Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Nintendo Switch)

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Information
Developer(s)	Intelligent Systems
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Series	Paper Mario
Release date	May 23, 2024
Genre(s)	Role-playing game
Ratings	CERO: A ESRB: Everyone (E) PEGI: 3+
Platform(s)	Nintendo Switch
Media	Nintendo Switch cartridge
Navigation
Predecessor	Paper Mario: The Origami King (2020)

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a role-playing game for the Nintendo Switch. It is a remake of the Nintendo GameCube game of the same name. The release date was announced on Mario Day 2024 and released on May 23, 2024.

Changes

Overall

• Most assets have been updated.
• Characters now have a "cardstock" appearance to them.
• Certain characters will have different sounds while dialogue is showing, such as Koops having Koopa-like noises.
• Partners can now face away from the camera.
• New Battle Master toads helping you practice battle skills.
• The Partners have now been given extra dialogue and animations.
  • Mario and the other characters (other than the partners) have more expressions and extra animations as well.
• Mario no longer loses coins whenever he runs from battle.
• Mario earns coins from defeating bosses or battles in the Pit of 100 Trials known as a Clear Bonus, a feature that first appears in Paper Mario: Sticker Star.
• The fast travel system in Rogueport Underground has been completely redone. Instead of it being two rooms with warp pipes in them, it is now one giant room where the Warp Pipes appear after Mario has visited the location that has one. This also helps cuts down on the backtracking of the search for General White twice.
  • In addition, there is a Warp Pipe that leads directly from the main plaza of Rogueport to the room with the Warp Pipes.
  • The player can now fast travel to Glitzville, Twilight Town, and Fahr Outpost, which previously couldn't be done in the original game.
• A fast travel system has now been added to Chapter 4 cutting down the infamous backtracking from the original game. There is a Warp Pipe located inside of a house beside the Item Shop where it can be only accessed by destroying a large block blocking access to the Warp Pipe in the Creepy Steeple. However, the player must wait until they get into the room with Doopliss' pet parrot to utilize it.
• Both Prince Mush and Whacka-who were originally just background characters-are both now hidden super bosses. Prince Mush can be fought anytime after Jolene's trouble is completed, while Whacka can only be fought by whacking him 7 times in Keelhaul Key, beating both the Shadow Queen and Bonetail, and doing the Pit of 100 Trials a second time.

Gameplay mechanics

• The player can now see whenever Mario and his partners are guarding allowing them to visually see when they guard (a trait that has been adopted from the later Paper Mario games starting with Paper Mario: Sticker Star).
• During the fight with Doopliss on Twilight Trail, Doopliss can now damage Mario while Mario cannot damage him back (in the original, Mario and Doopliss were unable to damage each other at all).
• When Mario levels up, all of his partners get their health refilled, instead of just the active partner.
• When a partner dies in battle, their HP will be set to 1 after the battle.
• Mario no longer shakes the bushes to inspect them. Instead, Mario must whack them with his hammer.
• Partner hints have been added. By pressing the ZL button, one of Mario's partners will now give the player advice on what to do next. During the main story, this will usually be Goombella unless there is a certain puzzle requiring a specific partner. During the postgame, partner hints will have various partners give Mario ideas on what to do next.
• The action command for Power Bounce is harder to execute, with the fourth bounce being frame perfect.

Other

• At the end of a chapter, the game will say "CLEARED" instead of "END OF CHAPTER".
• When hitting a save block, the game will no longer ask you if you are sure you want to save and will just save right away.
  • Also, after completing a chapter, the game no longer gives the player the option to save before going to Princess Peach and Bowser's sections. It, instead, autosaves between the interludes.
• When guarding / superguarding, the game will no longer say 'Nice' and 'Great", but instead 'Guard' and 'Superguard'
• A few locations, characters, etc. have been renamed:
  • Rogueport Sewers is known as Rogueport Underground.
  • The Shadow Sirens are now known as "The Three Shadows."
  • Riddle Tower is now called the "Palace of Shadow Tower."
• In the RDM forms, it no longer lists the ages of the characters that were involved in a certain article.
• You can no longer name your save file, much like every Paper Mario game since Paper Mario: Sticker Star.
• The dialogue was translated to be more faithful, matching the script from the Japanese version. For example, the Japanese dialogue implied that Vivian is transgender during a playthrough, but this statement isn't seen in the German and English releases. Despite that, the translators for the game included this implication in the Nintendo Switch version internationally.

Trivia

• The game was released on May 23, 2024, a Thursday, while most Nintendo games release on Fridays; the last Mario game to not release on a Friday was Luigi's Mansion 3, which released on October 31st, 2019.
  • Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, a game which had its release date revealed in the same video, was also released on a Thursday.
• Much like Super Mario RPG, the cover art is based off the original Japanese box art.
• This is one of very few Mario games where the title screen changes throughout the game (as it updates whenever Mario gains a new partner). Another Mario game that has notably done this is Mario Party where the title screen changes depending which character won the previous board.

Gallery

To view Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Nintendo Switch)'s image gallery, click here.