![]() ![]() We talked about pros and cons that fit nicely into the context of each game without stripping any of the nuance. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but he’s one of the most charitable reviewers I’ve ever met. Although we’re the same age, my friend had a lifelong head start on forming thoughtful and thorough opinions about the games he played. I would have looked at IGN and maybe GameStop if I’d thought to check reviews of any game, you know, from my eMachines PC in my dorm room. ![]() In 2007, there wasn’t the prevalence of polished media websites that there is now. I remember playing the game the first time and talking with my friend about his reactions. ![]() But voice acting has just never been part of Mario games, let alone Mario’s RPG-flavored games: a genre where fans are still used to playing pretty major games that don’t have voicework beyond incidental sounds. All I want is to press a button to move to the next bit, and voice acting is a series of cut-off sentence parts that I want to turn off. I’ve never understood this, because even an average-speed reader finishes a dialogue box long before the voiceover. The Paper Mario franchise is constitutionally nonverbal, but by 2007, reviewers started to comment on the lack of voice acting. (I’ve never liked the SMRPG art, but Nintendo did at least fully commit to the bit.)Īt the same time, critics also called the story too wordy. Even in Super Mario RPG, Mario and his friends fight, like, anthropomorphic hammers and other new enemies that all visually jive with the three-dimensionalized main character art. TYD’s Big Bad was literally an alien from another world, but he was drawn in the same style as the rest of Mario’s surroundings. The art was more futuristic and less homey, placing Mario in a world of incongruous neon gradients. SPM had platformer action instead of the charming turn-based combat of Paper Mario and TYD. The game got good reviews, but critics largely considered it a failure of imagination after the scope and depth of TYD. And less integral but just as fun, SPM’s best minigame is a platform you balance on but gently tip the Wiimote to tilt left or right. Where TYD had button cues for “stylish moves,” SPM lets you shake the Wiimote (this is also how it works in Mario Kart Wii). Combat items have you point at the screen to draw circles or squiggles, branching from mechanics introduced in the first two games. You explore items of interest by pointing the Wiimote like a flashlight. Unlike Zelda, where the Wii mechanics feel a bit tacked on, SPM has integral gameplay that used the Wiimote. Like the Zelda game, SPM was developed with the GameCube in mind and adapted. It was the first Mario title for the Wii and the second major Nintendo property after Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It’s not an understatement to say this all changed my life, and SPM was the perfect gateway game. After that, I was ready for Super Mario RPG and then Final Fantasy VII. After we both beat SPM, my friend lent me Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. The other best friend you can have is one who takes the controller to beat a difficult boss for you. The secret of life, it turns out, is to find a friend who makes a copy of their save file for you so you don’t have to sit through the game’s introduction again. ![]() I watched my friend play for a while, but I’d never seen a Paper Mario game and fell in love with the art at first sight. Super Paper Mario came out in April of our senior year, a moment when I did not need much help to wander away from my real work. I just slowly got better while the other seven people in the round raced ahead of me. What’s surprising and nice in hindsight is that no one minded how terrible I was at it, and they also weren’t patronizing about it. In college, I played a Mario Kart game for the first time: the “nerdy frat” had a basement lined with recliners and squashy couches where we played Double Dash for hours. I chipped away at Crash Bandicoot and slept over as much as I could with the friend whose family had a Super Nintendo. My family had a Nintendo when I was too young, and we had an original Playstation but no games I really liked. But after that, where else could they go?Īs a kid, I didn’t really play video games. Nintendo threw everything they had at the third Paper Mario game, an ambitious and creative Wii showpiece with an enormous scope and story. ![]()
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