Month of Mario: Paper Mario (N64)

While later entries in the Paper Mario series structure entire games around finding ways to factor its world being made of paper into how they play, the original Paper Mario almost seems to treat its paper aesthetic as something incidental. Beyond a few gags where the joke is almost the game reminding you the characters look like paper cut-outs, the game doesn’t even totally commit to looking like it is made of papercraft and cardboard with occasional smooth objects and characters. In fact, its Japanese name “Mario Story” feels more apt to describe it, this role-playing game essentially being an attempt to flesh out the familiar tale of Bowser Koopa kidnapping Princess Peach into the kind of narrative where you can care more about what you’re reading than what you’re playing.

 

Despite Mario’s heroics still taking on a similar shape even as he’s been flattened, the tale of Bowser capturing Peach isn’t so straightforward this time around. The evil Koopa King has managed to get his hands on the Star Rod, this mystical item able to grant wishes and Bowser wishes to be invincible so Mario can have no hope of beating him ever again. However, seven Star Spirits exist who can counteract the Star Rod’s power, Bowser making sure to send them off across the land with his minions as he enacts a rather bold plan to not just capture the princess, but to have his own castle rise up from beneath it, flying off into the sky with it so it’s out of reach. The humble plumber Mario should seemingly have no hope of turning the tables here, but if he can defeat Bowser’s minions who are hiding the Star Spirits, he can start to tap into their power to upend what might be one of the best plans Bowser has ever enacted.

 

Mario’s travels around the land are split into eight chapters and a prologue, and each one sees Mario heading to a new location in his quest for the Star Spirits. Some humble, some exotic, even the early moments of the game prime you for something that feels like a true adventure, the relaxed Toad Town just near where the Princess’s castle sat teasing you with areas you can’t access yet due to your meager early abilities. Strange characters from different regions can be spoken to in this little hub who also allude to the wider world you’re about to explore. What’s more, Toad Town even begins to connect to new locations as the game goes on, the city not quite static as you might return from an adventure to find it overrun with troublemakers or learn the garden near the plaza actually has a more magical purpose. The world seems to branch out rather well, the player able to find secret goodies, hear new things from familiar townsfolk, and more easily access previous areas once you start getting side quests that can span every location you’ve visited previously.

Heading out to search for the Star Spirits brings you to quite a few charming and less than straightforward locations with locals to talk to and unique trials to overcome like a desert where you must find out how to navigate its massiveness by ingratiating yourself to the mysterious Moustafa or the jungle on LavaLava Island where the intrepid explorer Kolorado must frequently lean on your abilities not just to navigate a volcanic cavern fraught with peril, but to help rescue the foolish baby Yoshis who sought adventure for themselves to little avail. Some segments may lean harder into action and battles, but then you’ll have areas like the Boo mansion where you’re trying to solve puzzles while avoiding ghostly mischief, and the memorable characters can lead to some amusing moments along the way. While its humor is more delightful than hilarious, it’s hard not to smile as you head to a new area and uncover some of its more creative ideas for adding some extra life to its towns and dungeons. The music can sometimes lean a little more towards emphasizing the energy or oddity of a situation, so much so that a stretch of the game where the tainted Flower Fields plays an outright off-putting variation of an otherwise pleasant song for a long while, but there is some nice and catchy background music at other points to make up for it.

 

One particularly interesting choice is made with interstitial segments between the chapters where you play as Princess Peach as she explores her captured castle in the sky. While these segments are often light on gameplay or involve some easy form of action like sneaking past guards, not only do these let us see some fun moments involving the delightfully dumb Bowser, but Mario likely couldn’t complete his adventure without the help Peach provides as she spies on the enemy’s activities. There are points where Mario would have no clue what to do if Peach and the star kid Twink she sends out to contact Mario hadn’t first snooped around to learn vital intel, the proactive princess leading these short but important cooldown segments after a chapter’s end that are enjoyable despite their simple gameplay.

 

Mario will pick up a fair few allies while journeying across the land, and these partners actually will join your adventuring party to help in battle and during exploration. Most areas and dungeons will require a good amount of special powers to properly traverse, and while Mario gets his high jumps and hammer upgraded over time to help, the partners have a wide range of abilities to help you out. The flying postturtle Parakarry can help Mario cross small gaps by carrying him, the fish Sushie can be used to cross water and dive, and Bombette can blow holes in cracked walls to open up new paths. These interactions can often be fairly easy to spot so there’s not too much thought in using them, but at the same time there will be hidden treasures that sometimes involve a little smarter use of them. Star Pieces in particular require a sharper eye for special use cases when exploring, these collectables able to earn you some of the game’s best equipment but not feeling like a requirement so that the game can keep its main adventure accessible to players of all ages.

In fact, one thing Paper Mario does to try and keep things simple for young players ends up remarkably inspired, and that relates to its battle mode. In Paper Mario’s turn-based battles, even late into the adventure, the numbers for health and damage are kept fairly low. An attack that can deal damage in the double digits is the kind of ability saved only for the toughest foes, but this means each point of damage can feel valuable. Being able to increase an attack’s power by one means a lot more when the opponents you are up against pack HP somewhere between 6 to 12 outside of boss encounters, and it makes foes who have tough defenses that reduce incoming damage require special consideration. Foes in Paper Mario already can have special advantages to make you vary up your attack methods, fiery and spiked enemies damaging you if you jump on them while your hammer can’t hit foes up in the air. This is one way your partners can come in handy, one of them able to help you in battle at a time although you can swap them around mid-fight if one might have a more useful ability. Partner powers definitely add a lot more to the battle system too, a character like the snooty ghost Lady Bow able to make you impervious to damage for a turn to avoid the strongest attacks bosses can dish out, Sushie can encase you in a water cube for a while to briefly give you that small but meaningful defense boost, and some can have attacks that hit multiple foes provide you spend some of the equally limited Flower Points required for abilities to unleash their potential.

 

Mario’s battle options would be fairly basic when compared to his partners if not for one major element of the battle system: badges. While health and flower points are definitely important to have, when you level up through defeating enemies, you can choose to instead upgrade your BP, the player able to steadily equip more of the special badges they’ll find around the world for extra powers and abilities. These can be a bit straightforward in use, you can use some to get a more powerful jump or hammer swing or ones with special effects like shrinking foes, but there is a considerable variety behind them that makes it a bit of a shame the game caps out BP at 30. With the Zap Tap badge, any enemy who must touch Mario to damage him will also receive a little damage, with the Spike Shield badge, you can now jump on prickly enemies without fear. Lucky Day means some enemy attacks will just spontaneously fail, Double Dip will let you use two healing or attack items in a turn, and Quick Change will let you swap your partners freely in a fight without having to sacrifice a chance to attack in order to do so. The best powers cost more BP to equip but you can get the BP back by unequipping them, shuffling them around to figure out what you want at the moment or what synergies you can build adding some appreciated depth to the battle system.

 

With occasional large enemy groups or late game baddies who pack more of a punch, the right badges can definitely change how the fights unfold before you even factor in little bonus powers the Star Spirits gradually grant you or the timing based Action Command system. Pressing the right buttons at the right time or moving the control stick properly can be key to not just increasing the power of some abilities but pulling them off in the first place, this making even simple battles a bit more engaging so you rarely find yourself just sitting back and mindlessly working through the opposition. Overall, despite not being all that difficult, Paper Mario still crafts fights that hold your interest even before you factor in more eccentric foes like the Koopa Bros. who are clearly styled after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or the ever persistent hatchling Jr. Troopa who will do whatever it takes to try and beat you.

THE VERDICT: Paper Mario truly understands how to write its Mario story, knowing where to include the familiar and where to expand it to make it into a more exciting journey than just stopping Bowser once again. A charming world with strange but delightful events unfolding throughout make this adventure more compelling to stick with, the difficulty not too high but the battle system still feels tight and layered because of the smart limits on damage numbers and the range of options granted to you by your partners and badges. While you might wish it would dig deeper and provide more challenging battles or navigation, Paper Mario still keeps you engaged and not just through action commands and involved exploration. It’s an adventure rich with personality, just the right amount of personality added to the characters and creatures of the Mario series to keep the story broadly appealing and entertaining to read.

 

And so, I give Paper Mario for Nintendo 64…

A GREAT rating. The idea of a “beginner’s RPG” is one that can sometimes lead to oversimplification or standardization, but Paper Mario is remarkably well-crafted to walk the line between not going too far out there with its ideas and concepts while still being easy for a new RPG player to pick up and understand. You don’t need to do calculations to figure out if you’re in danger or really how long a boss might take to take down, but there is still the badge point system where you do stop and think in ways that pay off in later fights. You need to focus on fights if purely to ensure you get the action commands down for their simple but meaningful power boosts, but you only need to start digging into ideas like status effects rarely and it’s likely you’re the one utilizing them since most enemies are vulnerable to them. Paper Mario doesn’t bog things down with constant battle either, the exploration of dungeons and the broader world giving you some simple navigation action and the rare puzzle that you do need to figure out beyond which partner’s ability will help you move forward. Devoting sections between chapters to Peach’s containment in her floating castle is one of the more indicative parts of Paper Mario’s confidence in its story-telling and narrative construction, there often not much to do as the princess but getting a teaser of what’s ahead and seeing the way enemies act outside of battle builds up the opposition in the same way the world is fleshed out to good effect by chatting with locals. Paper Mario does feel like it could afford to take the next step up in terms of complexity without losing the type of young player it might literally be introducing to the RPG genre, even just a higher BP cap feeling like it could allow more push and pull in later fights. Making sure there’s not too much down time between the active style of turn-based combat, the need to overcome environmental dangers to progress, and delightful character interactions though makes Paper Mario the kind of adventure that rarely drags, so there’s very little time spent dwelling on moments that are less exciting or entertaining throughout this decent length adventure.

 

I keep coming back to the Japanese name for the game Mario Story as I ruminate on Paper Mario. Not just because it succinctly emphasizes the greater importance of the plot compared to usual, but because this feels like it is truly building up Mario’s world rather than deviating too far into new territory like Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars did. The characters here come from recognizable species Mario encountered in his platforming adventures, their changes being to basically exhibit personalities and show where they live when they’re not just faceless foes. Sometimes Paper Mario can maybe reuse an enemy type a bit too often, but it can also build up locations that feel like feasible homes for these delightfully changed old foes. Paper Mario doesn’t do anything as bold as making every character truly unique, but it still wants its world to be inviting based on the merits of its personalities and the events that unfold in it. Despite its aesthetic choice, Paper Mario might be THE Mario RPG simply because it knows the plumber’s adventures are rich with opportunity for elaboration yet it doesn’t lose track of enhancing the familiar even when carving out new paths.