Video: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Side-By-Side Comparison (Switch & GameCube)

This is the perfect blending between the newer art style and the old one. Hopefully the rest of the series looks like this.

I have the original on disc but so up for playing it again with crisper graphics. It’s an all timer, one of the best of an often overlooked generation for Nintendo.

Why is the one Yoshi pink on GameCube but green on Switch?

@Nickinator Not to spoil too much, but that character can come in a variety of colors.

Excited to play this for the first time…from the looks of it, it got the Metroid Prime remastered treatment which is nice, hoping for more GameCube remasters like this..

@Nickinator When you get his egg the Yoshi can be any color of the species. I forgot if it is random or not.

Question : Will you be adding this classic to your Switch collection when it launches in 2024?

Me : DAY ONE Purchase !

@PokemonDMG @Nickinator The Yoshi's colour is dependent on how long you wait after you get the egg. If you hatch it as soon as possible, it's green. I think pink might be the very last one, with the longest wait.

I hope that if this game proves successful, it also proves a point to Intelligent Systems that there is already an... intelligent system for the Paper Mario series. It doesn't need to be stuck in an endless identity crisis.

@its_luke_c @PokemonDMG @ModdedInkling Thanks for the clarification, guys!

I have a Gamecube copy, but I’m likely to get the Switch version. The new graphics look great, but I prefer the lettering and word balloons of the original - feels a little more in line with the general feel and style. Nitpicks, of course. Looking forward to Luigi’s mansion as well.

@ModdedInkling

Honestly, this might sound crazy, but I think this game could do 10 million+ units. It's a Mario game, so it already has that going for it, and while Mario RPG's never sell that great, it's just SUCH a beloved game and one of those internet-breaking announcements because the fanbase is so passionate. There's been such a demand for traditional Paper Mario, there's literally been like a dozen really polished indie games trying to replicate that style.

Super Mario RPG is held in equally high regard. I worked with a couple guys who were about 10 years older than me, and while Thousand-Year Door is my favorite game of all-time, theirs was Super Mario RPG. These are the two most popular Mario RPG's for their respective generations who grew up with them and touched the lives of all who played them, so I think both titles are gonna do gangbusters.

EarthBound didn't sell very well initially, and we didn't even get Mother 3. But Toby Fox evidently wanted a new game in that style so badly, he did it himself, and Undertale became a cultural phenomenon. Never would've happened if it hadn't been for the niche, modestly-selling game that is EarthBound. If Nintendo plays their cards right, they can replicate that same success for themselves. The internet wasn't really a think back when EarthBound came out, and even by the time of Thousand-Year Door, social media wasn't an integral part of our lives like it is now. It made it a lot harder for these games to get out of obscurity. But now, it's so easy to get the word out, there's really no excuse for these games to sell poorly.

I'm going out on a limb here and predicting Super Mario RPG will sell approximately 7 million units, while Thousand-Year Door sells about 12 minutes. Call me crazy, but that would still be only a fraction of the Switch's install base and only like 1/4th as many units sold as Mario Kart. So I don't think it's too unrealistic. If Pikmin's poor selling streal can turn around, anything is possible!

Looks fantastic, day one buy indeed just like Super Mario RPG.

Huh, so this is an actual remake, not just a remaster. I'm kinda impressed. Might pick it up.

@Nickinator it doesn't have to be random, you can name your save file Green if you want a green Yoshi, Pink for a pink Yoshi, etc

@Harmonie It's remastered with the same quality as Metroid Prime Remastered. You really had to look at the side by side comparisons to see the difference in improvements.

@Serpenterror It's a remake. While we only get the barest glimpse of anything that wasn't in the original, a new Toad NPC with a unique design can be seen in one shot. Presumably, said Toad will tie into something added to the game

I always saw Paper Mario: TTYD as having a diorama look, but not everything was made of paper. Some was wood, some was clay, but now, everything is paper craft and I am not really a fan. It takes away any variety the game had and makes things look more flat and boring in my opinion. I am still glad many more people will get to experience this game and it's story.

@Serpenterror I don't know anything about the Metroid Prime game, but this game is definitely a remake. The comparison shows that clearly, the environments and models are all remade.

@Harmonie @PikaPhantom Okay it's a remake but in the same way as Metroid Prime Remastered.

An all new paper mario in the style of the first two games would have been cooler but I'll take this. At least it'll get more people to experience paper mario before it got all off track with games like sticker star, color splash and origami king. Not that those games are bad but they just don't have the same magic. They aren't truly RPGs with leveling or partners to join you on your adventure with their own set of skills.

@Not_Soos i laughed at first but then kept reading and realized that youve got a point. The only thing i could see holding it back would be either the just general huge amount of mario games coming out and the new system launch overshadowing it depending on when the game comes out and when the new system is announced/released

While I haven't exactly been keen on the amount of remakes shown, I will admit this is probably the best looking remake. Feels like a natural extension of the original TTYD's art direction.

@Nickinator is you can several colors for the Yoshi partner depeding on severals game factors

@Dragonite89 that's a good point.. would love to see more gamecube games remastered, although I have a feeling we won't see as many as we all want. Even if they remastered F-Zero X though...

I have my original disc, but it's so scratched that it won't load past the intro. Then I tried emulating it, and got a corrupted file that freezes during the train chapter. So this has me very excited

I still have my original CIB edition, which I bought for £10 second hand back in 2005. Great to see it being made more widely available, as going back to check my old save file recently I discovered I never actually finished it! Maybe now is the time.

All looks great. Honestly, the gamecube version looks amazing as well.

@LexKitteh outside of a few obvious 3D objects (like the pigs), it's kind of easy to tell the game was meant to be paper craft back then too, it just wasn't very possible to make it look convincing or good, so they relied more on cartoony textures to complement it. They've just cranked the natural paper look up to 20 in the remake, to fall in line with the recent games in the series.

PLEASE NINTENDO give us a physical

The colours seem a bit too muted in the new version?

Other than that great it’s available again. I’ve kept my original GameCube copy but it’s rare as hens teeth and that always made it such a shame as it was such a great game and should be enjoyed by all.

Great remake! Must buy (physical).
After this remake, a Paper Mario - 2000 year door plz?

I can't believe they censored 'airhead'. No buy from me.

I haven't played this game in so many years and I don't have a GameCube or Wii handy, so this is a must buy regardless. It looks like this remake will be a faithful one that actually keeps unique Toad and Koopa Troopa designs. I mean, they had to with characters like Jolene and Kootie, but it's still so nice to see.

@JohnnyMind Apologies, I was being sarcastic. Good information though. Any idea what was censored in the English version?

@JohnnyMind Thanks for that. Very interesting stuff!

@JohnnyMind @Jack_Goetz I've seen a few other instances of dialogue changes in the comparison video. Harmless stuff like Goombella's introduction. If they're changing stuff as simple as this and 'Airhead', prepare yourself for Vivian. Localization team arbitrarily changing a translation to justify existing on Nintendos payroll.

Not sure if I’m impressed by the new graphics or more impressed by how well the GameCube version holds up visually… anyway, i missed this game back in my gamecube days. I’ve played a couple others since, but since this one is supposedly the best, I’m looking forward to playing it next year.

@JohnnyMind meanwhile here I am. being ever so unfortunate that there's almost never a portuguese translation (though knowing Brazilian translators, they'd probably just translate from the english text).

I'm liking it, but that framerate though. I'm hoping it's just the video and it's as smooth as the original.

I prefer the original version

Has Mario put on weight? He looks chunkier in the remake. Even his shoes look bigger. 😅

I think the biggest update are widescreen and resolution upgrade since the original game graphics is still good 😃

@Anti-Matter

Me: Day one pre-order!!!

It looks so good. I played through the first two Paper Mario games within the last two years with my kids and it brought back so many memories. They love the humor and would laugh out loud while they watched. I perform the voices (my daughter voices Peach). I am so excited for this remake – and Nintendo, feel free to make a direct sequel to TTYD after this!

A really nice side effect is that the scalpers on the used market can now keep their copies. Prices have become absurd lately.

@Notsoavid I’m not sure it’s the best, actually I greatly enjoyed the most recent one, Origami King. Yeah boss fights a bit strange but not horrible, and that’s a minor part of the game anyway. Great return to form after Color Splash which I quit cause it was so tedious.

I know the Switch version will be "sharper" but the video seems to go out of its way to make the GameCube version seem smudgier than it actually was. What kind of video hook-up were they using? If they need to borrow my component cables, I could lend them out, lol.

@Fizza Yeah that's the element that impressed me the most and I noticed right away during the direct and realised this was no mere upscaling. It looks fantastic, I love how each layer has a physical thickness to the "paper" (rather than being a single 2-poly plain) and casts a very slight shadow.

@JohnnyMind I'd never heard about the Vivian thing - just looked it up. Its very interesting that only the English and German versions remove her being trans, while the Italian version specifically emphasises it and she says that she is happy/proud to be so, rather than being mocked for it. Here is not the place to debate but I'm glad to hear that even back then, Italian people were culturally deemed more tolerant to such things. There's a rabbit hole almost as deep as birdo on that one...

And speaking of rabbits I'm outraged I didn't get to see sexy bunny-girl boos! 😂 Realistically I don't think this was exactly "censorship", as they replaced them with "cat-girl" costumes which is just as sexualised if not more so in gaming and anime culture... more likely that they found out that in America you can't have waiting/service staff wear bunny-ears without paying a license to Playboy.

@Not_Soos Nothing crazy about what you're saying. If anything, it'd be crazy for anyone to think these will do poorly.
Just looking at the numbers, Nintendo's user base is enormous now- far exceeding that of the early 2000s, especially. If a game could sell 2 million copies back then, then about 5x that number isn't all that strange.

And of course, games like TTYD are the stuff of legend now. People have been raving about them for decades, and there are so many potential players who just never got their hands on a copy.

Whether it's this, Mother 3, or even F-Zero, I'm confident that there's a large audience out there, waiting for it.

@Classic603 Older versions of the emulator unfortunately had game-breaking bugs in the Paper Mario games, specifically if you used an arbitrary resolution like 1920x1080. Later builds removed this feature, limiting the resolution to exact multiples of the GameCube's output: 2x, 3x, and so on.

@JohnnyMind I will definitely check it out when I have time to properly wade through and absorb it, I'm very interested in this stuff and how much of the changes are because of cultural differences. And... bunny-girl Boos... for research purposes.

@Not_Soos Be glad if it sells 2 million, it's coming during the final year of the Switch, it's a remake and RPGs aren't for everybody. Origami King sold like 3.5 million and it was released during Switch's biggest year.

and lol 7 million for SMRPG is quite an ambitious prediction. I don't think SquareEnix and Nintendo are predicting to sell more than 5 million copies.