STILL PLAYING/ NEAR MISSES

REVIEWS. PERSPECTIVES. INTERVIEWS. AND SOME NUMBERS

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Switch Yes, fans have been clamouring for a remake for years, but Nintendo isn’t one to cave to demand (Mother 3, anyone?) and this makes for a curious choice of revival in many ways. Since TTYD, the Paper Mario games have consciously strayed from the traditional formula – partly to differentiate the series from the Mario & Luigi RPGs (that they’re not around any more might provide one hint as to why Nintendo has relented). Their return to the Mushroom Kingdom, meanwhile – as discussed by Intelligent Systems – was down to the parent company establishing new branding rules around its mascot. As such, it’s a surprise that Nintendo would opt to remind us what we’ve been missing, in an adventure that takes Mario to decidedly unfamiliar surroundings, where he’s not just treated as a hero but an object of desire. Visual upgrade aside, it’s largely faithful – Boggly Woods’ iridescent floors don’t quite do enough to distract from all the toing and froing in that chapter, and you will likely have forgotten just how many trivial encounters there are – but we see a few welcome adjustments. An embargo prevents us from talking about anything beyond Chapter 3, so let’s just say the treatment of a certain character is handled with pleasing sensitivity.