Paper Mario 2001 Edition

We’re still waiting for Super Paper Mario in Europe but in great timing Nintendo have added the original Paper Mario from the N64 to the Wii’s virtual console. It’s 1000 points, which is around 7 quid.

Being from the N64 it’s 3D but with an extremely limited polygon count, it was also obscenely low res, even squinting doesn’t mask the pixels. But, none of this seems to matter with paper mario because the art design is eye poppingly colourful.

It’s a completely different kind of game to what I expected, it’s a japanese style rpg (is JRPG a genre?), that is if you collide with a nasty you’re pulled into a turn based fight, utilizing items and power-moves, but being a mario game many of the moves involve jumping on people’s heads.

It’s similar in gameplay to Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time on the DS, but unlike the DS game which I found a tad forgettable and only something worthy of passing the time with, this Paper Mario is incredibly addictive. I cannot stop wanting to play it! It has some really silly and funny plot points, which in some ways actually remind me of the classic lucasarts point and clicks. Even the dialogue is funny at times.
Unlike other games of this type I’m not finding the turn-based fights annoying, they don’t happen frequently and randomly like the Final Fantasy games, and they usually have enough twists to keep them interesting enough.

I love it so much that I couldn’t resist buying the gamecube sequal. Problem is that that’s trickier than it sounds. All of the usual sites, amazon, game, play only had second hand copies and they weren’t cheap. Even ebay, any going aren’t as cheap as you would expect for a second hand game. I can only presume that it was released during the Gamecube’s waning years and only had some kind of limited release here in the UK.

Also complicating things, many are NTSC and I expect my Wii would toss it out, choking. Did manage to secure a copy in the end, after some hassle for 23 quid which I don’t suppose is toooo bad.

The photo was supposed to be a nice hdr affair but i think I went a bit wrong somewhere.