Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GameCube)

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Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Pmttyd.jpg
Publisher:	Nintendo
Developer:	Intelligent Systems
Alternative Title:	Paper Mario 2
Release date:	JP: 22/July/2004 NA: 11/October/2004 EU: 12/November/2004 AU:
Genre:	Role Playing Game
Number of Players:	1
Rating:	ESRB - Everyone (E) PEGI/ELSPA - 3+ CERO - CERO-rating
Platform:	Nintendo GameCube
Media:	Mini-DVD
Online Functions:	No
Amazon:	UK US De Fr Jp Ca

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is the sequel to the Nintendo 64 video game Paper Mario, and is the fourth in the series of Mario role-playing game titles that includes Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.

Story

Peach is enjoying a vacation with her loyal servant, Toadsworth, when a mysterious creature captures her. The one clue is a treasure map she had sent to Mario earlier. When our hero hears news of her capture, he follows the map's clues to the Star Crystals, strange artifacts of unknown power. Complicating the matter are three veiled figures plotting the return of the great shadow witch, an army of strange new enemies and one angry Bowser, who embarks on an adventure of his own to find out who's cutting into his villain business.

Gameplay

Unique elements

The Thousand-Year Door has some unique elements which owe to its very singular visual style. The graphics consist of an interesting mixture of three dimensional environments and two dimensional characters, who look as if they were made of paper, hence the name. At various points, Mario is "cursed" with four different abilities which enable special field moves, and which are based on the paper theme. These include:

Becoming a paper airplane and flying for short distances
Turning sideways to become as thin as a piece of paper
Rolling into a tube to duck under low-hanging objects
Folding into a boat to cross water

Another example of this is after flipping a switch in Petal Meadows, a bridge appears by way of a flipbook-like animation, each "page" causing a new piece of the bridge to appear. While hard to describe, it is immediately recognizable as though you were actually thumbing through a flipbook.

Battle system

Battles in The Thousand-Year Door borrow heavily from the original Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. The turn-based system, in which players select an attack, defense, or item from a menu, is augmented by timed button presses that, when performed correctly, can result in substantial attack or defense bonuses. In contrast to both Paper Mario and Superstar Saga, battles in The Thousand-Year Door happen on a stage in front of an audience. As the characters perform more advanced attacks, the audience grows, and Star Power is awarded based on the size of the audience. Having Star Power in turn lets the player perform Star Power moves. The size of the auditorium in which battles take place is affected by the fame ranking, which increases every ten levels up until Level 40. The player begings with a fame ranking of "Rising Star" (50 seats), then "B-List Star" (100 seats), then "A-List Star" (150 seats) and finally "Superstar" (200 seats).

Defeating enemies awards various numbers of Star Points to Mario; for every 100 points, Mario is able to level up, choosing between three character statistic enhancements. Selecting Health (HP) adds the specified number of points to Mario's maximum Heart Points, allowing him to last longer in battle; opting for Flower Points (FP) gives Mario additional ability to do special attacks or defenses; and finally selecting Badge Points (BP) increases the number of badges you can equip at any given time by increasing Mario's total BP.

Badges

Badges are found or bought in various spots. The character Dazzle will trade you Star Pieces for badges as well. Equipping a badge can do various things; some badges provide boosts in defense, some provide additional attacks, some increase your character statistics, and others only cause aesthetic changes to the game. There are literally dozens of badges in the game, and each one has a unique power. Each badge (besides aesthetic change badges) takes a certain number of Badge Points, or BP, to equip; as noted above, you increase your total BP by selecting the BP block when levelling up.

Controls

Controls
Button	Overworld	Menu	Battle
A	Jump, Talk, Examine	Confirm	Confirm, Stylish Move, Defend
B	Hammer, skip dialogue	Cancel	Counterattack
X	Use partner ability	(In partner screen) View partner attacks	Attack Crowd
Y	Use paper vehicle tile	Not used	Change battle order
Z	Scroll back dialog, bring up info display	Not used	Not used
L	Not used	Scroll up lists	Not used
R	Paper Mode	Scroll down lists	Not used
Analog Stick	Move Mario	Move Cursor	Move Cursor
D-Pad	↑: Inventory, ←: Partner, →: Badges, ↓: Journal	Move Cursor	Move Cursor
C-Stick	Not used	Scroll up/down description	Not used
Start/Pause	Menu	Exit Menu	Not used