Nintendo Wii - Super Paper Mario Review

Nintendo has a bit of a problem here. Their Nintendo Wii machine was a huge success in 2006 but now they need more games. Since the GameCube is deader then Paris Hilton's career Nintendo cancelled the Paper Mario sequel and decided move it over here to the Wii. Nintendo could have easily slapped together another port and charge us 50 bucks (like they did with Mario Party 8 for example) but Super Paper Mario's new features really help make it one of the stand out title's for the system.

In the game's story in the world of Paper Mario almost everyone is relaxing and taking it easy until Mario's old rival King Bowser plans on invading the kingdom and capturing Princess Peach again (like he did thousand times before). Mario and his brother Luigi are just about to take on Bowser when a strange magician called Count Bleck suddenly arrives from an alternate dimension and captures everyone. Mario must travel this new world to save his friends and stop the evil Count from marrying Peach and Bowser. What the heck!?

If you are a fan of the original Paper Mario's you're definitely going to notice a few changes. Your heroes can battle their enemies in real time so that's means if you see a bad guy you can simply jump on it and take away hit points instead of going to a new battle scene like in most Role Playing Games. There are also several new techniques like Mario's ability to jump from the standard 2D view to a freaky 3D perspective to help find secret items, enemies, and more. You can even use the Wii-mote sensor to help search for secret rooms and use magic spells.

As good as the game is there are a few gripes that bug me. When I unlocked more characters and pixel helpers it was annoying that I had to constantly switch between them all the time. Also the story is not only text based if you hate reading in video games but it can also drag on a lot and the game even makes fun of itself for being too long winded.

Although the game doesn't play as fast as a standard Super Mario platformer and the Role Playing element lack the complexity of something like Final Fantasy 834, it still mixes both worlds very well. Super Paper Mario has a funny story, the graphics are colourful, the music was cool, and the different stages here are always changing and never feel boring. If you have a Wii you got to check this out.

Super Paper Mario overall rating: 82/100

For 1 player only
Rated (E) for Everyone
graphics: 7/10
sound: 6/10
gameplay: 9/10
replay: 7/10

-StarSoldier1 2007
(Ryan Genno)