Although often out shined by its younger brother, Mario Galaxy, Mario’s first adventure on the Wii is still one of the best games the system has to offer, and one of my all-time favorite games.  While not as graphically amazing or innovative as Mario Galaxy, Super Paper Mario (SPM) stands out due to its great, entertaining story and enjoyable gameplay.

It starts out as so many Mario games do, with Mario and Luigi setting off to Bowser’s castle to rescue Princess Peach.  However, it isn’t long before you realize this isn’t your typical Mario plotline after all: as you all soon learn that she has actually been kidnapped by the nefarious Count Bleck, the true antagonist of the game.

Part of what makes SPM such an enjoyable game is the humor, which you get a taste of right from the start, and that will have you chuckling throughout the long adventure (if you try to be a completionist, you could easily spend 80-100 hours on this game).  Whether it’s poking fun at itself, the Mario franchise, or gamers in general, the dialogue is enjoyable, and the characters are pretty well-developed.  The story is actually very good and keeps you playing as you hope to find out more backstory, and the key characters (i.e., Count Bleck), are actually more than just two-dimensional characters (no pun intended).

The gameplay gimmick for the game is that Mario learns early on how to flip between 2D and 3D.  Although you’ll spend most of your time in traditional 2D, platforming a la the original Mario Bros. games, you will occasionally need to flip into 3D in order to discover hidden paths or solve puzzles.  The game also doesn’t take place in the Mushroom Kingdom, and instead transports you to the village of Flipside, where you will encounter Merlon and Tippi, who request your help in defeating Count Bleck, who is attempting to destroy all of the worlds.  Throughout your journey, you will thoroughly explore Flipside (and another village you discover), as well as traveling to various interesting worlds, all with their own character to join your party, and many with interesting people to meet, including Pixls.

Pixls are another element that makes Super Paper Mario’s gameplay different: throughout your adventure, you will find various Pixls, magical fairies that have different abilities.  For example, one Pixl will help you blow things up, another helps you cross spikes (also helpful for traveling quickly over large distances), and another will make you thin enough that you will be invisible to enemies and other dangers as long as you stand still.  You can also use the Wii pointer to discover hidden doors or stairs via the power of your original companion Pixl, Tippi.  You will also end up having a party of four, including Mario, with each character having their own abilities.  Although you will play as Mario for most of the game, the other characters have their purposes.  The game is also an RPG-lite, so you do have a leveling system, which is actually a lot of fun, as your attack power and HP will increase the more enemies you kill.

The game was originally developed for Gamecube, and then ported to Wii at the last minute (although never released on Gamecube, as Twilight Princess was), so the graphics aren’t ground-breaking, and there isn’t any voice acting (you also play holding the Wiimote sideways, like a NES controller).  Still, the dialogue is great, with each character having their own manner of speech (for example, Count Bleck uses the third person and always says “Bleck!”).  Some complained that there was too much dialogue, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

You have plenty of great platforming (including two bonus 100-room dungeons), a great cooking system (you can bring various ingredients to two different chefs and they will make new, often more powerful, items for you), and more, so you have plenty of gameplay. You can probably rush through the main story in 30 hours, but as I said before, if you really want the full experience, you can easily sink 100 hours (or even more) into the game.

I’ve played the game twice, and I know I would easily play it again.  It’s a great homage to the traditional Mario games of the early days, while still injecting something fresh, and with a fun and touching story sprinkled in.  If you own a Wii and haven’t played this game yet, you owe it to yourself to do so right away.

Title: Super Paper Mario Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Intelligent Systems Platform(s): Wii Release Date: April 9, 2007

Share On

Tags: Nintendo, RPG, Spawn Kill Favorites, super paper mario, Wii

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Editorials, Featured, Spawn Kill Favorites, Wii. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.