The Paper Mario series is a group of video games that is part of the larger Mario franchise. It was created by Intelligent Systems and released by Nintendo. The games mix elements from role-playing, action-adventure, and puzzle genres. Players control a paper-cutout version of Mario, often with other characters, as they work to defeat the main villain. The series includes six main games and one spin-off. The first game, Paper Mario (2000), was released for the Nintendo 64. The most recent game is a 2024 remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2004), which was released for the Nintendo Switch.
The original Paper Mario was planned as a follow-up to Super Mario RPG (1996), a game made by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. However, changes during development led to the game becoming a standalone title called Mario Story in Japan. Early games in the series were praised by critics, but Kensuke Tanabe, a developer, wanted each game to have different gameplay styles. This caused the series to shift from role-playing to action-adventure over time, though some role-playing features remained in later games.
The first two games, Paper Mario and The Thousand-Year Door, were highly praised for their stories, characters, and unique gameplay. When Paper Mario: Sticker Star was released in 2012, some players criticized the game for changes in genre, the removal of fictional races, and less original character designs. However, the game still received praise for its writing, music, and paper-themed visuals. Super Paper Mario is the best-selling game in the series, with 4.3 million copies sold by 2019. The series as a whole has sold 12.54 million copies.
Several Paper Mario games were nominated for awards. The Thousand-Year Door won "Role Playing Game of the Year" at the 2005 Interactive Achievement Awards. Super Paper Mario won "Outstanding Role Playing Game" at the 12th Satellite Awards in 2007. Sticker Star won "Handheld Game of the Year" at the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards in 2012. The Origami King was nominated for three awards, the most for any Paper Mario game. The first two games in the series inspired other indie games, such as Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling. Elements from Paper Mario also appear in the Super Smash Bros. series.
Gameplay
In the series, Mario is given a mission to explore the Mushroom Kingdom or a similar world. Each game divides the world into areas that players can explore. These areas include puzzles and interactive elements, such as obstacles that Mario must hit with his hammer to complete tasks and move forward in the story. The locations look like they are made of paper and contain coins and other collectibles, such as hidden trophies. There are also non-player characters (NPCs) that Mario can speak to. All games except Super Paper Mario use a turn-based combat system, where Mario and opponents take turns attacking each other.
The first two games, Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, include features common in role-playing video games (RPGs). Mario meets allies who join him on his journey. These allies help complete tasks and fight enemies, with combat similar to other RPGs. Players can perform regular attacks by pressing a button at the right time or use special attacks, which are stronger but require flower points (FP)—a game statistic. When enemies are defeated, experience points (called Star Points or SP in the game) are earned, making Mario and his allies stronger. Upgrades for special attacks can be found in the game world.
Super Paper Mario, the third game, changes how the game is played. Unlike the first two games, it does not use a turn-based combat system. Instead, Mario fights enemies in real-time while moving through the game world. Experience points are still earned by defeating enemies. While Mario does not fight with unique partners, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Bowser can be played as part of Mario’s team. Allies called Pixls, which provide abilities for combat and exploration, can also be summoned.
Since Paper Mario: Sticker Star, the games have focused more on action-adventure gameplay. Features like experience points, allies, complex stories, and fictional races have been reduced. Instead, the games emphasize puzzle-solving, a new experience point system, and combat that involves strategy and puzzle-like challenges.
Games
Paper Mario is a role-playing video game (RPG) released for the Nintendo 64 in Japan in 2000 and worldwide in 2001. It was later released again on the iQue Player in 2004, the Wii Virtual Console in 2007, the Wii U Virtual Console in 2015, and via Nintendo Classics in 2021. In the game, Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach and steals the seven Star Spirits and the Star Rod to become invincible. Mario must rescue the Star Spirits, defeat Bowser, and save the Mushroom Kingdom.
Gameplay involves Mario and his allies solving puzzles, with challenges often relying on characters’ special abilities. Mario meets new partners as the game progresses. In battles, Mario and his allies use abilities that require FP. Other abilities can be found in the overworld and used in combat.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is an RPG released for the GameCube in 2004. A remake of the game was announced for the Nintendo Switch in September 2023 and released on May 23, 2024.
The game takes place in Rogueport, a town where Mario and Peach find a locked portal believed to lead to a lost kingdom’s treasure. Soon after, Peach is kidnapped by the X-Nauts, who want to open the portal. Peach sends Mario a message, telling him to find seven Crystal Stars to locate the treasure. During this quest, Mario becomes cursed, gaining abilities like folding into a paper airplane or boat. Battles happen on a stage in front of an audience. If Mario performs well, the audience throws helpful items or harms enemies. If he performs poorly, the audience leaves or harms Mario.
Super Paper Mario is an action role-playing platform game released for the Wii in 2007. In the game, a villain named Count Bleck summons the Chaos Heart to destroy the universe and remake it. Mario teams up with Peach, Luigi, Bowser, and a new ally named Tippi to collect eight Pure Hearts and stop Count Bleck.
Unlike earlier games, Super Paper Mario focuses more on platforming than role-playing. Mario can switch between 2D and 3D views, revealing hidden elements. Allies called Pixls help Mario, such as Thoreau, who lets Mario pick up and throw objects. Battles happen in real-time in the overworld, and Mario earns experience points after winning.
Paper Mario: Sticker Star is a cross-genre game released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2012. The Mushroom Kingdom celebrates the Sticker Fest, where residents wish on the Sticker Comet, and their wishes are granted by Royal Stickers inside the comet. Bowser destroys the comet, scattering the six Royal Stickers. Mario, with help from a sticker named Kersti, searches for the lost stickers to fix the comet.
Sticker Star’s gameplay uses stickers found in the world, bought with coins, or given by NPCs. Mario’s abilities depend on stickers, such as a Jump Sticker that lets him jump on enemies. Other stickers, called Thing Stickers, resemble real-world objects and can be used for attacks or puzzles. Mario can also flatten the environment to reveal stickers and secrets.
Paper Mario: Color Splash is a cross-genre game released for the Wii U in 2016. Mario and Peach find a colorless Toad, leading them to Prism Island. They meet Huey, who explains that six Big Paint Stars, which give the island color, were scattered by Bowser.
Color Splash keeps some gameplay elements from Sticker Star. Mario uses a paint hammer with red, yellow, and blue paint. Coloring objects in the world rewards items like coins. The Wii U GamePad lets players trace holes in the paper environment to reveal secrets, called the “Cutout” ability. Combat uses cards to choose actions, similar to Sticker Star.
Paper Mario: The Origami King is a cross-genre game released for the Nintendo Switch in 2020. Mario and Luigi find Toad Town abandoned and discover Peach brainwashed and folded into origami by King Olly. Other residents, including Bowser, are also folded. King Olly covers the castle with five streamers, and Mario, with help from Olivia, destroys the streamers to defeat Olly.
Unlike Sticker Star and Color Splash, The Origami King brings back RPG elements. Mario has allies, though their roles are simpler than in earlier games. He uses the 1000-Fold Arms ability to tear parts of the environment and reveal secrets. He also uses a bag of confetti to fill empty spaces. Battles take place on a circular field divided into rings, and players rotate the rings to line up enemies and deal damage.
Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, also called Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam Bros. in Europe and Australia, is an RPG released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2015. It combines the Paper Mario series with the Mario & Luigi series. In the game, Luigi accidentally knocks over a book, merging the two universes and spreading Paper Mario characters across the Mushroom Kingdom. Two Bowsers from both universes team up to kidnap both Peaches. The game focuses on characters from mainline Mario games and includes only one character from either series, Starlow.
Although Paper Jam is a crossover, its gameplay is more similar to the Mario & Luigi series. Players control Mario and Luigi, who use their usual abilities, and Paper Mario, who uses paper-inspired moves like folding into a shuriken or stacking copies of himself for attacks.
Development and history
Intelligent Systems was created after Tohru Narihiro was hired by Nintendo in the 1980s to transfer games from the Famicom Disk System to cartridges. Narihiro later developed successful games in the Wars and Fire Emblem series, which helped him grow his company by adding more artists and developers.
Super Mario RPG, released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), was the first Mario role-playing game. It was developed by Square, which used new gameplay ideas, like timed button presses to increase damage in battles, to help fans learn to enjoy the genre. Although Nintendo wanted Square to make another RPG, Square later partnered with Sony Interactive Entertainment to create Final Fantasy VII for the original PlayStation. Instead, Nintendo hired Intelligent Systems to make an RPG for their new console, the Nintendo 64. Development began soon after the console was released in Japan in 1996. The game, led by Shigeru Miyamoto and a team of about 20 people, was originally planned as a sequel to Super Mario RPG called Super Mario RPG 2. It used a similar art style to its predecessor and was meant to be released on the 64DD, a disk drive for the Nintendo 64. Naohiko Aoyama, the game’s art designer, changed the graphics to a paper-like style because he thought players might prefer "cute" 2D designs instead of 3D graphics. It took four years to develop and was released in August 2000 near the end of the Nintendo 64’s lifespan, as the GameCube was about to launch. The game was called Mario Story in Japan and Paper Mario in North America.
At the 2003 Game Developers Conference, Nintendo announced a direct sequel to Paper Mario called The Thousand-Year Door. A playable demo was shown at E3 2004, and the game was released worldwide later that year as The Thousand-Year Door internationally and Paper Mario RPG in Japan. By the time it was released, another Mario RPG series, Mario & Luigi, was created for Nintendo’s handheld consoles. The first game in the series, Superstar Saga, was developed by AlphaDream and released for the Game Boy Advance in 2003. Kensuke Tanabe, who supervised The Thousand-Year Door, and assistant producer Risa Tabata were inspired by Miyamoto to add new gameplay ideas to make the series more fun. In a 2020 interview, Tanabe said it was hard to keep motivation when all games in the series felt the same, so they tried making bigger changes in each game’s design and gameplay.
The series changed over time to reach new audiences. For Super Paper Mario, game director Ryota Kawade wanted to surprise fans with new ideas not seen before. When the idea of switching between 2D and 3D gameplay was proposed, Tanabe approved and agreed it would work better as an action-adventure game instead of an RPG. Real-time combat was also added to fit this idea. Despite these changes, Tanabe asked writers to keep the story similar to a role-playing game. Super Paper Mario was announced for the GameCube at E3 2006 but was later moved to the Wii and released in April 2007. Since it was designed for a GameCube controller, it did not fully use the Wii’s motion controls.
Trailers for Sticker Star were shown at E3 2010, E3 2011, and Nintendo World 2011, but the game’s title was not announced until E3 2012. It was released later that year. Shigeru Miyamoto, who was no longer the series producer, asked developers to use existing characters from the Mario franchise instead of creating new ones. Nintendo’s intellectual property team enforced this rule for future games. He also wanted to change the combat system from The Thousand-Year Door and remove most story elements based on early fan feedback.
Paper Jam’s development was inspired by Sticker Star. AlphaDream wanted to add a third button to control a third character in their new game and thought Paper Mario would be a good fit. Every game in the series from Color Splash onward has a white paper outline around Mario; the developers of Paper Jam needed to make characters from different series look distinct.
As the Wii U had more powerful graphics than previous Nintendo consoles, development for Color Splash focused on the console’s visuals and controls. Artists made the graphics look like paper and craft materials, and the Wii U GamePad influenced combat because developers found motion controls fun to use. Producer Kensuke Tanabe limited character design variety and avoided original characters out of respect for Shigeru Miyamoto. The game was announced in a Nintendo Direct presentation in early 2016 but received negative reviews because fans were upset the series shifted to an action-adventure style like Sticker Star. Tanabe said Mario & Luigi would replace Paper Mario as the RPG series, and Tabata noted Paper Mario would focus more on puzzle-solving and humor to differentiate the two. The game was released in October 2016 and became the lowest-selling game in the series, possibly due to the Wii U’s low sales and the Nintendo Switch’s announcement before its release. Paper Jam was the last game in the Mario & Luigi series made by AlphaDream before the company went bankrupt in 2019.
This game is an action-adventure. Nintendo also has another series called Mario & Luigi RPG, and to keep these two series separate, Paper Mario games focus more on non-RPG elements.
Paper Mario: The Origami King was planned for the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. in early September 2020 but was instead announced in mid-May 2020. Soon after the game’s ROM was leaked, it was released worldwide in July 2020. The Origami King is the first game in the series without Shigeru Miyamoto’s direct involvement. Despite featuring iconic characters and returning allies, critics were disappointed by their limited roles in the story and gameplay. The game includes large open worlds instead of the linear levels used in earlier games.
In a 2020 interview with Video Games Chronicle, Tanabe said he pays attention to general criticism but ensures casual players and new fans are not ignored. The Origami King focused heavily on puzzle-solving because Tanabe could not satisfy all fans, especially veterans and newcomers. He used origami as a new paper-like theme to introduce fresh ideas. Tanabe explained the game’s writing was kept simple to appeal to different ages and cultures. He avoided complex plots because they “led the game away from the Mario universe” and instead tied different locations to memorable events. He also noted that since Sticker Star, it has been impossible to change Mario characters or create new ones connected to the Mario universe.
On September 14, 2023, Nintendo announced a remake of The Thousand-Year Door, which will be released on the Nintendo Switch.
Reception and legacy
Paper Mario received good reviews when it was released. People liked how it combined roleplaying, platforming, and elements from the Mario franchise. The game’s writing and characters were especially praised. Magazines like Nintendo Power and GameSpot listed it as one of the best games on the Nintendo 64. In 2006, Nintendo Power ranked it as the 63rd best game on a Nintendo console in its "Top 200 Games" list.
The Thousand-Year Door is often considered one of the best games in the series. Reviewers praised its story, characters, and new features like the paper-based game mechanics. Eurogamer called the story whimsical. The game won "Console Role-Playing Game of the Year" at the 8th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.
Super Paper Mario generally received positive reviews, even though it changed from the traditional RPG style. Many praised its dimension-changing concept, but some criticized the gameplay as underdeveloped. Some reviewers found the story too complicated, though most appreciated the writing and humor. The game was often listed as one of the best on the Wii.
Sticker Star received mixed reviews. Critics liked the graphics, world size, and characters, but disliked the lack of variety in character designs and the sticker mechanics. Some found the stickers engaging, but others criticized them for having only one solution per puzzle and requiring players to backtrack. Fans were upset about the removal of a strategic combat system.
When Color Splash was announced, fans criticized it for continuing the action-adventure style. A petition was created to cancel the game, but it received mostly positive reviews after release. Reviewers praised the graphics and soundtrack, but criticized the simple combat system and lack of original character designs.
The Origami King is the latest game in the series. It added back some RPG elements and removed unwanted features, but kept the action-adventure format. Reviewers praised its interactive elements, writing, and worldbuilding, including hidden Toads with humorous dialogue. The combat system had mixed reviews—some liked its strategy, while others found it difficult and unrewarding. Some critics said the character designs were less charming than earlier games.
Games released after Sticker Star faced criticism for removing RPG elements like the XP system, original characters, and other unique features from earlier games.
The Paper Mario series has inspired other games. Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling, created by Jose Fernando Gracia, was influenced by the first two Paper Mario games. Nicolas Lamarche, who is working on Born of Bread, said the series inspired his focus on RPG gameplay. Other games inspired by Paper Mario include Scrap Story, Seahorse Saga, and Tinykin.
Paper Mario was the best-selling game in its first week in Japan and other regions, selling 1.3 million copies. It is one of the best-selling games on the Nintendo 64. The Thousand-Year Door sold over 1.3 million copies in Japan and became the 13th best-selling game on the GameCube. Super Paper Mario sold over 2 million copies worldwide by 2008 and is the best-selling Paper Mario game to date, with about 4.3 million copies sold by 2019. Sticker Star sold around 400,000 copies in Japan by 2012 and nearly 2 million worldwide by 2013. Color Splash sold over 60,000 copies in Japan and nearly 1.2 million worldwide by 2020. The Origami King had the best launch in the series, selling 3.05 million copies by December 2020 and becoming one of the best-selling games on the Nintendo Switch. By December 2022, it had sold 3.47 million copies. The remake of The Thousand-Year Door sold 1.74 million copies in its first month and reached 2.06 million copies by December 2024.
Various Paper Mario elements appear in the Super Smash Bros. series. The "Paper Mario" stage, which folds into areas based on games like Sticker Star and The Thousand-Year Door, first appeared in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U in 2014. It later appeared in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2018. Ultimate also includes "spirits," which are collectibles based on characters from the series. Three characters from The Origami King—King Olly, Olivia, and Princess Peach—were added in August 2020.