Topic: Super Mario RPG Finally Hits the Virtual Console...in Europe

[KDR_11k]

Is there ANYTHING released by them on the VC? SMRPG doesn't count since they don't have full control over it.

[GoldenPhoenix]

Is there ANYTHING released by them on the VC? SMRPG doesn't count since they don't have full control over it.

Yeah they released ActRaiser here and like 4 games or so in Japan (mostly games I have never heard of).

[RABicle]

Wow this game sucks. Paper Mario 64 for lyfe.

[NWR_Neal]

THIS GAME IS MAGICAL. EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE EIGHT COPIES.

According to posters at GoNintendo this game is good only for its nostalgia value only and hold up horribly now.

Gonintendo community > Evan

The GoNintendo community also said that my review of Mega Man Star Force 2 was crap because I knocked the story in an RPG.

This game rules and is the only game that I consistently do a yearly playthrough.

[Ian Sane]

It does have an ugly rendered style though...

I find rendered games look great on TV (a normal TV, it probably looks terrible in HD) but look terrible on portables.  It just seems to look smoother on a TV.

Before I bought a copy I remember a time my brother rented it.  We had rented it already before when it came out and this was a few years later like 1998 or so.  The save battery was busted so my brother just kept the SNES on the ENTIRE duration of the rental.  And he played it like all day.  It was only a two day rental so I don't think he had enough time to beat it.  Later we found a used copy with a working save battery.  Hell even if it didn't work my friend now knows how to replace it as he did with my Earthbound cartridge.

What I love about Super Mario RPG is that it's this perfect balance between an RPG for RPG fans and an RPG for people who don't like RPGs.  Paper Mario is for people who don't like RPGs and it's a fun game.  But the people who like it over Super Mario RPG are usually the people that sh!t on every RPG.  To me that's what I don't really like about Paper Mario and that's why I like Super Mario RPG.  Mario RPG still feels like an RPG so if you hate the genre you'll probably hate it.

I however tend to like RPGs more in theory then in practice.  The problem is usually the game is too damn long and has annoying random battles and these annoying "teenagers vs. the evil empire" storylines.  I however love exploring the world and meeting all the characters and stuff.  Mario RPG is relatively short for an RPG, doesn't have random battles, has an incredibly intuitive user-friendly interface, and has a story that is actually fun.  Actually a lot of what I just said applies to Chrono Trigger as well.  With both games it's like Square stopped and said "Wait a sec!  Why do all our RPGs have these stupid design conventions?  Let's make something actually user friendly for a change."  Chrono Trigger was designed as the "ultimate RPG" and that's pretty much its design philosophy: user friendliness.  It really makes no sense that Square pretty much went back to what they did before with Final Fantasy VII.  They rejected that user friendly design which was supposed to be the way to make the ultimate RPG.  For two games Square was making RPGs exactly the way I like them.  Oh well.

GoNintendo is probably full of brainwashed "RPGs suck" Nintendo fans that decided that Square and the whole genre sucked during the N64 days because Nintendo told them so.  Don't forget that first person shooters suck now too.  They didn't on the N64 but the Gamecube didn't have any while the Xbox did so they suck now.  And online used to suck but now Nintendo is doing it so it's cool, unless it's done in a non-stupid way.  Then it sucks again.

[Bill Aurion]

GoNintendo is probably full of brainwashed "RPGs suck" Nintendo fans that decided that Square and the whole genre sucked during the N64 days because Nintendo told them so.  Don't forget that first person shooters suck now too.  They didn't on the N64 but the Gamecube didn't have any while the Xbox did so they suck now.  And online used to suck but now Nintendo is doing it so it's cool, unless it's done in a non-stupid way.  Then it sucks again.

I'm hardly defending GoNintendo, but seriously...Seriously?  RPGs suck because they, well, do...Most of the time, that is...And for the reasons that you even specified in your own post...(Hey look, I can even flip this around...How about Sony fans were brainwashed into thinking RPGs are fun?  That works too, right?)

Hurray for pointless and baseless generalization about favored game genres...

[NWR_Neal]

Don't forget that first person shooters suck now too.  They didn't on the N64 but the Gamecube didn't have any while the Xbox did so they suck now.

I'll be honest, my problems with first person shooters stem from the oversaturation that's happening now. There are very good first person shooters out there but the genre is a dime a dozen these days.

You did hit the nail on the head on why most people like SMRPG though. I love it because of its mix of depth and simplicity. It's a simple RPG that doesn't really pander to its audience like the Paper Marios have a habit of doing sometimes.

[Nick DiMola]

I found the story, characters, and settings of SMRPG to be much better than those found in Paper Mario.

SMRPG > Mario & Luigi > Paper Mario, however all three are amazing and it is really splitting hairs when arguing which series is the best.

[KDR_11k]

I'd say PM stays truest to the Mushroom Kingdom setting, it feels the closest to the regular Mario games in the presentation of the world. Of course that's no major metric, M&L was superior due to its much more interesting gameplay. I feel that SMRPG's rendered style destroys any similarity to the original setting and the added characters don't help as they don't mesh with the rest of the setting.

I hate rendered graphics in general, I remember back when I got the Club Nintendo issue that came with the video cassette promoting Donkey Kong Country, I hated the look even back then.

Of course all of that is a secondary concern. I don't remember much about the gameplay of SMRPG (played it on an emulator LOOOOOONG ago) but I think it was the most RPGish with the action commands feling pretty tacked on and a standard stat system.

[GoldenPhoenix]

Don't forget that first person shooters suck now too.  They didn't on the N64 but the Gamecube didn't have any while the Xbox did so they suck now.

I'll be honest, my problems with first person shooters stem from the oversaturation that's happening now. There are very good first person shooters out there but the genre is a dime a dozen these days.

You did hit the nail on the head on why most people like SMRPG though. I love it because of its mix of depth and simplicity. It's a simple RPG that doesn't really pander to its audience like the Paper Marios have a habit of doing sometimes.

I agree with Ian on why Mario RPG is great, and I disagree with his generalizations on why people say it sucks. Personally I think it is nothing more than people distancing themselves from games that get a lot of hype.

Nron also had it right with FPS, the problem isn't that it is a bad genre but that it has been over saturated to the point of being overkill like plat formers were at one time.

[Bill Aurion]

It'd be nice if there was an over-saturation of platformers NOW... =(

[NWR_Neal]

It'd be nice if there was an over-saturation of platformers NOW... =(

QFT

[Halbred]

Dude, Mario RPG is teh_roxxors. It blows the Paper Mario games out of the WATER. The world is huge, there are secrets galore, the isometric viewpoint actually looks good (the pre-rendered backgrounds haven't aged well, though, I'll admit), and the combat is fun and involving. And I don't have to mess with badges!

And the plot is awesome. Bowser joins your freaking team!

[Ian Sane]

I forgot to mention that my cat is named Booster after the character in the game.

Does it make sense that another part I like about it is that even though it's a lot less complicated then something like Final Fantasy it still has the sort of stats and menu presentation that a typical RPG would have?  Paper Mario just seems like it is dumbed down and treats the player like they're a moron who couldn't understand an RPG.  Little things like how the "party" in Paper Mario is just you and one helper or how the highest level is like 10 or something really small like that just bugged me about that game.  The storyline is a lot simpler either with no real twists or turns at all.  Back then it always bothered me that Nintendo was accused of being "kid-e" but Paper Mario DID seem a lot more kid-e then Super Mario RPG.  Like "we can't have normal RPG stats or the little tykes won't understand it".

Super Mario RPG is also the last time Mario was silent.  A few months later Super Mario 64 came out with that stupid "it's a-me" voice.  Anyone playing the game now for the first time should take into account that when it came out those playing it had a different perception of Mario then what would soon follow.  To me Super Mario RPG seemed like the "real" Mario and everything since then hasn't quite felt right.  Remember also that when the game came out no previous Mario game had any significant story or character development .  Super Mario RPG was the first time the Mushroom Kingdom was presented as a world and not just a series of levels.  Yeah there was the show and the comic but this was the first true reveal in the videogames and even as a kid I knew that the videogames were the true canon.  To me Super Mario RPG will always be the true Mushroom Kingdom.

One thing that always hurt Paper Mario for me was that the world was inconsistent with the one in Super Mario RPG and the Mario RPG one was a lot more interesting.  The inconsistency gave me the impression that Nintendo was sloppy and didn't care.  Keep in mind that when Paper Mario came out there were only six Zelda games so it wasn't entirely obvious how sloppy Nintendo is about that stuff.  That careless attitude towards continuity still bothers me but I'm just more used to it now.  You pretty much have to take each Nintendo game as an isolated title.

[Bill Aurion]

One thing that always hurt Paper Mario for me was that the world was inconsistent with the one in Super Mario RPG and the Mario RPG one was a lot more interesting.  The inconsistency gave me the impression that Nintendo was sloppy and didn't care.

Hahaha, what...Super Mario RPG isn't consistent with, well, Super Mario Brothers 3...How about them apples?

[Deguello]

I really wish Ian would stop posting a lot of words that mean very little.

Super Mario RPG is also the last time Mario was silent.  A few months later Super Mario 64 came out with that stupid "it's a-me" voice.  Anyone playing the game now for the first time should take into account that when it came out those playing it had a different perception of Mario then what would soon follow.  To me Super Mario RPG seemed like the "real" Mario and everything since then hasn't quite felt right.

So the "real" Mario to you is the one from a spinoff?  That's really damn weird.  Care to comment, Ian2004? *click*

<Ian2004> Who the heck is that guy?  That guy's not me.  Mario should never be in any spinoff ever!  Especially not ones I personally do not like and another th-

That's enough, Ian2004.  *click*  The consistency thing is also laughable considering Mario started fighting Donkey Kong, then some kind of Turtle somewhere else, then some kind of green thing, and then the turtle comes back, and then DINOSAURS show up.... I think you get the point.

But of course, we shouldn't make this post about Ian.  Mario RPG is a stunning effort by a company not know for gameplay, and shows that Nintendo can change any third party for the better if they'd only let them.  But my personal preference in the Mario RPG line is Mario and Luigi, because it has better writing.  Zoom!

[Ian Sane]

Hahaha, what...Super Mario RPG isn't consistent with, well, Super Mario Brothers 3...How about them apples?

There's no indication that the areas in Super Mario Bros. 3 and the areas in Super Mario RPG can't co-exist.  They could very well just be different portions of land on the same planet.  And in the sidescrollers the levels aren't very specfic.  For example Mario visits Yoshi's Island in Super Mario World but he visits like six levels which would be like visiting six houses on an entire island.  So the fact that none of those areas are in Yoshi's Island doesn't screw up continuity because they COULD be there and that game takes place like 30 years earlier anyway.

But in Super Mario RPG you have the Mushroom Kingdom with the castle that Princess Peach lives in.  Now even though the castle looks slighty different in Super Mario 64 it's close enough that it can work.  BUT in Paper Mario there's Toad Town which has completely different geography surrounding it than the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario RPG.  Crap.  Unless the worlds of the two games are on opposite sides of Peach's castle we've got a big inconsistency.  That bothered me at the time.  It's too big to explain it away or even have the possibility that the areas COULD co-exist.

That's just somewhere where Nintendo and I disagree.  If I created a fictional world I'd be damn picky about making sure the world was consistent with itself throughout the franchise.  Nintendo does not care about that at all and Paper Mario was the first time I really noticed that, though I probably could have discovered it much earlier.

[KDR_11k]

S-E is third party, what they make is as canon as fan fiction. None of the characters and races added in SMRPG have been reused in any later Mario game to my knowledge.

Nintendo doesn't care about continuity or story as much as they care about gameplay and they have zero qualms tossing anything out that doesn't work in favour of the game.

Also remember that this fictional world was never designed as a world just as jumpman was never designed to be a character. These were simple things thrown into a simple game since SOMETHING had to be there and they were designed for only one purpose: Working well with the game. That's why I insist Nintendo should stop reusing characters from the NES and SNES era in "epic" games since these characters were simply not designed to be more than a sprite that represents the player.

[Bill Aurion]

But in Super Mario RPG you have the Mushroom Kingdom with the castle that Princess Peach lives in..

Okay, so you say that there is no evidence that all the other games could or could not have been in the Mushroom Kingdom...So in essence you are basically admitting that it was Super Mario RPG that ruined the "continuity" of the series by forcing a location to be set...

[Deguello]

Ugh no way, he did not even attempt to do that.  There is no way in Hell Ian tried to connect SMB3 and SMRPG.  God Golly Gracious, your standards for continuity are low, even tot he realm of "could be's."  And if they are that low, I can connect Paper Mario to SMRPG in less moves.

Please notice all the lumber and construction equipment in the Southern Part of Toad Town.  Obviously the town has expanded enough to be severed from the actual castle proper, as obvious from the Mushroom Kingdom's economic move from fief-and serfdom to a well financed Communistic Capitalism.  (What with coins literally falling out of random boxes and such.)

This sounds like a waste of time because it is, and you can't even do that right, lightweight.

[Ian Sane]

All I'm saying is that Paper Mario had a completely different world than Super Mario RPG and IN MY OPINION that partially affected my enjoyment of Paper Mario and that TO ME that was an inconsistency that bugged me that made ME notice that Nintendo doesn't give two sh!ts about that kind of stuff for the first time.  Pointing out a bunch of stuff I missed prior to 2001 doesn't mean jack sh!t because I'm talking about something that happened.  And just because I was apparently too dumb in 2001 to notice that Mario didn't have any consistent continuity doesn't change it.  Paper Mario made me notice it.  That's factual so why present all these counter-arguments when I am merely stating what I noticed for the first time seven years ago?

Super Mario RPG kicks ass.  Paper Mario isn't fit to wipe Super Mario RPG's butt.  Back on topic.

[EasyCure]

lol i love internet bouts

[Halbred]

I think the Super Mario RPG stands completely separate from the Paper Mario series, which in turn is completely different from the Mario & Luigi games. So we've got three Mario RPG frachises. I could do without one of them.

I will agree with Ian on at least one point: Paper Mario is like RPG's for people who have never played an RPG or D&D at any point in their lives, and Nintendo doesn't seem to think that we can handle stats any more complicated than Attack and Defense.

Happily, Mario & Luigi remedied that problem. I think the Paper Mario is for the younger, RPG-newb crowd while Mario & Luigi is being built up as the successor to Super Mario RPG.

Now that Nintendo and Square(Enix) have remedied their relationship, perhaps we can start hoping for a real sequel? That would be pretty kickass. I would like to see Super Mario RPG on the North American Virtual Console, and maybe even a souped-up DS port.

[NWR_insanolord]

I've never played Super Mario RPG but I have a negative impression of the game because of people that feel the need to bash Paper Mario in their praise of the game.

[NWR_Lindy]

Play it.  You won't be sorry.  Paper Mario is good, but Super Mario RPG is on another level entirely.

Besides, you have to wash off that Communist stench.