20 years ago, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door became one of the best games on the Nintendo GameCube. Now, 20 years later, in the twilight years of the Nintendo Switch, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is back, almost exactly how you remembered it.
While the Paper Mario series has been through a rollercoaster of releases that experimented with different genres and concepts, most fans tend to agree that The Thousand-Year Door was where the series peaked. It makes sense then that if Nintendo was going to drum up interest in the Nintendo Switch when eyes are already clearly looking at their next console they would bring back a fan-favorite classic that a new generation hasn’t had the opportunity to play yet. Overall, Nintendo Switch Online is doing a respectable job at keeping Nintendo classics playable to modern-day gamers, the GameCube has been forgotten for years, its library neglected except for the biggest titles.
And Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a big title, in more ways than one. It’s a JRPG that tasks Mario with traveling to the seedy city of Rougeport at the request of Princess Peach who, while on vacation, discovered a treasure map that leads to items known as the Crystal Stars. According to legend, the seven Crystal Stars are needed to open up a magical door that has been lost to time in the subterranean sewers of Rougeport. No one knows what’s inside it though. Treasure? A monster? Nothing? No one is certain, but the evil X-Nauts have kidnapped Princess Peach and are searching for the Crystal Stars themselves, so it’s up to Mario and the friends he makes on his quest to find the Crystal Stars, defeat the X-Nauts, and rescue Princess Peach.
Just to make sure we all put this into perspective, the 2024 Switch release of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a remaster, not a remake. I bring this up because this is still, in essence, the same game from 2004, just updated with some better visuals and more modern sensibilities. To most newcomers, none of the changes are really going to make that much of a difference, but to returning fans like myself, do these updates make this the definitive version of the game?
To start, the core gameplay loop of The Thousand-Year Door is still the same. From the hub town of Rougeport, you’ll travel to a new level, figure out where the Crystal Star is, go through a dungeon and solve some puzzles within them, defeat the boss at the end, and then add another Crystal Star to your collection. It’s a tried and true format, but what separates The Thousand-Year Door from other JRPGs is the aesthetics. The game looks wonderful, from the psychedelic Boggly Woods to the glamour and energy of the Glitz Pit. Characters, despite being made of paper, all have unique facial animations and body language, way more than the original game.
It should be noted that the game does run at a consistent 30 FPS as compared to the original’s 6 FPS. I personally don’t care all that much about framerates, but even in the early hours of the game, I noticed that it felt just a tad slower than the original game. My memories of the 2004 version are still relatively fresh – I played it late last year – so seeing characters move slightly slower was noticeable, as were some transition screens that weren’t in the original. Also, while I’m just saying my criticisms of the remaster, Mario feels ever so slightly stiffer and combat encounters are just a little bit slower because of that framerate change.
Keep in mind that none of that makes this remaster bad. In fact, given that those are the only real criticisms I had with what the remaster changed, I think it just goes to show how polished of a package this is. Exploration with Mario is never too complicated, allowing anyone to enjoy each level. The puzzles are never too taxing and when the game does get a bit convoluted, a newly introduced hint system will help keep players on track and ensure they can reach the end credits.
To do that though, they’ll have to fight over one hundred different unique enemies in what is perhaps the best combat system any Mario RPG has ever had. You’ll enter combat with one of seven different partners and by timing your attacks via action commands, such as hitting A when jumping on an enemy or pressing a button combination, you’ll damage enemies. You’ll have to defend against their attacks as well, but you have a risk vs reward system where you can choose to guard against enemy attacks with the A button, which will reduce the damage you take slightly, or try to Superguard, where by pressing the B button at the right time, you’ll repel the enemy’s attack and damage them instead. The window for it is tight, but it keeps you fully engaged with combat.
Even in combat, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door absolutely sells its presentation. Each encounter takes place on a stage with an active audience, one that will grow larger the more you level up. The audience can give you Star Power to pull off Special Moves, throw items at you, or interact in the fights, giving each combat encounter the potential to feel distinct. Then again, with how much you’re able to customize your load-out, such as which partners to bring into battle. The customization goes even further when you level up and have to decide whether to increase your health, Flower Points, which enables you to use stronger moves, or Badge Points, which will allow you to equip Badges that give a variety of new abilities.
Over the course of 20-25 hours, players will become immersed in the streets of Rougeport and grow to like this seeder look at the Mushroom Kingdom. It all just feels so distinct in a way that modern RPGs or Mario games don’t. In a lot of ways, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door seems like a conventional RPG because its mechanics are very beginner-friendly and the game isn’t too taxing on the whole, but that simplicity is exactly what makes it so engaging. I don’t have to worry about grinding to defeat bosses or farming random materials to craft better weapons. All I have to worry about is making it from Point A to Point B and being a part of this silly world where I can join a pirate crew, solve a murder mystery on a train, or listen to how nearly everybody hates Luigi.
It’s memorable is what I’m saying.
As far as new features go in this remaster, they range from minor quality-of-life adjustments to neat yet little inclusions. Backtracking has been made a lot simpler in certain levels, making chapters like Chapter 4 not as much of a slog as they used to be. There’s an art gallery and sound gallery, which is nice, but to unlock the art gallery you need to find every Star Piece in a given chapter, which is a bit much. There is an updated translation, which has made this version of the game more in line with the original Japanese version, including making Vivian canonically trans like in the original Japanese release. You can also switch between the remaster’s updated soundtrack and the 2004 original at a moment’s notice, which is cool for those like myself who prefer the original game’s soundtrack.
I do wish that some things were at least slightly altered from the original release in order to make certain segments better. Like I said before, Chapter 4 is still a low point of the game and instead of trying to make it better and fix it, the folks at Intelligent Systems have opted to just make it quicker to complete rather than address the core problems. Also, the sidequests you access in the Trouble Center are still mediocre, usually just having Mario complete a tedious fetch quest. I can understand not wanting to completely remove those sidequests, but the least Intelligent Systems could have done was allow players to accept multiple quests from the Trouble Center instead of one at a time.
But again, most of the criticisms I have don’t do much to change the fact that this is a stellar remaster of an already great game. While the original version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door still has a special place in my heart, I can’t dispute that this Switch remaster is the definitive version of the game. All of the charm that made players fall in love with it back in 2004 is still here and the gameplay is still as simple yet brilliant as it was back then. There’s a steady difficulty curb and while the few new additions to this game are quality-of-life changes, not fundamentally altering what was there originally was probably for the best. In a year where major game releases for the console are few and far between, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is, unsurprisingly, going to be one of the best games on the Switch this year.
