Highlights

  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remade for Switch blends classic charm with modern improvements fans have longed for.
  • The switch version keeps the original's charisma while adding fresh elements like pop-up book design, and bridging series' past and present.
  • The success of the TTYD remake points to a brighter future for the Paper Mario series, emphasizing the need for creativity and depth in gameplay.

What was once an impossible dream for many fans is finally real as Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has been completely reworked for the Nintendo Switch. The situation feels rather similar to what happened with the Super Mario RPG remake last year, as many fans expected far more drastic changes if Thousand-Year Door was to ever be rereleased or remade. The Paper Mario series continued in the absence of the GameCube game being accessible so there were a bit more things to fear when it came to a Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake.

Recent Paper Mario releases never matched Thousand-Year Door's unique style which led many, many fans to crave and ask for it for the last three console generations. Even putting the second Paper Mario title on Nintendo Switch Online, whenever GameCube games theoretically arrive, would be enough as it would be a way to experience the game without paying what would be likely hundreds of dollars. However, the impossible was made possible, and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is natively on Switch as a perfect fusion of the series' past and present.

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Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Is Now a Pop-Up Book of Players' Dreams

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has been given a fresh coat of paint that brings the soon-to-be 20-year-old game closer to more recent series standards. However, it doesn't sacrifice any of the original's charm, choosing to add and improve a plethora of things rather than take anything away.

Returning players will need to adjust to some things but not everything overall. While there's a heavier emphasis on things being paper than in the original game the overall tone is still as cartoony and charismatic as ever even with the up-to-date translation the Switch version offers. There's an obvious throughline from Paper Mario: The Origami King's world design that was consistently always paper at best and a construction paper mess at worst, but it seems that Intelligent Systems combined both styles to create something akin to a playable pop-up book.

The Paper Mario series has leaned heavily into the arts-and-crafts aspect of its world since Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the 3DS, which was poorly received by fans for its nature of going backward in terms of removing RPG elements and becoming far easier in difficulty and more simplistic in story; two important pieces of Paper Mario that The Thousand-Year Door has always handled with flying colors.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Should Point Towards the Series' Strengths From Now On

Of course, not everything looks great in the newer Switch release, with the Crystal Stars being made of metallic wrapping paper and bodies of water stubbornly being relegated to the same construction paper of The Origami King serving as examples that may push the new look of TTYD onto players a bit too heavily. These are only a few small things out of the plethora of details that help make this classic Paper Mario game one of the series' best offerings all over again, even becoming one of the highest-rated games of 2024 despite its age.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door's success serves an important point in that Paper Mario players may not hate the emphasis on paper or at least not mind it, but there's a lack of a game that's creatively exciting and alive, full of comedy and depth in both gameplay and story. There hasn't been a title that fits that bill since Super Paper Mario, and even then, the drastic difference in gameplay between it and TTYD is a point of debate among fans.

With how the Switch version of this beloved classic bridges the gap between what's commonly seen as the series' best game and its most recent ones, Intelligent Systems has a perfect way to understand the common threads between them to take Paper Mario in a more inspired direction going forward. While the Paper Mario series doesn't inherently need to stay RPGs only, the more out-there gameplay styles and explorations could be received much better if what made TTYD so iconic and fun remained going forward.