Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - TV Tropes
- ️Wed Jun 22 2011
"Indeed... This is the tale of the fabled treasure of Rogueport. Yes, this is where it begins, in the sea town of Rogueport. The tale of the quest for the legendary treasure... and the Thousand-Year Door... starts here."
— Intro
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is the 2004 sequel to the original Paper Mario and the second game in the Paper Mario series, developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. It released on Nintendo GameCube in Japan on July 22, 2004, in North America on October 11 and in Europe and Australia in November.
The game starts like a lot of Mario games, with a letter from Princess Peach telling Mario to meet her at a distant town called Rogueport and help her search for a legendary treasure indicated by the map she sent along with the letter. By the time Mario actually pulls into port, however, Peach is gone, and for once it's not Bowser who kidnapped her (and he's very, very peeved about that).
The mysterious secret society of X-Nauts and their leader, Sir Grodus, are the ones responsible this time, as they're after the same treasure as Mario and are hanging onto Peach for an unknown purpose related to this treasure hunt. Mario learns from the Goomba Professor Frankly and his young assistant Goombella that said treasure is locked behind the eponymous Thousand-Year Door beneath town, and that opening the massive door involves collecting the Crystal Stars scattered across the surrounding regions. As Mario searches for the stars, the nature of the treasure and the X-Nauts' plans come to light, and let's just say said treasure is not a pile of gold coins...
The game retains the same paper aesthetic, Turn-Based Combat, Action Commands, and Better than a Bare Bulb humor of the previous game, with some extra tweaks introduced: Action Commands are needed for the Limit Break moves that are attained with each Crystal Star, the previous game's damage-reducing button presses during enemy attacks are supplemented by a Blocking Stops All Damage mechanic with a narrower window of accuracy and each battle is fought in front of an audience that must be pleased by a good performance in order to increase the amount of Star Power recovered per turn. Your partners now have a health meter and can be incapacitated if they run out (though the battle will still go on as long as Mario is alive). World exploration is also aided by Mario gaining several paper-themed transformations like a paper airplane and a paper boat.
In honor of the game's 20th anniversary, a remake of the game was released for the Nintendo Switch on May 23, 2024.