- Tested on Nintendo Switch.
- Code transmitted by the publisher.
- Played a dozen hours to get to midway through the adventure.
- Count 25-30 hours to finish the main adventure.
- Home captures and comparisons from the excellent video of Digital Foundry visible Here.
- I had played and returned the Gamecube episode several times with Ummagumma on a little cathode-ray TV 30 cm that made our entire childhood.
The name of Paper Mario La Porté Millenium evokes for teens of the 2000s the memory of a wild and bold adventure. A step aside from Nintendo towards his flagship franchises with religiously replicated DNA according to the cannons of the genre. Sometimes accused of conservatism (and rightly), Nintendo had with this episode silenced his most fierce critics. It is at Intelligent Systems, founded in 1986 by members of Nintendo R&D1 that this cult title of the Gamecube is owed. Almost a quarter of a century later, what remains of our youthful loves?
From botox to the Mushroom Kingdom
A remarkable fact and sign of Nintendo's interest in the series, this remaster was entrusted to the original studio which had thought and designed the title in the 2000s. A good sign when you know that other games have been given third-party studios not always as experienced. Intelligent Sytems remains one of the two legs of the little artisan who has since his origins rested on this studio first party. The latter was directed until 1995 by the late Gunpei Yokoi, the father of the directional cross and thinker of many licenses and technologies that made the company successful until the tragic death of Gunpei in a car accident. After Super Paper Mario RPG (read our critical) who also got his remaster on Switch, everyone suspected that the next title on the list would be the Gamecube opus, in other words the best of the saga.
Among the new features, the game has a style to pay tribute to the original game to the artistic direction on the margins of the productions of the period. Clearly the developers relied on the graphics engine of Paper Mario: The Origami King (2020) who took on more of his style. At the initial cel-shading, the developers gave a depth effect that added to the 2D elements and to the soft cardboard side of the protagonists, as if they were papier mâché puppets. The resolution has obviously been revised upwards as well as the much warmer colorimetry of this remaster, especially on Oled model. This artistic choice will divide the more diligent fans of the mustachu plumber. What you gain in heat, you sometimes lose it in harmony with associations very (too much?) sliced even of bad taste in places. The game would have been magnified if he had taken advantage of the 3D relief of the 3DS, a console with half-tone success and which signifies the abandonment of this yet dazzling technology once mastered.
Finished with the washed side and brown shades of the Gamecube episode and these good old cathode-ray tubes, the Switch version is particularly bariolated and the elements of the decor as textures have all been redesigned for an artistic direction sometimes closer to 3D than paper effect. Overall interiors are without common measure in terms of detail and precision and beautiful kinematics. However, one loses some of the charm of the original game, which did not demonstrate the same technical generosity and which had to use fireworks to represent the landscapes and characters of the game. For example, clouds and mountains dear to the fungus kingdom lose this designed and minimalistic effect for a more conventional, if not generic approach. It feels like Paper Mario Gamecube was out two years after the incredible Wind Waker whose generous clouds have never left my imagination. If we push the line a bit, this remaster seems a bit like the ass between two chairs, between its original material and the style chosen by Origami King, where Super Mario RPG He seemed more comfortable on his own artistic choices.
The Millennium Gate, a model of cel-shading?
We could almost talk about the golden age of cel-shading since Zelda The Wind Waker who had had the effect of a bomb at his presentation at E3 2002. Then follow titles like incredible Viewtiful Joe (2003), the deluge Killer 7 (2005) or very friendly XIII (2003), as if the wave of cel-shading launched by Jet Set Radio (2000) had become an unstoppable bottom blade. This may seem silly to our youngest readers, but at the time it was a real artistic revolution for the media with all that this implied in terms of public reactions. The detractors of the cel-shading were as numerous as his fervent defenders... A debate that now seems totally sterile where the independent video game exploded all the conceptual and graphic barriers yesterday. Remember this love of the polygon and its eternal promise of realism from which we finally seem to move away today, as if 2D and 3D could finally coexist. (Will we one day be freed from these damn teraflops?)
Regarding the management of lights, shadows as well as reflections, the Switch version does not have to blush the original which it completely dethrones. This remaster is much more dynamic and alive on this side. However, this technical gap is not without consequences. Finish the 60 fps and the game will have to settle for a 30 fps fortunately constant. Hide those framerate jumps that I can't see, the game doesn't sunk for a second and don't move from an iota in terms of fluidity. This meagre concession has, let us be frank for a moment, imperceptible consequences on a game of this acabit. Of course we're not in Street Fighter, but it seemed that the timing of the fighting was too generous. The parades seemed more permissive and easy to realize than in my old memories where I kept in memory a millimetred and sometimes rough game with the player.
A thousand-year game?
While the form of the game has been the subject of remarkable care, despite the few black dots raised above, Intelligent Systems has not dared to thoroughly review the gamedesign of Paper Mario: The Millennium GateOtherwise the game would have been a real remake rather than a simple remaster. And it is on this point that your appreciation will differ according to your expectations. Nearly twenty years after the Gamecube release, were we not entitled to have a full remake when other titles gave rise to increasingly spaced remasters? (Hello Sony!) Unless Nintendo didn't dare touch the raw material without screwing the fans?
A perilous exercise is true, but the author of his lines would not have been against reinvigorating a little more the formula. In the 2000s Paper Mario break the model of the turn by injecting interactivity in its fights, water has since sunk under bridges in the competition as at Nintendo to whom it owes the saga Mario & Luigi. Released in 2003, Suestar Saga was already more lively and interactive in its gameplay possibilities than Paper Mario. Making a synthesis between AlphaDream and Intelligent Systems could have given a little peps to the set. For the old breakers of the RPG, the first ten hours is too timid in terms of bestiary like gameplay possibilities whose novelties are distilled to the dropper. The entry of battles might have been more enjoyable by accelerating the fighting. On the first part of the game, one is too often confronted with the same enemies so at the same parades. Even if the game remains pleasant, short sessions are more recommended to avoid the repetitive side of the skirmishes.
The naughty little Shigeru duck?
If Paper Mario La Porte Millenium has marked the minds as much, it is first for its irreverent tone that we find as is in this version Switch. As in 2000, the texts do not a priori move with a hair like exploration and the unfolding of the title cut between the passages with Mario, those with its unlikely new acolytes like his figures Peach and Bowser. It is the narrative of the game that makes it so unique thanks to a mixture of adventure and second degree where the characters do not hesitate to break the fourth wall. The singularity of Paper Mario La Porte Millenium,it's to reveal upside down the decor that can literally fall at every moment. One can also sneak in profile between small gaps like Mario is as thin as a sheet of paper. It's as much a playful idea as a subversion of the Nintendo world, as if behind its pixels, all this pretty world had its own life independent of the player. As such, the game is an example of artistic direction at the service of narrative.
The seven road partners we meet are now interchangeable at any time and they come to vary combat situations such as the resolution of puzzles. Moreover, they are all completely new in the universe of Nintendo, even though they have been blacklisted since. We must understand that The Millennium Gate is an anomaly in the Nintendo landscape with regard to complex writing and double reading of the script. Since the torch of the franchise to Shigeru Myamoto, the saga had lost much of its superb and its stamp, the unbelievable master and genius of Nintendo arguing that « if a game works very well without a scenario, the latter has no reason to exist », an antipodic philosophy of episode N64 and Gamecube. A step that is readily understood but that makes The Millennium Gate the exception that confirms the rule.
Peach and Love
In passing, anecdote obliges and rather dared at the time, Viviane's secondary character was one of the first transgender characters formalized by Nintendo after this good old Birdo. The game also allows many freedoms in its way of flirting between language registers. Some characters don't hesitate to treat you stupid or even imbecile. In a few years, who knows, maybe Mario will give up some « Fuck » every jump between two TikTok! The Millennium Gate is also much more liberated as to his relationship to sexuality. A taboo for Nintendo that seems here to amuse Mario's celibacy as desires of the Mushroom kingdom. It is one of the very rare Nintendo games of the time where characters make sexual allusions barely veiled. The same goes for Princess Peach's AIA, which gives rise to lubricating discussions about the nature of love. We'll have to wait for the movie. Super Mario Bros So that the Japanese firm is a little less constipated to singer her lovebirds repressed from her characters. Still resisting the change of this type on his queen licenses, Nintendo dares to develop the relationship between Zelda and Link and whose premises have been flung since Breath Of The Wild ?
Divided into chapters, the intrigue can always be enjoyed even if the chatter side is sometimes tiring and could have been mitigated if Nintendo had thought of adjusting the speed of dialogues. The chapter of wrestlers repeats an endless pattern where the fights chain with the same replicas that return to each fight, which will make the modern player more tired! This irritating side certainly participates in the charm of the episode but a little flexibility would not have been a refusal to, like the fighting, give a bit of vivacity and fluidity to the whole. Among the new features, Nintendo is content with the fan service overall with a system of retro badges allowing to listen again to Gamecube music and noise, concept arts and a playlist to unlock by finding items on the map.
The rest of the additions democratize the formula with a purple mouse that can give us clues and Toad to coach us in combat. We will finally appreciate the teleportation pipes to avoid going back and forth on the map, even if they do not disappear completely. On this point, moreover, one feels the gamedesign somewhat engulfed by the technical limitations of the Gamecube. Exploration is like old games partitioned by « screen », like the old games of the time.
Brighter, finer and more modern, the graphic redesign remains very satisfactory although a little more generic... So all artistic choices may not be happy even if our imagination sometimes cultivates misleading memories, not to say completely reacs. Paper Mario evolves and remains a formidable gateway to the dark side of Nintendo, where the Nintendo characters have dreams and desires! Shigeru's nightmare? Academic in its gameplay, exploration, it, frees from all the codes, juggling from chapter to chapter from one concept of gameplay to another. Certainly we would have liked a remake from bottom to bottom, but this remaster remains very good. A cult game to rediscover even if the dreads of time come to remind the age of a formula that has changed little since Super Mario RPG. The comparison between the Millennium Gate and its dispensable suites reminds us of the regression of the RPG formula. Mario and Luigi: Will the Fraternal epic come up and honor his forefathers? With this remaster, the door remains open...
For
- Clean and shimmering...
- FPS constant...
- Fun characters...
- Effective gameplay
- Successful animations
- Find a cult game of the Gamecube
- Some ideas
- Atypical Writing
- Peach passes are tricky
- Control this old, downgraded Bowser
- The fourth wall
Against
- ... Very (too much?)
- ... but capped at 30 FPS
- ...but too talkative sometimes
- More generic DA?
- Bestiary too long to reveal
- Go returns still many
- Gamedesign caught up with years
- A little peps wouldn't have been refused.
- How about a remake?
So many good memories in front of the little TV to play together!
I had enjoyed this game so much at the time. But I think it's crazy that he only comes out in 30 FPS.