The Great PokeClone-Off Part 1: Visuals

Several months ago, I visited a Gamestop with some friends. It was the first time I’d set foot in a physical game store in over a year. As digital markets like Steam rose in popularity, I cut down on corporeal visits. Soon I made the decision to buy nothing used if I could pay the actual creators, and a second nail flew into that coffin. Now I’m a post-college adult with a day job, several creative hobbies and a backlog of dozens upon dozens of games I already own. Brick and mortar outlets are so far off my radar that Gamestop could start doing trade-ins for human skulls and I wouldn’t notice. On top of that, I’d never visited this particular store. So while waiting for friends to inspect some trading cards, I did what any sensible person would do:

I stripped that whole store down to the god damn marrow.

The result was what I’d like to call The Discount Fifteen. 15 games purchased for 30 US dollars. I dug through mountainous drifts of sports games, shovelware and sports games again (there were a lot of sports games) to find the diamonds in the rough. Or more accurately, the gravel shaped like funny faces in the rough. The games I selected were not all good - though you’d be surprised what Gamestop will let sink to the bottom after an arbitrary amount of years. But even those not “good” were at least interesting, and the first I popped in a console was a game called Spectrobes: Beyond the Portals.

Super Paper Mario Part 4: Writing

Super Paper Mario is a game with flaws. Even the most ardent fans wouldn’t call the game perfect. But when complaints about it arise, there is a common response. There is one element of the game that supposedly makes up for everything else. From the moment you start writing a critique, you can see a vision flash in your mind’s eye, a person countless miles away with fingers poised above a keyboard. If you listen to the whispers on the wind, you can hear their call: writing!

When people complain about Super Paper Mario’s transformation into a platformer, you hear the call: writing! When people moan about Super Paper Mario’s removal of RPG elements, you hear the call: writing! When people whine about Super Paper Mario’s complete absence of difficulty, you hear the call: writing! When people trip over a discarded Super Paper Mario disc, you hear the call: writing! When you stub your toe and Super Paper Mario happens to be in the room, you hear the call: writing! When your dog urinates on the good rug and Super Paper Mario wasn’t in the room at the time but you were kind of half thinking about it in the back of your mind a minute or two before it happened, you hear the call: writing!

An exaggeration, but not as much as you’d think. In my experience, the common defense of the game is not to support the gameplay. The gameplay is dismissed as “good enough” and people gush about how great the writing is to make up for it. And though I can quibble on particulars, I agree. The writing is not some shining savior that absolves every other sin in the game, but it helps a lot. So it’s high time we dissected it, to see what it is that works so well for people.

Super Paper Mario Part 3: Odds and Ends

Greetings yet again, weary web travelers! Sit and gather round the fireside for toasty tales of amateur game analysis. Don’t actually do that though. What, did you bring your laptop on a camping trip? Knock that off, there’s friends to tolerate or s’mores to be swiped! Only reason to bring a laptop while camping is to look up how to avoid a deadly bear mauling. I’ll give you a hint: It’s not by sitting out in the open with a laptop, you doofus. By the time your browser loads “Buzzfeed’s 11 Most Shocking Bear Accidents” the animal will be enjoying it alongside a midnight snack of your succulent flesh.

And what’s the alternative? That you’re started an indoor campfire next to your desktop? I appreciate your dedication to verisimilitude, but this blog isn’t worth a case of fatal arson! At best, it’s worth a few felony misdemeanors and some light insurance fraud. Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yes. Super Paper Mario. We gon’ talk ‘bout it mo’.

Super Paper Mario Part 2: RPG Mechanics

Welcome back, spambots and tumbleweeds that make up my recurring viewers! Last time on our thrilling adventures of hobbyist armchair game blogging, we cracked open Super Paper Mario. We took a break for the more literal minded among you to tape your game discs back together, but now you’re all back, for some reason. Today I’ll be talking about the gameplay unrelated to the old run-and-jump. Specifically RPG elements. So enough intro! As a famous man* once said: “Let’s-a go!”

*Though for the life of me I can’t remember who. I think it might’ve been a wrestler. The Great Gorgonzola or something.

Numbers That Go Up

Super Paper Mario handles RPG elements poorly.

There. We’ve got it out in the open, and now we’re gonna break it down, piece by piece. We’ll start with one of the most basic elements of an RPG: leveling up.

Just don’t level up Resistance, you casual.

Super Paper Mario Part 1: Jumpin and Jammin

Introduction

The first two Paper Mario games are some of my favorites of all time. The first game was a light-hearted storybook adventure with a colorful cast of characters and locations. It created combat that was fairly simple, but in doing so actually drilled down to the essentials for refreshingly minimalistic gameplay. It offered the strategy of turn-based RPGs with none of the unneeded complexity, and an added boost of tactile/timing based challenge.

The second game, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was an improvement on the already excellent original in several ways. The combat received a plethora of small but notable tune-ups, the dialogue was funnier, the plots were more varied, and the soundtrack was phenomenal. The series was an amazing one, and eventually I’ll have to do them justice with their own write-ups here on the blog. Especially since…well, it’d help to keep things positive. You’ll note I said the series was an amazing one.

Genericide Update: Illegal Ear Lending

Friends! Countrymen! Lend me your ears! Or, y’know, don’t. I have nothing important to say. Also, readers need not be citizens of the US to lend me your ears. Out-of-countrymen are also welcome to lend me your ears. But in interest of stimulating my local economy, only countrymen are permitted to lend me the full ear. Foreigners will be limited to lending me their outer ear, no further into the canal than the ear drum. If I catch any illegal immigrants trying to lend me their Cochlea we’re going to have to get the authorities involved.

Villainous

So the Super Paper Mario articles crawls onward, but have been further delayed for a couple reasons. The first is that I haven't found the time to listen to the soundtrack, particularly since my internet has been a cavernous hellhole of agonizing sloth and dropped connections this week. The second is that the hulking three part article is now large enough that it'll need four. I'm not sure how much longer it will be but I don't want to keep actual content withheld so long. In the past, I would sometimes pepper these droughts with short stories I'd written for classes years back. I still have some I've never posted here, so I thought I'd post another. Initially I was going to throw in my opinion on it, but I've decided it's better to let it stand on it's own. Enjoy.

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