General Mario Thread

I heard that when people saw the trailer of Paper Jam, a lot of people complained that it focused far more on Mario & Luigi than the Paper Mario side of things. Funny, I got the exact opposite impression.

edited 25th Jun '15 7:35:12 PM by MightyMatilda

To me, it seemed like a pretty good balance. The combat is largely that of Mario and Luigi but the field exploration will likely incorporate a lot of ideas from The Thousand-Year Door (like Mario turning sideways to slip through cracks like he did during the Treehouse demo).

The combat is largely that of Mario and Luigi

Maybe I didn't notice because the two series have very similar battle systems, in that they utilize Action Commands, shared mana pools, and badges. So, the only things that stood out were the on-field paper mechanics, the paper clones, and Papercraft Mario.

Paper Jam isn't exactly a full crossover. It's a Mario & Luigi game with Paper Mario characters and elements.

How is that different from a crossover?

Basically you shouldn't treat it as Paper Mario 5. It's just Mario & Luigi 5. I don't think IS is working on it (though they probably have a few advisers helping AlphaDream), and it should have no effect or influence on the next Paper Mario.

x4 They do have highly similar combat but the devil is in the details. For starters, Badges in Paper Mario games usually great Mario and sometimes his Partners access to brand new attacks and abilities while they usually just have some minor passive effect in Mario and Luigi. You have multiple Partners in a Paper Mario game who all have different methods of attack (and thus usually action commands) and have unique specials both in combat and in the field. In Mario and Luigi, you just have Mario and Luigi and you get Bros. Abilities here and there to help you traverse the area (these abilities also provided you with new attacks in the first game). The Mario and Luigi series is also very stat heavy compared to Paper Mario which only has three that can increase upon level up while the others are largely only powered up by the story (although you can increase Attack and Defense through Badges).

There's also the fact that the Action Commands work in completely different ways (with the exception of jumping starting with Bowser's Inside Story) and the fact that Mario and Luigi is all about dodging and counterattacking while Paper Mario is about reducing or negating damage (I can't remember if the Super Guard also did damage).

Don't forget that Mario and Luigi is a much higher numbers game compared to Paper Mario where you'll only be doing two or three damage per hit for most of the game.

Yeah, it's not a perfectly even crossover. It's a Mario & Luigi game first and foremost, just with Paper Mario elements crossing in and being the central "gimmick".

Mario Maker has 100 levels included on disc.

I hope it includes the Super Bowser Totem.

x4 The superguard in TTYD did inflict damage...about one point of health to be exact. And Sticker Star abandoned the partner system in exchange for item-based combat. The M&L series always had an equipable armor system and their badges was either an empty slot for it or an single-use rechargable effect; but in Paper Mario TTYD, the badges gave you elemental moves and various buffs. The item economy and effects were mildly different until Dream Team and Sticker Star, but the gap is still there.

edited 26th Jun '15 7:25:55 PM by RabidTanker

@Very Melon: That's good. Tons of professional-level content gives the base game value, even if it probably won't have the kind of collectathon madness the New Mario games do.

For comparison, how many levels did 3D World have?

114 that includes the Captain Toad levels, Sprixie Houses, and Mystery House challenges. It also includes levels like 3-A and 3-B that involve objectives like defeat hammer bros. So it is probably about the same number of levels.

edited 27th Jun '15 3:22:58 PM by Halberdier17

They're not. It's all AlphaDream.

edited 28th Jun '15 12:13:59 AM by Marioguy128

I usually don't count the Sprixie Houses as levels because they were far too microscopic (just get the stamp and leave). Even without counting them, there are actually 117 levels in 3DW:

• World 1: 5 standard levels (L) + 1 Captain Toad minigame (T) + 1 blockade (B) + 1 boss level (Z) = 8 levels
• World 2: 5L + 1 Mystery House minigame (M) + 1B + 1Z = 8 levels
• World 3: 7L + 1T + 1B + 2Z = 11 levels
• World 4: 5L + 1M + 2B + 1Z = 9 levels
• World 5: 7L + 1T + 2B + 1Z + 1 super-secret gold level (G) = 12 levels
• World 6: 7L + 1M + 2B + 2Z = 12 levels
• World 7: 7L + 1T + 3B + 1Z = 12 levels
• World 8: 7L + 1M + 4Z = 12 levels
• World 9: 9L + 1T = 10 levels
• World 10: 7L + 1M = 8 levels
• World 11: 12L
• World 12: 1L + 1T + 1M = 3 levels

Total: 8 + 8 + 11 + 9 + 12 + 12 + 12 + 12 + 10 + 8 + 12 + 3 = 117

Would have been nice to have three more levels to get the nice round number of 120, much like the amount fo stars in the previous Mario games (though not all of them were gotten in different missions, see the blue-coin ones in Sunshine).

EDIT: Also, I'm very pumped with Mario Maker.

edited 29th Jun '15 2:07:55 PM by MyFinalEdits

On the subject of Mario Maker, I just had a thought.

With the amiibo costumes, what happens if you use a style other than 8-bit?

For what I've read, the Amiibo thing will only work for the SMB 1 set.

Right, yeah, that seems to be the case.

Still, there's at least 90 Mystery Suits. I'm wondering what they'll all be. Smash Bros. makes up only about half of that, less if we exclude the Pokemon and Mario himself. Then we've got Toad, the Splatoon pack, Chibi Robo, and Animal Crossing, but that's not anywhere near 90...

I'm pretty sure there are some unlockable costumes. I've heard that all of them are unlockable, though I don't think that has been verified, and I doubt that myself aside from maybe Luigi. Still, I expect the likes of Daisy and Waluigi to be in.

Maybe if Nintendo ever gets around to publishing a second series of Mario Party amiibos.

If nothing else, I'd be somewhat surprised if you didn't have them added for good to your collection after finishing someone else's level with one.

... I can't be the only one who's looking forward to Maker more for the chance to get the hang of level design and less for the chance to create Platform Hell trials, right?

edited 6th Jul '15 11:17:58 AM by Pulse

So, since Chuggaconroy started his LP of Superstar Saga, I decided to replay Partners in Time just to see if my opinion was the same.

I'm partway through the final dungeon now and this is certainly a much higher numbers game despite my level being lower than I think it would be before the final dungeons of the first and third games (I think everyone's in the mid to late 20s right now when I think I was around the mid 30s for Superstar Saga and around 40 for Bowser's Inside Story). I've been focusing almost solely on POW and Stache, going for DEF and HP (rarely SPEED) only to improve the roulette. I've also been going for more offensive badges and gear. Though I can burn through battles, it's still slower than SS (as demonstrated by Chugga's LP) and I take massive damage if I get hit (which I do with a fair frequency in the final dungeon since the enemies attack at a stupidly fast speed and are really annoying).

Overall, I have to agree that this certainly is the weakest of the three games I've played but it's still a damn good game.

That's sorta a truism for most of Mario's appearances- As many games as he's been in, the list of truly bad games featuring him is vanishingly small. Like, Super Mario Sunshine is almost certainly the weakest of the 3D Mario games from the collection era, but it's a fantastic game regardless.

Oh, one thing that doesn't help the perception of the game are certainly the Bros Items. Aside from being pretty boring (I mean, the Chain Chomp, Copy Flower, and Trampoline are basically the same with the Cannonballers being the same but weaker), you have to have crazy fast reflexes and dexterity in order to get good damage from the best ones since you have to hit four different buttons rather than two.

Also, in the other games, a damage-centric build will let you mow down everything with relative ease provided you're good at dodging and countering. In Partners in Time, it's a necessity if you want to get through the fights at a reasonable pace.