thousand Year Door. The idea of retaining the story and characters while adding new twists intrigued me. I gave TTYD64 by elDexter a fair shake.
I was entertained by the tweaks, but I felt I was missing something of the original idea. The original games weren’t designed to be challenging, but heavily skewed towards rewarded player creativity. The game here was just another game’s systems slap dashed over Paper Mario’s Nintendo 64 entry.
Sure the new additions like the game’s own Pit of 100 Trials brought it in line with the rest of the original trilogy. I think the fan made pit is the best challenge in the series hands down. Still, the game’s core and immersion was lost within this rebalance, with little easter eggs and echoes to old areas on new maps distracting from the 1st game’s experience.
I got lost in the glitz pit and never found my way back with this game, too distracted to finish off Tuba Blubba again. I watched a friend playthrough the rest of the game on my own time. Still, I enjoyed my time here enough to make my own MIDI rendition of the star piece get sound effect (for fair use of course). MIDI’s a pretty fun tool, and I’m no audio engineer, but the fact that this series got me to be creative in two different scenarios speaks to nostalgia’s power to motivate and inspire others.
[Making a midi inspired track was not the creative spark I expected, but the one I got.]
This brings us to Super Paper Mario. Originally concepted as a Gamecube game, it was brought to the Wii with great ambition to capture a new audience with remote control gameplay. I remembered the game being distinctly easy due to its unique battle system. It played much like a classic side scrolling Mario game, but wasn’t deterred by that to shy away from RPG elements. Right away I noted a more robust setup was necessary to play this one entry more than the other games. Gone were any portable options for now. I broke out an original Wii, made a personal sensor bar out of the Roomba normally tasked with cleaning my floors (after which I gave the role of an honorary pixel, the game’s assist characters, complete with their own tongue in cheek artwork.) I charged up a pair of AA batteries for a mostly original hardware experience.
I went into this game with my podcast Co-host and best friend Redd. He’s also a fan of the series and had been following some of my adventures on discord. Together, we found the story more engaging to watch and act along with. The characters and story elements were some of the best written of the trilogy. I’d say from start to end, Super has a story that holds and even succeeds TTYD’s story which I touch upon below.
Characterization is at its peak in Super. While the residents of towns tend to be forgettable, the unique inhabitants of each world resonate in the player’s mind. The zany assistant and boss characters take on a life of their own with various accents, styles and quirky icebreakers. I had fun channeling my Irish heritage while voice acing out the tinged tone of O’chunks for my friend. We both pointed out how many dresses the automata spider girl Mimi went through during our playthrough. Dimentio, the clown/jester/reality bender played with the 4th wall just enough to give the overall story a twist. The duality of Luigi getting characterization as Mr. L was quirky, but didn’t land as well as the rest of the cast.
The villain I feel stole the show best was Count Bleck. His betrayal and death as a character learned about through the intro cutscene and at intermissions in which the count recounts his lost love, Timpani. In a fit of desperation, he throws away his identity of Blumiere and assumes the role as the antagonist of a dark book. The counter to this is our heroes venturing forth into the unknown to find the pure hearts scattered among the many worlds of the game.
Like the other Paper Mario games, the pit of 100 trials returns, with this one rewarding more creativity than the last few. In total, a player would beat the pit 3 times in a completionist run, netting themselves some overpowered abilities upon the pit’s final boss. This just compounded how easy the last chapter of the game was, effectively giving the player double damage and mobility benefits. This made the finale a cakewalk. The fact that this has to be done 3 times is very tedious, which reveals the game’s biggest problem. While all 3 Paper Mario games are unique, the gameplay of Super feels like it overstays its welcome a bit too long. Part of it was the controls feeling a bit too of their time. The Wii remote on its side is simple, but doesn’t have as much going on like the Gamecube controllers of yesteryear.
So many of the game’s elements and motifs have gone onto inspire creators decades later. One can’t help but draw comparisons of the rainbow tinted pure hearts to Toby Fox’s souls in Undertale.
My last spark of inspiration came in the form of a relatable game character which I feel resonates, but not in the most pleasant way, with a great number of gaming communities. I’m talking of course about Francis. This guy is a high tech otaku collector & photographer and also the webmaster of a domain called “digibutter.nerr”. While the website name was made up, modern ICANN rules allow for custom TLD’s, meaning that this domain can, and as my friend found out, is actually a real thing. So I joined the fan site, shared my experience, and got an oddly farmiliar feeling revisiting another shade of the past, the old internet.
Feeling nostalgic about my decades old screen name again, I checked out other accounts I had forgotten about from my formative years. Names like “superlugia3” and “theguesst” sprang to mind. As it turns out, the internet doesn’t forget either. Through this tunnel of self re-discovery, as if waking from a long forgotten digital coma, I found that there was a conference in town (through mastodon mind you) honoring gaming’s greatest historical figures from the famicom era as well as key game museum preservation researchers. Without Super Paper Mario, I can say I would have not had the confidence to attend the Save the Games 2024 conference. I connected and reconnected with many grand people of varying prestige, found comfort in old friends, shared knowledge with colleagues, and relearned information that my decade in gaming had left and returned to. All of these moments I’ve come to understand and enjoy are now a part of history.
Most importantly, it helped me feel whole again, a feeling which I had lost during the COVID-19 pandemic back in 2020. I had after my first trip to college become a delivery driver, much like how Blumiere assumed his role as a villain without a guiding light. The difference here being that with the right guidance, one can keep their way even in the moments where one assumes a role for the better of their community. It’s sappy, corny, hokey but darn it, to my gaming and tech oriented mind it’s close enough to the truth.
Redd and I wrapped up the game’s story last night, it was a blast. With this I can close another chapter and pick up the torches I’ve lit in teaching digital literacy, podcasting, and student work as I finally finish up the schooling I set out on in 2021.
Thanks for sticking along this gaming retrospective. As always folks, stay safe.
