paper mario the thousand year door nintendo gamecube rom

Paper mario the thousand year door nintendo gamecube rom series#

Soon the daring duo are scouring the underbelly of Hoodlum Town in search of the Thousand Year Door, which can only be opened once Mario has collected the seven Star Stones. Christina, inevitably, joins Mario's party, and the pair set off - first to find out what happened to Princess Peach (short version: nobody knows), and secondly to rendezvous with Christina's dopey professor, a man who can help them on their quest. Fortunately for Mario though, his enemies' vast numbers give him and Christina a chance to slip out and scarper up the stairs and into town, while a sea of frothing white henchmen struggle to beat up whatever it is that remains in their midst.Ĭhristina, it turns out, is a student at the local university studying archaeology, and it quickly transpires that they're both keen to get their hands on the Legendary Treasure, if only to find out what it is. Having taken down his enemy though, Mario and his newfound friend Christina are set upon by a screen-filling horde of minions - literally hundreds in fact - and look done for. Mario, upstanding gent and renowned hero that he is, blunders accidentally into their midst and finds himself thrown into battle. However there is some commotion up ahead - a young goomba is being accosted by a rather red-faced and rotund fellow with some dodgy milk bottle shades and his band of square-headed minions. Stepping off the jetty though, there's no sign of the Princess.

Having said his goodbyes to his brother, Mario sets off - and when the captain of his ship rouses him on the other side of the opening credits, Hoodlum Town is indeed in sight. She encloses a treasure map, and encourages Mario to head along and join her. She's in a place called Hoodlum Town - home more or less exclusively to undesirables - where she reports that she's on the trail of a magical bounty called the Legendary Treasure.

It's a letter from Princess Peach, he tells Mario. (Okay so it's not really anybody's reason for being here, but how about you let us earn our keep, eh?) At the outset of the game, housewives' favourite Luigi strolls outside and collects the mail from a flying koopa. Pulp Fictionįirst, let's tackle everyone's reason for being here - the plot. The latter in particular has - and will continue to - win plaudits for demanding a bit of skill as well as strategy. What makes it interesting compared to, say, Final Fantasy is that it doesn't take itself very seriously at all - instead it delights in silly characters, daft jokes (particularly in-jokes - the most renowned being the way everybody recognises Mario but nobody's even heard of Luigi), and above all rewarding and engaging puzzles and combat.

The 'Paper' part of the name is down to the graphical approach, which involves cutout character models, page-turn-style screen wipes and fades and all sorts of other paper-related ideas borne out in a 3D engine that pretends to be 2D. Paper Mario 2 is a fairly simple RPG with a turn-based battle system.

To begin with though, let's recap what we're dealing with. And, rather more gratifyingly, the intricacies the battle system - so often the make-or-break factor in many people's RPG love lives, and so often close to infallible in these Nintendo titles. But, having dealt with the important issues - how the save system works, which Japanese characters can be arranged to resemble English words on the naming screen - we managed to struggle through the first few hours and get something of a handle on the plot. Picking up a Japanese RPG is always a bit of a challenge when your knowledge of the language begins and ends with Yes and No, so we certainly wouldn't recommend any eager beavers in the audience to jump the gun and order it now. Having spent a few hours with the Japanese version - already a chart-topper in the Far East - we've few doubts that it deserves the publicity. And with Paper Mario 2: The Thousand Year Door, favoured first-party Intelligent Systems is arguably working on the first 'highly anticipated' title of the bunch. Super Mario RPG, the original Square/Nintendo crossover, laid the foundations - but it was latter day titles like Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi that developed the concept into something indispensable.

Paper mario the thousand year door nintendo gamecube rom series#

may have a handle on the serious RPG, but - ignoring green tights and Master Swords - over the past few years Nintendo's quiet little series of quirky Mario-led role-players has done more to excite the minds of its fans than anything on the same format.