You may be shocked to learn this, but I never actually played Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door when it was released back in 2004. I remember trying it at an old EB Games demo stand, and after not being able to figure out where to go, I kind of wrote it off and forgot about it. It wasn’t until a few years later, that I started playing a friend’s save file—starting at Chapter 3—and I was hooked. I hijacked his save file and beat the game.
It’s been years since then, and the Paper Mario franchise has, quite rightly, in my opinion, gone in bold and interesting directions—becoming a unique testing ground for innovative twists on the RPG genre rather than trotting the same turn-based pony to market six times in a row. That isn’t to say I wouldn’t welcome a new, “classic” Paper Mario, and this remake of The Thousand-Year Door is a good reminder of why.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remains one of the best and most beloved RPGs not just of the GameCube era but, frankly, of all time, and it’s easy to see why. The way it built on its predecessors’ (both Paper Mario 64 and Super Mario RPG) unique style of turn-based combat combined with imaginative settings and stories and genuinely funny writing make it enjoyable for almost every player.
“Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remains one of the best and most beloved RPGs not just of the GameCube era but, frankly, of all time, and it’s easy to see why.”
For those unaware, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door begins when Mario receives a letter and an old treasure map from Princess Peach. She claims she needs his help to search for the treasure, which leads him to the mysterious and shady town of Rougeport. Once there, he is immediately thrown into an adventure as a young Goomba girl is being accosted by strange hooded figures called the X-Nauts.
It isn’t long until Mario learns the map is the key to several mysteries surrounding a strange subterranean city under Rougeport, particularly involving “The Thousand-Year Door,” which some believe holds incredible treasure. This leads Mario on a search across the land to recover the Crystal Stars and open the massive door to recover whatever is behind it before sinister forces do.
While having a plot similar to its predecessors, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door differed greatly in its execution. While the original Paper Mario treads fairly familiar ground in its story and world, The Thousand-Year Door never really goes where you think it’s going to, and its story is consistently surprising. Though the game starts with a fairly traditional story, involving our hero literally fighting a dragon to save a village, before you know it, you’re helping a mafia Don in order to get to a fighting ring, and soon you’re uncovering its seedy underbelly.
It’s something Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door did really well and speaks to the series’ creativity that would continue even into the modern games. While Paper Mario 64 had a well-crafted and interesting story, it’s also a somewhat “traditional” story by narrative and even RPG standards. The Thousand-Year Door, by contrast, goes in so many wild and whacky directions that it’s almost like a parody. This is all backed by an incredible cast of characters and some genuinely funny writing and situational humour—like how Bowser is always one step behind everything going on in the game.
The gameplay remains as tight as ever, staying true to the format established by its predecessors but expanding it in small but meaningful ways. The core of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door’s experience remains wholly unchanged—players still explore a strange new world, having crazy adventures, meeting new allies and battling fearsome foes. Mario will use a combination of his jumps, hammer and ally’s abilities to solve the various challenges that block his way.
“While the original Paper Mario treads fairly familiar ground in its story and world, The Thousand-Year Door never really goes where you think it’s going to, and its story is consistently surprising.”
Like its predecessor, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door approaches combat in a unique way. Mario and his chosen partner will approach however many enemies stand in their way in battle, with both players and enemies attacking in a somewhat straight line. Enemies on the ground need to be hit with Mario’s hammer, while aerial opponents need to be jumped on. Alternatively, jumps can reach any opponent in the line, while hammer/ground attacks can only hit the first enemy in the line.
Furthermore, Mario can access unique abilities and upgrades through Badges he finds throughout his adventure—and some that can be purchased from a shop in Rougeport. Each badge requires a certain amount of Badge Points to equip, so finding which abilities or buffs best suit each situation adds to the game’s strategy—of course, you can always just stick to the ones you like best.
Similar to both its Nintendo 64 counterpart and SNES predecessor, Timed Hits are an essential part of the combat—for a refresher on what those are, see my Super Mario RPG review. There’s an interesting yet simplistic strategy to combat, as players need to decide between whittling down opponents’ health one-by-one or spreading the damage across every opponent for a somewhat longer but more balanced fight. However, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door added deeper layers to the combat that made it much more manageable compared to its predecessor.
Firstly, unlike Paper Mario 64, where only Mario had HP and had to handle the majority of defensive actions, The Thousand-Year Door gave partners HP as well. Even though they still level up via a collectable found across the world—meaning their HP rarely changes relative to Mario’s—it allows players to swap partners to the front of the line to take more hits if Mario is ever in trouble. The second big innovation Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door added to the combat was expanding thematically on its predecessor’s visual conceit that battles took place on a theatrical stage.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door went wild with this idea, adding an audience, props, and several other elements to the battle stage that make it much more dynamic. It adds a layer of silly fun to each battle as stage malfunctions can work to help or hinder Mario—background sets can fall over, lights can fall from the roof, and dry ice machines can tip over, freezing opponents or Mario himself!
It also creates a unique atmosphere, as audience members can throw items to help Mario or objects to hurt him, requiring some quick thinking to see if you need to stop a member with a slap of the hammer. Furthermore, performing Timed Hits effectively and making the fight exciting will attract members to the audience, and performing poorly will cause members to leave. While this might not seem important, it plays into the last way Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door expanded on the combat.
“The core of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door’s experience remains wholly unchanged—players still explore a strange new world, having crazy adventures, meeting new allies and battling fearsome foes.”
Similar to its direct predecessor, Mario can access incredibly powerful Special Attacks with every Crystal Star he finds on his adventure. Using these moves requires Star Power, and once drained, Power needs to be restored with Star Energy. While players can get some energy from performing successful Timed Hits and using the Appeal ability, earning bonus energy has been integrated into the combat via “Stylish Moves,” where every attack has a specific moment where if the player presses the A button, they’ll add a little flourish to it.
It creates a combat system that, like both its predecessors, is incredibly simple to understand while following basic RPG principles, and yet is so incredibly fun, lighthearted and incredibly nuanced. However, while there was very little to add or fix with The Thousand-Year Door’s combat, this new remaster adds extra options for increased ease of access.
For starters, players can now access a “Tattle Log” for every enemy that has been analyzed using Goombella’s Tattle ability—which not only gives players details on enemies’ HP, STR and DEF but also insights into how they function. Players no longer need to waste a turn using Tattle every single time if they forget how certain enemies operate; there’s a handy guide available to them, making fights much more convenient.
But the biggest addition comes in the form of the Battle Master, who is both extremely helpful and a touch annoying. The Battle Master is a Toad who will allow players to practice moves, allowing them to get the timing down for Timed Hits and even showing players where the windows for Stylish Moves are. And while this is an incredible asset to the game, in typical Nintendo fashion, there had to be a mild degree of inconvenience attached to him.
“Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door added deeper layers to the combat that made it much more manageable compared to its predecessor.”
This comes in the way that with every new Chapter, the Battle Master will move to the new area players will be exploring rather than staying in a single, centralized location within Rougeport. While I understand the theoretical convenience of having him go where players will be spending the bulk of their time for that chapter, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has enough convenient fast-travel options available to the player that getting to and from Rougeport is easy enough to do at almost any part of the game. Having the combat training mechanic stay in a central location—namely, the game’s main hub town—would have just made a great feature even better.
But the best thing about Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door—and the thing that received the most change for this remake—is undoubtedly the audio and visual design. Although the game’s reveal trailer gave players a pretty good idea of how good this game was going to look, which isn’t to say the original didn’t already look amazing, it really is remarkable in every moment of the game.
The visuals have been updated to be much more in line with the more modern Paper Mario games, not just on a technical level but a thematic one as well. While the original Thousand-Year Door did play around a lot more with the game’s “paper” element, so much of the world felt fairly standard in its design. The Thousand-Year Door remake goes a lot further with this idea, with environments appearing much more like papercraft and characters all possessing paper doll-like qualities—with individual limbs appearing pinned onto their bodies.
The visuals in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door are much sharper, brighter, and more colourful, and they are brought to life in a way that far exceeds the original. And while I’ve seen a lot of tears being cried online about the game being locked in 30fps, I can safely say it hardly matters. The game runs incredibly smooth in docked mode, so much so that you might not even notice the frame rate—however, this may be more or less noticeable depending on your TV.
“The visuals in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door are much sharper, brighter, and more colourful, and they are brought to life in a way that far exceeds the original.”
But the real stand-out is the audio. Almost all of the game’s sound effects have been updated and made more crisp and clear. Not only that, the original’s somewhat standard text-scrolling sound has been replaced by distinct audio babble that reflects each unique character. Koopas, Goombas and Bob-ombs possess their Super Mario 64 voice clips and a whole host of new ones—special mention to the adorable pips that the X-Nauts make now.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door also not only features updated versions of all the original’s songs, but a veritable cornucopia of new tracks added for the remake. Not content to simply improve the already good music, The Thousand-Year Door remake took a page from The Origami King’s book and included themed battle music for almost every new area, taking what was already an incredible battle theme, cranking the dial to 11 and ripping it off the box.
And much like the Super Mario RPG remake, players can swap the game’s music to the original tracks via a Badge that can be purchased early on and requires no BP to equip. However, this almost feels like a completely opposite situation here. Whereas, I had said the original music in Super Mario RPG was so good it almost didn’t need to be updated, here it is not the case. The new soundtrack is so amazing, switching to the old one is a genuine step-down—with maybe the exception of Rawk Hawk’s theme which did sound a bit better in the original.
In addition to the updated visuals and music, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door adds some collectables for this remake. If players essentially 100% each chapter, they can gain access to exclusive concept art for the game, and completing every chapter gives players access to the game’s Jukebox. There is some other added content that I won’t mention due to spoilers, but players will be happy to find it.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remains one of the best, most beloved RPGs of all time, and this remake is a clear reminder of why. It has simple yet nuanced controls, an incredibly fun and creative story, and an overall lighthearted tone that is immediately captivating and incredibly absorbing. While I personally love the weird, experimental direction the series has been going in, it was nice to experience this classic again in an updated way for modern audiences.
Now Nintendo needs to get to work remaking Paper Mario 64 so we can get an awesome updated version of the Koopa Bros. Theme!
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake releases on May 23, 2024, for $59.99 USD or $79.99 CAD.
- Join Mario on an epic paper-adventure to collect the Crystal Stars before the X-Nauts do!
