Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (remake)

My recollection of Paper Mario’s GameCube outing from 20 years ago was that it was almost too good to be true, a game with writing so sparkling, funny, and heartfelt that I wanted to absorb every word, a saga that’s both adventurous and poignant, and gameplay that remains delightful to the end, never losing a sense of playfulness and discovery. Surely, I thought, this was a case of rose-colored glasses tinting the fond recollections of my (relative) youth. But no. As my time revisiting it on the Switch has shown me, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is that rare classic you can return to decades after its initial release and find its charm, elegance, wit, and power undiminished. The papercraft visuals, already wonderful on the GameCube, only look more vibrant and captivating today. The RPG fundamentals still strike a perfect balance between approachability and depth. And the writing remains as endearing and hilarious as ever. Nintendo’s been leaning pretty hard into its back catalog to give the Switch’s final year as its flagship console some big releases, but it’s hard to complain about that when what you get as a result is an even better version of a game so timelessly wonderful, it hasn’t aged a day. — Carolyn Petit