Why I Love Super Paper Mario

With the TTYD remake coming out, I wanted to finish covering my bases and do the last of my three Top 100 posts about the Paper Mario series. I went over why I love 64, I went over why I adore Origami King, but now, it's time to talk about my favorite Paper Mario game... kinda.

Super Paper Mario is my favorite "Paper Mario" game, but it also doesn't feel like a Paper Mario game. Sure, it shares similarities with Paper Mario like the visual style and the RPG mechanics, but they're minor at best. It almost feels unfair to call this the best Paper Mario game when it lacks most of the stuff I love about Paper Mario as a series. Hell, it's not even made of paper, it's all digital. If you ask me what my favorite Paper Mario games are, I'm not going to say Super. I'm going to say 64 and TOK. Comparing Super with any of the other games is a waste of time, because there's nothing to compare.

And yet, I love Super Paper Mario more than any other Mario RPG, and the fact that it isn't like any of them is its greatest strength. Not only does it not feel like a Paper Mario game, it honestly doesn't feel like any game I've ever played. With Super Paper Mario, Intelligent Systems and Nintendo pushes the medium in some truly mindbending and unconventional directions that demonstrates its capacity for story-telling better than most games out there. Its impact is indescribable.

Super Paper Mario is a game where everything about it is in service of the central narrative. The gameplay, the music, the visuals, the level design, it all prioritizes pushing the story and its themes forward over what can be conventionally considered "good design". So to actually dive into what makes Super Paper Mario's story so good, I need to start by talking about the gameplay.

Super Paper Mario has some of the most unique gameplay of any game I've ever played. Instead of being a turn-based RPG like the other Mario RPGs, it's an action RPG fused with a side-scrolling platformer. So the game plays like Super Mario Bros and you attack by jumping, but there's still RPG elements like XP and items. One of my favorite touches is how your experience is determined by score, so you level up by engaging with the level design, breaking blocks, finding secrets, and stringing together jumps across enemies... but not too many. You might want to be cheeky and try to pull off an infinite 1-Up trick, but SPM has an anti-grinding measure in place that detracts points if you jump off an enemy too many times. And that's good because this game is already very easy. Yeah, as it turns out, when your main method of attack is bouncing off enemies, there's only so many ways they can try to attack you. However, there's still a decent amount of complexity involved between racking up score to level up, unlockable Pixls that give you movement and combat options, being able to play as Luigi, Bowser, and Peach each with their own abilities, and of course, the game's main mechanic...

While most of Super takes place on a 2D plane, you'll quickly get an ability that will allow you to shift the world into 3D for a limited amount of time. Platforms will go out of sync with each other, walls will hide away collectibles, and often times, you can even walk on the scenery. It's such an awesome and inventive mechanic that's not only used often but whose novelty never really wears off. Going 3D in this game is always cool, from start to finish. I was a bit iffy on the addition of a timer at first as I wanted to be able to explore each stage fully in 3D with no limitations, but I actually think the timer adds to the magic of this mechanic. While going 3D may seem cool at first, later stages will force you to spend extended amounts of time in 3D racing against the clock, and it really serves to emphasize just how... unnatural this ability is in universe. There aren't many NPCs in 3D, the tightly-packed 2D stages feel far more empty and liminal with this perspective.

And that's just the beginning as far as gameplay informing narrative goes. The level design in Super Paper Mario is something else, ranging wildly in terms of quality but always fitting in terms of themes. Now, about 50% of Super Paper Mario's stages are totally solid. They're fun side-scrolling platforming sequences with lots to interact with and a ton of neat secrets to discover in 3D, but the other 50% is a lot stranger. The first truly bizarre level you encounter is Merlee's Mansion, where the sketchy maid Mimi forces you to do slaver labor and play tedious minigames to farm money... or you could scout around the area, talk to NPCs, break out of the bounds of the level, and get a hidden password that you can jot down to bypass most of the process. Either way, this level is tough. You'll either have to weather a very long minigame or deal with some tricky adventure game-esque puzzle-solving as you try to figure out another way. Some may argue that this level is poorly-designed due to how much of a time sink it is, but I think it perfectly manages to capture Mario's situation being under Mimi and immerses me in the game and its world even further, and this is just the beginning. The ridiculously long password in the Gap Of Crag, dealing with Squirps' constant detours in World 4, or making it through the hellishly long Underwhere stages in what can only be described as a Sisyphean climb. You could make the argument that these stages suck and are horribly designed, but I just can't bring myself to hate them. There's something so raw and charming about how Super Paper Mario purposefully tries to annoy the player for narrative purposes, especially considering what the narrative is. 

Super Paper Mario starts off with an incredibly bizarre opening where an evil count named Count Bleck manages to forcedly marry Peach and Bowser, which in turn creates a Chaos Heart that can destroy the world. So it's up to Mario along with his new ally, a mysterious and somewhat cold ally named Tippi, to find the Pure Hearts to save the world. For the first half or so of the game, the story is fairly light-hearted. It's got all that classic Paper Mario humor particularly in the Bitlands world, Peach and Bowser quickly join your party and even have their own unique dialogue with the NPCs, and you defeat most of the world bosses fairly easily and successfully.  However, there's an underlying current of dread right from the start. From Level 1, you can see the void that the Chaos Heart created, and with every world, it gets bigger and bigger. You get intermissions with Peach, Bowser, and Luigi as they try to escape Castle Bleck, which itself has an eerie atmosphere, especially when Luigi doesn't even manage to escape. By World 5, the void has gotten so noticeable that it really hits you why the game is so content on wasting you and the characters' time. It's because they're racing against time, and they're losing. 

World 6 of Super Paper Mario is one of the most chilling sequences I've played in any video game. Halfway through their trip through the Sammer's Kingdom, the void gets so big that Mario and the gang are unceremoniously forced out of it without even being able to get what they were there for. You don't even get a victory animation, it feels abrupt and you're denied any form of closure. And when you re-enter, all that's left is a World Of Nothing. The entire kingdom and all its inhabitants been reduced to a white, empty void. Sometimes you see a few wrecked pagodas, but they have all the color sapped out of them too. And all you can do is walk to the right... for 5-10 minutes... with minimal music. In conventional terms, doing nothing but walking right for ten minutes would be "bad design". But it works here, it works so well. Super Paper Mario leaves you to really soak in the ramifications of what just happened, to sit with the tragedy and realize just how high the stakes truly are. While both Super and TTYD are infamous for rewriting deaths quickly (looking at you, Luvbi), this moment lets the player mourn not just one death, but an entire world's worth of deaths. It's incredibly dark for a Mario game, but the way it's handled as effective as it is unconventional. 

Super Paper Mario is known for being one of the darkest Mario games, but it's not the darkness that makes it works. It's how well that darkness is handled. Super Paper Mario doesn't usually go for shock value, every time it tackles a darker subject, it really leans into it. The best example from the early game is Francis, the otaku parody who gets absolutely skewered over the course of his chapter. IntSys dismantles his immature and sexist personality in a manner that has aged impressively well. But from Sammer's Kingdom onward, Super Paper Mario gets relentlessly mature. Right after dealing with the World Of Nothing, you get hit with yet another plot twist where the true villain of the game Dimentio reveals himself to blow up the main party and send them to the Underwhere, the Mario equivalent of hell. Granted, they never actually died, but the fact that the game even went close to that, just a year after Sonic 06's infamous death at that, is wild. However, the fun gag of "hell" being the Minus World keeps things from being too bleak, once again showing how good this game is at balancing tone, not going too far into shock value, and knowing when to use restraint.

After making it to the Overthere (aka heaven), the party can finally head over to the final dungeon, Castle Bleck, a finale so good it makes everything you've been through across the game more than worth it. Castle Bleck brings together every single gameplay element for one final test. Each party member gets their own stage to shine before they sacrifice themselves to help you forward, and the stages tests you on pretty much everything from cryptic puzzle-solving, to 2D/3D platforming, to enemy combat. There's even a very memorable setpiece where you chase Dimentio across all the worlds you've previously been too. The oppressive atmosphere, tense music, and distinct monochromatic color palette also make this part of the game feel incredibly climactic, leading to the grand finale. After what feels like the final battle against Count Bleck, you learn his tragic backstory. Bleck, originally called Blumiere, fell in love with a girl named Timpani. However, his father disapproved and cursed Timpani into becoming a Pixl, leaving Blumiere to fall into grief and become Count Bleck. That Pixl was, of course, your partner Tippi.

The story of Tippi and Bleck is easily the beating heart of this game, and it's executed incredibly well. Tippi gets a really strong character arc as Mario and the others slowly chip away at her hardened exterior throughout the game, all the while Bleck shows increasingly more signs of who he used to be. There are hints scattered across the game over their shared origin, but it's this final segment where all the pieces are put into place. Frankly, all the villains in Super Paper Mario are fantastic characters. I also love the creepy Mimi and the enigmatic Nastasia, and of course, the "true villain" Dimentio, who ends up betraying Bleck and becomes the actual final boss. They all get a lot of great little moments in this final act too, like O'Chunks and Bowser holding a collapsing ceiling up for each other, Mimi getting mad at Peach for sacrificing herself to save her (this is still the best-written Peach has ever been btw), Bleck begging Mario to "end his game" after being defeated as he feels he has nothing left to live for, and my personal favorite, Nastasia taking a bullet from Dimentio for Bleck despite knowing his heart belongs to Tippi. The dramatic writing here is just incredible. And once Dimentio is defeated, Tippi and Bleck sacrifice themselves to stop the Chaos Heart once and for all, and we get one final moment of catharsis showing the two living happily together. I'm not gonna lie, this is the only time a Mario RPG has made me tear up.

Super Paper Mario's story does so much that it's hard to really articulate how good it is. Not only does it just have a well-crafted plot with an incredibly strong emotional core, but it manages to take the Mario cast in a darker direction in a way that feels earned and natural, and it conveys much of its story solely through the gameplay, and it also has the incredibly sharp, meta, and witty writing you'd expect from a Mario RPG. Super Paper Mario swings for the fences in ways I rarely see from a Nintendo game, and I think it pulls it off incredibly well. If the story didn't land, the whole game wouldn't work, but it absolutely does in my opinion. But on top of that, Super Paper Mario is also deceptively influential. Its style of humor has not only aged perfectly but has gotten more relevant with time, and it really feels like indie games have taken after it just as much as the more credited Earthbound. Undertale is the biggest culprit, it's not hard to notice how similar it is to SPM specifically, between the visuals, character designs, story-telling, writing, and even the music. Just listen to the track "Battle Time" and tell me it doesn't sound even the slightest bit like Toby Fox wrote it. But also look at Omori's white space, or Fez's dimension flipping and overall puzzle design, or the entirety of Underhero. There's an indie spirit to Super Paper Mario and that's really weird to say considering it's a Nintendo game.

Back to the gameplay, Super Paper Mario also has some of the best replay value of any "Mario RPG" since it actually has a postgame! Just beating the campaign is only the tip of the iceberg, there is so much else to do here. There's a few sidequests that can lead you to some entirely optional Pixls including a robot replacement for Tippi. There's an arcade with some surprisingly addictive minigames, several of which use the motion controls. There's a ton of collectible cards, some of which featuring the partners from past Paper Mario games, along with treasure maps that lead you to even more secrets. There's not one but two Pit Of 100 Trials, a recipe log like in the previous game, and you can even return to Sammer's Kingdom to finish what you were doing before the world got destroyed. I love how Super Paper Mario just lets you run around the entire world after the events of the story, rather than just booting you back to right before the final boss. It's something more RPGs should do.

As for the presentation, Super Paper Mario goes for an artstyle unlike anything else in the series. Mario and the gang are pretty much ripped straight out of TTYD, but the world of Flipside boasts a unique digital art aesthetic that still looks quite fresh to this day. Not only is it just really clean and visually-appealing, but there's a ton of little details that sell you on the game being played on a fictional computer, like a mouse dragging over Mario every time he flips dimension, or all the mathematical equations floating in the sky. There's a strong usage of minimalism too, particularly in the bleaker locations like the aforementioned World Of Nothing and Castle Bleck. But even better than the visuals is the incredible music. Super Paper Mario goes for a similar techno style to TTYD, but it's slightly more eclectic, slightly more diverse, and a lot more emotionally-charged. Super's OST has everything from catchy level themes (Lineland Road, Gloam Valley, The Open Plane, Gap Of Crag, Sammer's Kingdom), to tense dungeon themes (Merlee's Mansion, Fort Francis, Floro Sapien Caverns, and Castle Bleck), to banging boss themes (Fracktail Battle, A Powerful Enemy Emerges, Brobot Battle, King Croacus, Battle Time, The Ultimate Show), to emotional gut punches like Bounding Across Time, and I still feel like I'm leaving tracks out. Super Paper Mario's soundtrack is an emotional rollercoaster that easily stands as my second favorite in the series behind The Origami King.

Super Paper Mario is an extremely raw game, in a way that Nintendo games rarely are. It's flawed, its visuals are a patchwork of new assets and repurposed ones from previous games, the soundtrack is a bit harsher and more unconventional, and the story goes to some really dark places, but it's that rawness that left such an incredible impact. There's still nothing else like Super Paper Mario, it's got so much soul. The story is engrossing and beautifully told, the gameplay mechanics are inventive and never lose their luster, the soundtrack is phenomenal, and it offers so much that I was able to fill over 10 paragraphs worth of praise and still feel like I left things out. Super Paper Mario is a special game, and it gave me so much more appreciation for what gaming as a medium can accomplish in terms of story-telling.