The Surprising Similarities Between Sticker Star and Breath of the Wild

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Paper Mario: Sticker Star is the proto-The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

I have been muttering about how I believe Paper Mario: Sticker Star (developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo) and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (developed and published by Nintendo) fundamentally share similar game design philosophies for several years now. With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild finally having its sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, releasing at the end of this week, it's time for me to finally and fully share my thoughts about how Paper Mario: Sticker Star is the gameplay prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It was Nintendo's try of a non-linear limited-durability-weapon game four to five years before Breath of the Wild came out.

For the rest of this article, I'm going to discuss the gameplay similarities between the two titles, and then move on to the narrative similarities. (The story is greatly influenced by the gameplay structure.) Of course, the two games do have differences, as you should expect from a spiritual sequel, so I end the article by discussing those. It is also notable that both Paper Mario: Sticker Star and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are radical departures from what their respective franchises have developed a reputation for.

The Core Design Similarities

Designed with non-linearity

While everyone is well-aware of how The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild starts out—you wake up on the Great Plateau, acquire all of the Runes (Magnesis, Remote Bomb, Statis, Cryonis), and jump off with the Paraglider, and then you get to decide what direction you go—not as many people consider Paper Mario: Sticker Star as a predecessor to this.

After E3 2016, Color Us Splashed

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - We're non-ironic about our pro-Paper Mario: Color Splash stance.

We at KoopaTV had no expectations regarding Paper Mario: Color Splash going into E3 2016. And I don't mean that in a “if you purposefully lower your expectations on something, you'll get more out of it! Consider this a life philosophy!” sort of way. It was in a, “The initial trailer for Paper Mario: Color Splash from March 2016, compared to other Paper Mario games, made us believe that this game was dead-on-announcement.”

Of course, we didn't have any expectations for Paper Mario: Color Splash going into E3 2016 because the official word for a while was that we'd only see The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It's a good thing Nintendo backed off from that. We were dying from half a day of just that game. Imagine two days.

By the end of when Nintendo Treehouse Live was finished with Paper Mario: Color Splash, our opinion of the game did a total reversal within that one hour. How could that happen? (And does it mean that KoopaTV should no longer judge games based on trailers?)

Before I hit the page-break for this article, I want to get this out there: There are no dudes on the Internet more understanding of why people hate Paper Mario: Sticker Star and adore Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door than KoopaTV's staff. Among our staff is literally Rawk Hawk. Personally, I have a very close attachment to several original characters from the series, such as the Crystal King and Doopliss the Duplighost. And that's not just because of my fan-fiction Events of Star World, though that was a major contributing factor.

Paper Mario: The Series' First Trailers

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Two of these things are not like the other three.

I wrote on Friday that the announcement of Paper Mario: Color Splash was the worst thing to happen on Thursday last week. I wrote that I'd complain about it for months. That might be hyperbole. But it also might not. Here's the official start of it.

I'm joining this whole Internet chorus of complaints about Paper Mario: Color Splash. It all stems from the trailer, so I'd like for you to take another look at it. I'm embedding the trailer from the European Nintendo Direct, because it has slightly more information than the American one.

One thing Bill Trinen does that Nintendo of Europe Satoru Shibata does not do is refer to Paper Mario: Color Splash as an “action-adventure” game, specifically that Nintendo “always tries to challenge ourselves to bring something fresh to the action-adventure genre.” Nintendo only began to refer to Paper Mario games as action-adventure starting with Paper Mario: Sticker Star. They were “Role-Playing” before.

That's not a good sign, if we don't want another Paper Mario: Sticker Star. And believe me, we do not want that.

There are several arguments that optimists have to stay hopeful about the quality of Paper Mario: Color Splash, including that one cannot judge a game by its first trailer. How can we judge what direction Paper Mario: Color Splash is taking from just its first trailer? Well, let's compare it to the first trailers for the other Paper Mario games! One can learn a lot about a game's direction from the first trailer — it's the developer's/marketing department's first opportunity to leave an impression on what the game experience will be like. What's emphasised in that trailer will, presumably, be what the game emphasises as well. 

These were, I think, the earliest trailers for each game. I could be wrong. If I am, let me know:

Are We Too Harsh On Miyamoto?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - We're not harsh enough.

Last night we were talking about the Paper Mario series in our [Koopa Keep] AIM Blast. Incidentally, today's Super Smash Bros. 4 pictures of the day:

Sakurai has announced a Paper Mario stage... based off of Paper Mario: Sticker Star.

There is another picture right below that one, too.

Well, what do you know! They took some inspiration from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door!

Seriously. That timing is kind of surreal. It's not like we talked about this every day you know!

So our discussion was of course on one of KoopaTV's hated figures, Shigeru Miyamoto. Well, before that, I was talking about how when Super Paper Mario came out, it pretty much broke the community of Nintendo fans in half. Since, you know, everyone back then played the Mario games for the RPGs.

So we had this platformer-RPG hybrid that was clearly so different than Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. And boy, did it cause controversy. Flame wars and such! The community took sides, and there was a lot to talk about. Did the gameplay compare at all? Should Super Paper Mario have really come out on the GameCube like it was supposed to? Were the Pixls a worthy replacement for Mario's partners? How awesome did it feel to play the adventure as King Dad? (About the same awesomeness as playing as him in Super Smash Bros. 4?)

First Thoughts on Paper Mario: The Origami King REVEAL!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Let's be clear on what's speculation and what's confirmed.

My very first thought was, “A new trailer for a Paper Mario game? Am I looking at the official Nintendo YouTube channel, or is this a fake look-alike?” Upon confirming it was real, I watched it, and here's what I saw:

Now, understand that Paper Mario is on a small list of videogame franchises made up of four or more games that I've bought every game for (others include Ace Attorney, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon—if you discount the remaster and those WiiWare things, and Super Smash Bros. ...That might be exhaustive, actually), which makes this a very important reveal.

I'm something of an expert in analysing the first trailers of Paper Mario games, and my findings are that people can be very easily fooled by trailers. In fact, there were a lot of contemporary positive responses (that I quoted in that article) to the first trailer of Paper Mario: Sticker Star, back when people were upset over Super Paper Mario's genre shift and people thought Sticker Star represented a return to form. Now everyone's priorities have also shifted since then, but the fact that first trailers are inherently untrustworthy remain true.

Ah, still, what did I think of it?

Is There a Meaning Behind Paper Jam?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - On first glance, it doesn't have a positive meaning.

Pretty much all of KoopaTV's staff seems to agree that Nintendo's only great announcement from E3 2015 was the 3DS game, Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam from AlphaDream. It's the newest game in the Mario & Luigi series, but it features Paper Mario (from his own series). So it's like a crossover of the two on-going Mario-themed RPGs, though it's tough to still consider Paper Mario to be an RPG series considering its last two releases, especially with Nintendo outright not considering Paper Mario: Sticker Star a roleplaying game.

Anyway, a lot of people have convinced themselves that this is a new game in the Paper Mario series, which is wrong. It's not really a crossover, either, since Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi don't get the same or equal attention in the title: In fact, Paper Mario doesn't really even get the sub-title, because... um... "Paper Jam" doesn't exactly scream "Paper Mario"... It screams "Crap I kept the paperclip in that group of papers when I fed it into the scanner."

That colour scheme for "Paper Jam" directly correlates to Paper Mario: Sticker Star but none of the other box arts in that sub-series.

A Call for Memorial

By RAWKHAWK2010 - Or why Sticker Star makes me sicker and scarred.

Today we honor the lives of many of our closest friends and allies. They hosted trivia, did archaeology, trained dudes in the martial arts, feared Bowser's accounting, and without them the Shadow Queen would have plunged Star World into darkness even darker than Sticker Star's.

And Miyamoto fucking killed them.

Finally, The Paper Mario: Color Splash Review

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - In terms of action commands, is this EXCELLENT, GREAT, NICE, or just GOOD? ...Or a failure?

After being informally requested for a long time, on September 23, 2016, it was requested (and seconded) by the readers that when Paper Mario: Color Splash comes out, we would write a review of it. Well, REVIEWS TAKE A LONG TIME, so here we finally are.

We have a very extensive and rich history with Paper Mario: Color Splash. When it was first revealed in a March 3, 2016 Nintendo Direct, Ludwig cursed it. That caused an analysis article looking at the first public trailers of every Paper Mario game, where he again condemned Paper Mario: Color Splash for its striking similarity to Paper Mario: Sticker Star. However, by the time the next round of footage came at E3 2016, the entire KoopaTV staff was stunned at how Paper Mario: Color Splash progressed, which forced Ludwig to write an extremely controversial article defending Paper Mario: Color Splash from people who were still criticising it. From between then and the game's ultimate October 2016 release, KoopaTV covered every Rescue V: Fearless Color Defenders video Nintendo put out, which you can find and read on your own time since this paragraph has enough hyperlinks.

Finally, after having beaten the game and spending quite a number of months thinking about it (to make sure we're not in a honeymoon period), we're ready to review Paper Mario: Color Splash. We'll be reviewing it on what the game is, not what we think it should've been. Also, this review is free of spoilers, or at least, if there are any spoilers, there isn't any context given so you wouldn't know that it's a spoiler.

Metroid Prime: Federation Force —Spin-offs are Okay, Guys

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...Though not if those spin-offs have you spinning off as a pinball.

Perhaps the biggest anger and outrage from the general fan reaction for Nintendo's E3 2015 was towards Metroid Prime: Federation Force. Now, I'm not the biggest Metroid fan out there (and there are others on the staff not named Rawk who actually are big on the series), but I did own and play through Super Metroid and the games included in Metroid Prime Trilogy. ...Though I did quit Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, which I'm ashamed about. (I quit right after I got the Plasma Beam.)

More later on how Metroid Prime: Federation Force was despised, but lemme give some not-so-apparently-relevant background first.

I never finished it because the aspects of the Metroid series that people love it for — the lonely atmosphere, the backtracking around the world when you get a new item to discover a new path, creepy enemies — aren't things I appreciate. ...Well no, I like the backtracking bit, but I'm more of a cute and cuddly kind of guy. Metroid Prime in particular (and its sequels) requires huge emotional and time investment just to go through a single play session, and I'd say it fits guest-poster Feriku's definition of survival-horror, though she might disagree. I mean, it scares me, and you're trying to survive on whatever alien planet you're on.

Grenchlers are the most terrifying monsters I've encountered in a videogame.
Scarier than Code Name S.T.E.A.M.'s blobs.

So it looks like Metroid Prime: Federation Force is going against a lot of those aspects people like Metroid Prime for, such as that lonely atmosphere bit.

Kamek and Iggy Koopa in Paper Mario: Color Splash

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Maybe I should ask Iggy to write for us sometime. He seems like the kind of Koopa to do that.

When I wrote this clause yesterday, “Instead of releasing the video that will be the focus of tomorrow's article (...if it's released),” I really thought Nintendo would today release Paper Mario: Color Splash's Rescue V: Episode 4 as part of its series that we've been covering. It'd give us a view of the Yellow Coliseum and the Rescue Yellow Toad squad.

Well, instead, they put out this episode of another web-series they have on their YouTube channel, the Nintendo Minute. This also covers the Yellow Coliseum, though from the perspective of that disgusting red-hatted plumber, not the (presumably virtuous) real protagonist, the yellow-hated Toads. Might as well talk about it.

But first, you gotta see it:

(Remember, Nintendo Minute is never a minute!)
 
So, we have two important Koopas making introductions here, and Rescue Yellow. KoopaTV staff member Kamek, and one of my brothers, Prince Iggy Koopa!

Hey you! Get off of my cloud!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's still not his cloud.

If you are lucky, you won't remember that article from a month ago featuring LEGO-ified me. But at the end of that discussion, I said that my set comes with me standing on a very low cloud less than one Mario-length off the ground. I wrote that you could swap me for Lemmy, because the next LEGO Super Mario release also includes a LEGO Lemmy Koopa alongside LEGO Ludwig (...I really don't want to say LEGO me!) and LEGO figures are designed to have the same feet as one another allowing them to stand on interchangeable surfaces. Like the cloud. Therefore, you can recreate the Hotel Mario scene where that menace invades Lemmy Koopa's High-ate Regency Hotel, kicks Lemmy out, and then demands that Lemmy get off Mario's cloud. Even though it was Lemmy's before.

But besides recreating it with LEGO, you can also recreate that scene with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, as I did:

It's totally off-screen in the video, but Lemmy actually gets on top of the cloud platform by footstool jumping off of Cloud Strife: putting another meaning to “get off of my cloud!” (As well as another meaning to how many clouds Mario claims to possess.)

In the decade since Paper Mario: Sticker Star released, I haven't seen anyone equate the TOTALLY RANDOM BIGGEST FAN THAT APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE in Hotel Mario to the TOTALLY RANDOM BIGGEST FAN THAT APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE in Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Which then made subsequent appearances in Paper Mario: Color Splash as a Thing, and even Paper Mario: The Origami King as a very random cameo on Bonehead Island. I'm not saying I'm the first person to ever think of it, but... I haven't seen anyone else. The Fan in Hotel Mario is EXACTLY like the running gag from the past Paper Mario games. They're both big. They both blow things away like clouds or fog. Especially in the Paper Mario stage in Super Smash Bros., where it blows away the cloud platform and anyone on it.

Sucks this happens to Lemmy Koopa a lot!


It's probably not a coincidence that there are big haters of every game the fan appears in. Ludwig at least liked Paper Mario: Color Splash and Paper Mario: The Origami King, though he has an overall unfavourable opinion of Paper Mario: Sticker Star and Hotel Mario. He considers it canon they are the same fan. Do you?

Paper Mario: The Origami King is Out Now!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Check it out. If you dare.

Since Paper Mario: The Origami King was almost silently announced by Nintendo just a mere two months ago, it's felt like the game has been under a constant barrage of scrutiny that you usually wouldn't see from a just-announced Nintendo title. That goes to show just how passionate the Paper Mario fanbase is... and how divided we are.

Then we got a closer look in June where we learned more about the characters and the battle system. It was rather obvious to me that this wouldn't be in the vein of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, though a few people continued to think it would be despite no evidence of that.

By the way, quick correction: According to the official website, I apparently misheard Kamek being into cleaning as Kamek being into cream. Alternatively, he likes cream and cleaning. Multiple interests, you know.

Hey, I'm getting Captain Vul (Events of Star World) vibes from this.
Even if pretty much no one reading this caption will get that reference.
By the way, Kamek's getting married soon. Cleaning makes sense.

After that, we saw a semi-dedicated Nintendo Treehouse: Live... well, just last week. It wasn't very interesting.

Now the game is out and we get this scenery-filled trailer:

I would tell you my own personal impressions of Paper Mario: The Origami King, except my copy is going to be delivered on Monday, after the retailer claimed that it would arrive today. That's the only reason I ordered it instead of physically going to the retail outlet and getting it myself. Regardless, I don't want to keep contributing to the digital slide of the new normal.

I guess I'll use the rest of tonight's article to discuss an interview that gaming outlet VGC had with Nintendo EPD and Intelligent Systems. It's certainly making the rounds.

Losing the Soundtrack to Sticker Star Makes Me Sicker and Scarred

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Re-purposing old article title ideas.

The one redeeming thing about Paper Mario: Sticker Star is its soundtrack. Before I actually got the game, I asked Rawk how the soundtrack was and he claimed it only had nine songs on it. Boy, was he wrong. The real thing is almost three hours long! That's longer than Paper Mario itself, and nearly tied with Super Paper Mario. It's the best soundtrack that Intelligent Systems has ever done, even better than Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn or its predecessor, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance.

Paper Mario: The Most Popular Plumber

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Fans like him more than the other forms of plumber.

I don't ever write articles complimenting Mario Mario. He's a terrible person. His brother is, too. I write negative stuff about him. Constantly. His creator, too.

That said, there's degrees of awfulness with regards to the plumber. Nintendo's child-focused site, Play Nintendo (which is still around, folks), held a poll on March 10 (“National Mario Day”), 2016 about “Which version of Mario would you want to meet on National Mario Day?”

Of Pixel Mario, Cat Mario, Baby Mario, and Paper Mario, which big-nosed diabolical jerk did fans want to meet the most?

Well, there's not much build-up to be had here since this article title spoils it. I took this screenshot on March 10, by the way. You can't see this now:

Paper Mario won by a large plurality!

The poll is currently being rerun (or maybe it's the same poll but renamed, but I could vote in it again, so...) past March 10. The results of that? Well...

Dos and Don'ts: Club Nintendo's Last Rewards!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - My recommendations of that catalogue.

I got 700 Club Nintendo coins to use until June 30th, and I have no idea what to use them on. For your collective sake, dear readers, perhaps I'll dedicate them to KoopaTV-related prizes. But I kind of want to enjoy myself, too. So let's check out Club Nintendo's grand finale! I can tell you what to get and what to avoid.

...If we can get in.

You Need Things For Color Splash Boss Battles

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's unfortunate.

While almost everything else in our post-E3 analysis and defence of Paper Mario: Color Splash's right to exist and be liked came true, this has not: 

“See the screenshot above? There is a Fan card at the very left, a bit off-screen. At the right, there is another Fan card — a replica. We know nothing about replica Thing cards besides the above screenshot, but it proves that you can have more than one Thing card in your inventory at once. Whether replicas are exact copies or are weaker remains to be seen, but this already seems to solve a problem, does it not?

All the Intelligent Systems team needs to do is make the overworld puzzles not totally weird that you have to look up the solution to figure out the team's logic. Also, make boss battles either possible without needing to use Things, or make them not a total pushover if you do use them. That's a balancing issue, though. Not a fundamental game design issue.
At least, in the Treehouse Live segment they actually said, ‘this game does a great job of equipping you with the tools you need, and you need to instead of blindly charging into battle, think about what you have in your arsenal.’ The double usage of the “need” may turn people off, but pros should consider it a challenge. After all, if Paper Mario: Sticker Star didn't ‘need’ characters or story, does Paper Mario: Color Splash ‘need’ Thing cards to win boss battles?”

Okay, PARTS of that are very true. The game DOES do a good job making sure you know you have the right thing. There is a dedicated, unique Toad in Prism Plaza just for that purpose, and a Toad right next to him to make sure you can acquire that Thing by buying it with your overflowing amount of coins. This also makes the whole guessing-the-game's-logic point null, since, at least so far, it's pretty obvious what you need to do.

So, the wrong part? Well, the article's title should tell you, and I'll go into detail. Keep in mind my experience is solely up to obtaining the Big Red Paint Star. So... things could change, and hopefully they do. 

Paper Mario: The Origami King Review. How does it compare to Color Splash?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I try to unfold this Paper Mario game.

Once upon a time, a game called Paper Mario: The Origami King came out. I was asked to write a review on it. After sitting on the request for ten months, I've decided to now do so.

Unlike its prequel, Paper Mario: Color Splash, there wasn't a big gap between Paper Mario: The Origami King being announced (May 14, 2020) and when it was released (July 17, 2020). Just two months, really.

I 100%ed the game a very long time ago. As in, around August 29, 2020. (I have a date because I publicly bragged about it.) That's given me a long-term perspective on Paper Mario: The Origami King that isn't influenced by a honeymoon period. ...Well, the real reason I didn't write this review in a more timely fashion is because I don't like writing reviews, but it's also given me time to think about what I think about Paper Mario: The Origami King. If you read the following review and want to know even more, please comment in the comments section!

This review avoids spoilers as much as possible.

Is The Legend of Zelda an RPG?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Let's also talk about game genres in general.

It has been a classic question for debate for decades: Is Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda series considered a role-playing game (RPG)? I've seen it repeated many times on the Nintendo NSider Forums/its predecessor, Hyrule Town Square (though I'm not going to go to the Wayback Machine to look for an example so believe me here) between 2003 and 2007, and it's still asked occasionally on Miiverse and other places. That said, I think most people have reached the right answer by now. The answer is "no."

If you don't know why, then ask in the comments section because I'm not going into a detailed response into something that everyone else has figured out by now. (But if you want to be contrarian, be bold and unafraid! That's the KoopaTV way.)

I'd rather discuss how stupid game genres are in general. Which is sort of why I've been mocking/ignoring them in KoopaTV's game reviews with functional-sounding, non-standard answers. (Then again, for the most part, I've been reviewing non-standard products.) Nintendo doesn't even use the word "genre" on their site, instead using the broader term "category". But believe me, they used to say "genre" and they never called The Legend of Zelda games RPGs.

Nintendo.com "Category" listings for:
Super Paper Mario,
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword,
and Final Fantasy.

...There's something unusual about the above screenshot, though.

Rescue V: The Fearless Color Defenders!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Clearly, with these Toads involved, the Paper Mario series is not in danger.

The Fearless Color Defenders doesn't specifically refer to KoopaTV's staff, the same group of folks that were stunned by Nintendo's E3 2016 presentation of Paper Mario: Color Splash and then stood out among the entire Internet when they wrote an article defending the game from its hordes of detractors.

This will be the another complimentary article for Paper Mario: Color Splash. Not because some higher force is MAKING us, but because the game deserves it. Just take a look at this trailer Nintendo just put out, involving some special heroic Toads:

The Rescue V refers to five Toads. (Oh no! FIVE TOADS! TRIGGERED!) These Toads believe that they are the REAL protagonists instead of that miserable Mario. That makes sense to me, since Mario is evil and all.

In fact, Mario is so dastardly that he not only is taking most of the credit, but he's taking ALL of the credit! 

Nintendo Treehouse Live E3 2016: Day 2 — Paper Mario: Color Splash

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Completely unexpected. We're absolutely bewildered here.

We have been developing a theory at KoopaTV throughout this incredibly long Day 2 of E3 2016, as we've been covering Nintendo Treehouse Live: They're going to save Paper Mario: Color Splash for basically last and show a ton of stuff we don't care about. Then, by the time Paper Mario: Color Splash arrives, we'll actually like it.

That may or may not have ended up actually happening. We ended up having a VERY enthusiastic response to Paper Mario: Color Splash, and it's still unclear whether it's fatigue or we actually somehow enjoyed it.

You can read the log and find out for yourself. I'm Nintendork 13 13, Vortexica is breezinabout, and RawkHawk2010 is RawkHawk2010.