Paper Mario Sticker is what I consider to an anomaly throughout the entirety of the Mario RPGs. First of all, it’s the only Paper Mario to be released on a handheld, which was a strange market shift for a series that was primarily on consoles due to the Mario & Luigi games being portable titles. the biggest shift was in gameplay, however, as attacks would now take the form of items of a consumable nature.

The development cycle for Paper Mario Sticker Star is one littered with conflict. The identity of the series was at stake, and the identity of the game was ill-defined. Early screenshots showed us a partner character, but that didn’t pan out so well, and the gameplay was a bit of a hodge podge. Many suspect that reviews and opinions of Super Paper Mario lead to the change.

Nintendo is known for overcomplicating things, and I have no idea why they tried this new approach to begin with when they had a solid base. Maybe it was to differentiate the game from Mario & Luigi, since plans for Dream Team were being speculated to be around that time? Maybe they thought there was no potential in it, similar to F-Zero. Whatever the case, the Nintendo Switch is a promising console that could lead to Paper Mario’s golden return… If its even worth bringing back.