For all Nintendo’s reaches to new audiences with the Wii, 2006 was not a total year zero. (For Nintendo it was Year 117, or at least Year 36 or Year 26 if you start from electronic/video games). The Wii launched with software including the Virtual Console, a way of downloading old Nintendo games which provided the means for my first ever time playing Super Mario 64. Nintendo weren’t going to give up on years of adding Mario into everything. And so, while Wii Sports and Wii Play were ripping it up and starting again, one of the other earliest Wii games at the top of the charts was one that catered to players with deep levels of existing video game knowledge.
Super Paper Mario is derived from a series of RPGs, but does tone the RPG elements down significantly in favour of more platforming and platforming-based puzzles. Still, you spend a lot of time reading dialogue and using menus to vary the available actions, even if turn-based elements are totally removed. The central mechanic is one of switching between a flat 2D world and a 3D view of the same world, revealing many of its building blocks as mere facades. It’s like taking Super Mario Bros. 3’s stage show and letting you peek behind the curtain. Though inevitably it’s the original Super Mario Bros. that it more heavily references, with levels styled up to match and a recreation of the jumping-out-the-top-of-the-screen moment from World 1-2. Not to mention the whole 1-1 to 8-4 structure.
Super Paper Mario uses a lot of well-established typed of secrets, from remembering number codes to open doors, to being told of particularly secret spots where you can progress. Its platforming rarely gets beyond fiddly, and its puzzle elements only fare a little better. You unlock abilities and characters as you go, but only Mario has the ability to use the swap to 3D, so using anyone else when not required adds annoyance. You can only use that ability for a limited time each go, so as not to be able to go around the level with all of its secrets revealed constantly. Given how much of the game relies on that one trick, its limitations wind up making it simultaneously underpowered and overpowered.
None of that sounds great, but Super Paper Mario is a game whose gameplay elements exist in service to its narrative to an extent which hadn’t been seen at the top of the charts since the heyday of LucasArts point ’n’ click adventures. The consciously literary intros to each chapter repeatedly emphasise an epic journey, and its hard work is there to make sure that journey has the right feeling of weight. It actively taunts its players on this front in World 2, giving them treadmills and hamster wheels to earn nigh-unachievable levels of currency. In practice you just need to earn enough at each level to bribe your way to info to get you to the next one, but even that takes a while and it doesn’t stop you from going the long way round if you don’t see the underlying logic. Later on you get confronted with the prospect of having to fight 100 battles, though that gets short-circuited too.
These ways of playing with expectations are typical of a game which treats absurdity as a glorious base state. The malleability of its world is set up and reinforced throughout, and the level of invention that goes into it is one of Super Paper Mario’s most consistent pleasures. Each time you go through a pipe you watch the screen get sucked into a crumpled piece of paper to pass through. The movement between 3D and 2D is accompanied by a mouse pointer clicking and dragging to select. The sequence in which one of the humanoid bosses unfolds into a giant spider, head rotating uncannily, is a lovely bit of horror. Then there are the power-ups which turn your character enormous, introduced with an etch-a-sketch drawing of the corresponding pixel version from Super Mario Bros., which is a delight.
The flexibility and invention goes into the way the story is delivered too, breaking with structure in delightful and unexpected ways. Super Paper Mario is a game goes to a video game afterlife called ‘the underwhere’, which sets up one boss battle with an imposter-identifying gameshow, and which briefly turns into an old school dating sim, to Peach’s fourth-wall-breaking disgust. That last one comes at the end of probably the game’s most famous bit, a satire of obsessive fandom which forces you to play along and agree with increasingly ridiculous statements. It is celebrated for a good reason, being extremely funny and perfectly paced, building slowly to the transcendent punchline of “I love going on message boards and complaining about games I’ve never played!”.
The story even manages to reach past the absurdity at points too. Nintendo recognise that the barely two-dimensional archetypes of Mario, Peach and Bowser aren’t enough to carry a story, and instead play on those archetypes for humour while introducing a supporting cast that can carry it. Plus it’s nice to finally get away from Bowser capturing the princess to someone else capturing both. It even has a cute and well-set-up last act twist which lives up to the initial promise of being a tale of love. In another sense, Super Paper Mario is already a tale of love from start to finish: a tale of love for the history and potential of video games.
Top of the charts for week ending 22 September 2007:
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