Super Paper Mario

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Mario and Luigi are enjoying a lazy afternoon at their house when they hear the terrible news: Princess Peach has been kidnapped! The two brothers head straight for Bowser’s castle to get her back, but Bowser is just as surprised about Peach’s kidnapping as they are. At that moment, a strange top-hatted villain warps in and abducts everyone but Mario. The mysterious villain then forces Peach and Bowser to get married, creating a rift of dark energy that threatens to tear the universe apart. Only Mario can save the day … but he can’t do it alone.

The newest chapter of the Paper Mario story isn’t just out of this world … it’s out of this dimension. What at first glance appears to be a 2-D side-scroller ripped straight from the stylized pages of the Paper Mario universe soon turns into a hilarious dimension-shifting platformer possible only on Wii.

1. Mario on speed: with the Red Flower power-up Mario will be able to run faster than an Ethiopian with ADHD.
2. Princess Peach and Bowser are getting married, wonder what the kids ‘ll look like.
3. The starman Power Up lets your character grow to immense proportions and demolish everything in your way.
4. You’ll get to be Bowser and breathe fire.
5. The space helmet, you’ll be floating whilst shooting a BFG-like gun at your enemies.

As mentioned before each of the 3 playable characters will have some special moves, here you’ll find more info about the specific moves.

Mario can turn the world 90 degrees, transforming the 2d level into a 3d one, this way some complicated puzzles can be solved

Princess Peach can jump the highest and has the ability to float in the air.

Bowser is the slowest playable character. But he breathes fire, which will cause his opponents serious damage.

I came across a gigantic variety of Mario related toys today at Toywiz. Some of them had pretty decent prizes, whilst others where just incredible expensive. To bad I found out about these toys only a few days after Valentines day.

Will Greenwald got a change to preview 3 new Nintendo games. And yes, Super Paper Mario was one of them.

Here’s what he had to say about it:

Unlike the straight role-playing in previous Paper Mario games, Super Paper Mario is a puzzle-filled platform game with some loose RPG elements. The titular 2D plumber gets the power to move about in the third dimension, adding fantastic puzzle elements to otherwise flat landscapes. Impassible walls and dead ends can be overcome by switching to 3D mode and revealing that the wall is only paper thin, or that the dead end is actually the start of a bridge. The level of the game that I played was filled with clever 3D puzzles that included hidden pipes, invisible blocks, moving platforms, and plenty of imposing-yet-flat enemies. Of course, you can’t spend all your time in 3D; after a while in 3D mode, Mario starts to lose health and must return to flatness. Fortunately, even 2D mode is full of enemies to stomp, puzzles to solve, and characters to interact with. What little I played of Super Paper Mario got me pretty pumped for the rest of the game when it hits in April.

Found some more screenshots of Super Paper Mario

I found this bit of information regarding the gameplay on the Wii Controller.

Similar to playing NES games on the Virtual Console, the Wii Remote is held sideways, where the player moves using the control pad and jumps using the 2 button. Pressing the A Button (if the player’s character is Mario) switches the viewpoint from 2D to 3D, or in other words, from a side-scroller to a third-dimensional landscape. This allows a more thorough sense of depth and more action taking place. However, this perspective is only temporary: when the player switches to 3D mode, a 10-second timer appears beneath the player’s HP, as a row of rainbow-colored squares. When it reaches zero the perspective snaps back to 2D, and then slowly recovers.

It has been stated by Nintendo Power that as the player progresses he will pick up new allies called Pixls, which give the player new ways to use the Wii Remote in game. For example, one Pixl, named Tippy, allows the player to use the remote as a pointer, using it to find hidden objects and learn about enemies.

Someone managed to film this boss level of Super Paper Mario, at the 2006 World Hobby Fiar in Tokyo.