I have a hard time picking favorites. Chalk it up to stereotypical millennial indecisiveness, I suppose, but it’s challenging to narrow down the breadth of all my experiences and identify just one thing as the best version of any particular category. Different movies or books are special to me for their own unique reasons; it feels silly to say that I prefer the Garth Nix Abhorsen trilogy over China Mieville’s New Crobuzon books or vice versa when both series have been important to me at very different times of my life. I don’t consider myself as having a “best friend” because each of my friends brings something unique to my life – someone I’ve known for a decade isn’t inherently better than someone I’ve only known half the time. Just because I’ll talk to one person about “more serious” things doesn’t mean they matter more or less to me than someone I’ll talk to primarily about hobbies. Despite my aversion to playing favorites, there’s one particular thing that has held the title of favorite for almost twenty years.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is my favorite video game. And yesterday, May 23rd, a remaster released for the Nintendo Switch. If my best laid plans didn’t go awry, last night I streamed the game and shared my first impressions on my Twitch channel. Today’s post isn’t about my thoughts on the remaster. Instead, I wanted to take some time to reflect on my love for the original game. Why did it resonate with me so much? How has it withstood the test of time? And what about the game keeps me coming back to it, including paying a frankly silly amount of money just to play it again with some new graphics and music? This is the story of my Thousand-Year Door journey.
I first played Paper Mario 64 as a rental game. See back in the late 90’s early aughts we had these magical places where you could go and borrow video games or movies for a very modest amount of money, trying them out before committing to paying full price. Anyway, I fell in love instantly. I made it all the way to the lava piranha boss in chapter five during my rental period and I begged my mom for the game. I think I got it for my next birthday, maybe? Regardless, I finish and loved the game, so when I heard a new one was in development for the GameCube I got really excited. I can remember sitting on my grandpa’s computer while visiting his house looking at screenshots and marveling at the special effects, such as the light sigils glowing on the floor in front of the Thousand-Year Door. Perhaps recognizing my excitement from all the time I spent looking at it at his house, my grandpa got me the game for Christmas the year it released.
Intro Story, the song that plays over this introductory storybook scene, still gives me shivers to this day
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door released in 2004, which means that by Christmas time I would have been 13 years old. Thirteen is a pretty pivotal age; lots of changes are happening with puberty and developmentally the brain is starting to be able to handle more abstract concepts. A person is really starting to experiment with their sense of identity for the first time at thirteen. I was at the perfect age to get super into something that would radically shape my perception of the world. And this new Paper Mario game felt so mature for a Nintendo title. There was noose in town square! All the dudes in Rogueport were grimy thieves! At an age where edge was appealing for me I found it in The Thousand-Year Door, but there was more than that to the experience. It was fun to play, the writing was funny, and I loved the characters and the worldbuilding in the game.
I remember fighting Hooktail for the first time convinced I hadn’t found the tool I needed to overcome her, the thing that starts with cr and ends with icket. I remember seeing Madame Flurry and experiencing that confusing mix of fascination and shame that was so emblematic of my relationship to sexual desire as a young teen being raised in the Bible Belt. The Glitz Pit became my favorite area in the game as I rose through the ranks to battle Rawk Hawk, and then Twilight Town became my favorite area immediately after because of the eternal sunset and the spooky villager designs. As the game entered its final stages and the endgame became clear, I found myself amazed at how “dark” Nintendo was willing to go for this title. By the time I rolled credits, I already loved The Thousand-Year Door, but my fascination with the game was only just beginning.
Subsequent playthroughs began to introduce secrets and depth that I had missed during my first run. I recruited Ms. Mowz, solved all the troubles at the trouble center, and met Grifty on the rooftops of Rogueport to learn all of the lore behind the Shadow Queen and the four heroes. I would write fanfiction about new fighters at the Glitz Pit or self-insert stories about being a Twilighter, meeting Vivian, and having her become my girlfriend. The Thousand-Year Door became more than just a game to me; it was a foundation for creating my own stories and exploring my own ideas about worldbuilding. Now this wasn’t the first game I engaged with in this way, but what ultimately made a big difference between this and the other games or media I wrote fanfic about was my increased level of access to the internet.
Truly grateful that I was too terrified to post any of my Rawk Hawk fanfiction online
Online I would be exposed to the fan art and fan theories created by other people for the world of Paper Mario. I’d lurk the GameFAQs message boards and read the stories that people posted there or watch other forum members come up with roleplaying games set in the world of the game. There was a particular thread I remember really clearly called X-Naut Fortress where people would post their X-Naut OCs and roleplay them hanging out, having conversations, and just generally getting into hijinks. I remember wanting so badly to participate myself but being held back by fear of rejection; most people at my school didn’t think I was cool, so why would this place be any different? I kept my stories and my OCs to myself, making my own little X-Naut Fortress in a Word document while silently watching everyone else have fun on the forum. It is my first clear memory of engaging with fandom, for good and ill.
The Thousand-Year Door didn’t just influence my fanfiction, though. It set a bar for what I thought made stories interesting. To me the game had just the right blend of humor and seriousness. I wanted to create stories that could make people laugh but also weren’t afraid to deal with heavy themes – not for the purpose of shock value but for the purpose of setting stakes that really made you care about the characters in the setting. I imagined creating locations that fascinated me as much as the Glitz Pit or Twilight Town in my original works. The majority of the fictional stories that I wrote during that time all bore marks of the influence that Paper Mario had on me. It didn’t just inspire me as someone who enjoyed games – it inspired me as someone who likes to create things, and I strove to create not just stories but also my own games that captured the spirit of The Thousand-Year Door. I’d listen to music and draft rules for tabletop roleplaying games, documenting all the mechanics of the game and trying to refit them for creating your own Glitz Pit fighters and competing in the arena. I imagined doing a satirical news show set in the world of Paper Mario, complete with commercial breaks advertising Glitz Pit fights or vacation packages on the Excess Express.
Naturally as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gone through a lot of phases with the game. Each replay digs into something different or hits on some new perspective that my adult self brings to the table. I’ve learned more about the world, about game development, about social issues, and my own self. From debates about Vivian’s status as a trans woman in the Japanese version to discussions of how weird the game is about Peach as a potential sex object for the player, I’ve read the perspectives of people who see the game through a different lens than I do as an American guy. Mechanically I’ve learned more about how many of the game’s scenes were designed primarily as a processing power showcase for the GameCube hardware, showing off how many characters could be displayed on the screen at a time as a way of promoting the console. I’ve listened to discussions of how much the backtracking hurts the game or how it’s too iterative on Paper Mario 64, not introducing enough new mechanics. While at some point in my life I truly did think The Thousand-Year Door really was the best game ever made, I am well past that now. It’s as flawed as any other game, with lots of nuances to unpack in the examination of its characters, themes, and gameplay elements. It’s clear at this point that when I say Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is my favorite video game, I’m not talking about technical quality or writing quality.
Something doesn’t have to be “the best” in order to be your favorite. Your favorite food, your favorite show, your favorite person are all decisions made subjectively. They may reflect quality to a degree but more likely they reflect something unique about your specific experience with them. The Thousand-Year Door has been in my life every year of the twenty years since I first played it. Playing it, replaying it, writing about it or because of it, reading about it, reading stories created by others, imagining myself within it – at this point in my life it is a place of familiarity and comfort. It doesn’t mean the same thing it did to me as a young teen and I don’t think of it in the same ways I used to. But I recognize how important those initial experiences are to me as components of who I am now, both the good memories and the bad ones. It’s not the only game I feel this way about – I could easily write an article just like this one about The Ocarina of Time – but it’s the one I’ve chosen to mark as uniquely special.
I’m excited to experience the remaster and once again bring this game into my life, adding color to the breadth of my experiences with it. Sharing it with my stream audience, experiencing it on my own and possibly with my partner as well – heck, Inkling is at an age where they might want to try the game as well. Seeing concept art, hearing new music – will I once again be creatively inspired to spend time in this world outside of the game? Will there be things I notice now that make me shake my head or roll my eyes? I don’t know the answers yet but I am looking forward to finding out how this particular revisit will become a part of the broad tapestry of my history with the game. I’ll keep you posted.