The ’00s brought not just Paper Mario and its sequel The Thousand Year Door, the greatest such game to ever be made, but also the excellent first three titles in the Mario & Luigi series on GBA and DS. While the Wii’s Super Paper Mario would be more of a strange platformer-RPG hybrid than another turn-based juggernaut, it still proved excellent with amazing writing and a tearjerking story. But over the course of the ’10s, both franchises deteriorated – Mario & Luigi falling into mild mediocrity before developer Alphadream tragically shuttered a few years ago, and Paper Mario torpedoing its formula with the infamous Sticker Star on 3DS and stubbornly refusing to break away from that new foundation ever since.
Now in the ’20s, with one series gone and another having changed to the point it’s nigh-unrecognizable, an unlikely hero has emerged – the one who started it all. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was the first title to feature turn-based adventuring for Mr. Nintendo, and it laid the foundation for both series of Mario RPGs that came after it – despite never receiving a proper sequel itself (though Paper Mario famously began development as exactly that). And now that it’s getting a brand-new HD remake for Switch, it’s a perfect time to remember what made Mario RPGs so special in the first place.
