PM Post-Prologue: Thank my Lucky Stars!

After beating a chapter, the Peach interludes begin with this screen and this theme. The complete and utter dissonance is hilarious.

As alluded to previously, Peach is going to take on a major role in the story following every chapter. This one's just a visit.

Peach is particularly emotionally attuned to her environment, and is prone to bouts of depressiveness in dire situations. Which is "most situations, when story is involved". Peach manages to be bubbly and enthusiastic in brighter times, but we're going to see very little of that side of her in the Paper Mario trilogy. It's more of a thing in the sports games.

Even Peach seems to think Bowser's going to be going for this.

Peach is right about one thing: She's not doing anything on her own from this room.

Well, she can talk to Bowser, but no guarantees that does anything.

Trying desperately to pretend this is anything of the sort.

PM Prologue Part 2: Using Your Head

We begin our journey across Goomba Road with a helpful sign.

Truly, we have been warned.

Helpfully, the Goomba leaps off the sign and tries to attack us, as proof of concept.

Your first battle with Goombario will have him pipe up with a short tutorial on how you can have either Mario or Goombario move first in a battle. There is no inherent reason one might want to do one or the other.

Goombario only has two options: Actions and Strategies.

He doesn't even get the choice to Run Away. There is going to be another Strategy he can do later, but still.

Actions are the battle abilites we went over earlier. Tattle does not cost any FP to use, thankfully.

When you Tattle, a blue box appears over the enemy as Goombario delivers his spiel.

This is a Goomba. Goombas are what you'd call "small fries." Actually, they're pretty much the smallest fries. ...Hey, wait! I'm one of 'em! Max HP: 2, Attack Power: 1 Defense Power: 0. You can jump on them or whack 'em with the Hammer. These guys are old school. They've been around since you were in Super Mario Bros.!

Showing off Headbonk, it's literally a Goomba-flavoured Jump command. Whoever thought Goombas should attack with a Headbonk instead of their traditional "Marching straight ahead into the enemy's feet!" creed was onto something.

PM Prologue Part 1: Fighting Fit

Chapters (and the Prologue) are explicitly numerated in this game. Not that I find this entirely helpful for chopping things down, we'll see how many times I get weird cutoffs.

Mario has landed in this clearing. Wherever this is.

The ghosts of the Star Spirits appear to lend a hand. They like to spawn, despawn, and in general act one at a time when in a group, but outside Eldstar (the one with a giant white moustache), the order they do so doesn't seem to have any logic to it. However, going clockwise, they are lined up in the order we will rescue them.

Mamar and Kalmar dive down to inspect Mario.

The Star Spirits, because they're all static-y, have very static-y text to match. This isn't that bad to read (although I have never seen someone with bad vision try to read it in motion), but as screenshots, it's awful.

Kalmar is very pessimistic about our odds. Considering he will be the last Star Spirit we save, he's probably feeling really worried about how long he's going to spend captured.

Eldstar reassures Kalmar, although he addresses it to everybody. I'm not sure who else was that concerned, they all seem pretty content with their lot later.

Mario got a thorough beating by a powered-up Bowser and fell from the sky at perhaps his greatest drop in the series. Mario is no stranger to surviving stuff like this with nothing but dusting off his overalls, but at this early juncture in the series, they took a more realistic approach and had Mario need to get an magical recovery from the Star Spirits, what little power they happen to be able to expend while captured.

The Star Spirits hop, and Mario gets several dozen star effects over him. This does heal him, but only in a technical sense.

It's also the limits of the Star Spirits' power, and now they have to put their faith in time, Mario, and whatever people happen to live nearby.

There's one such passerby now! Although as far as "friendly species" are concerned, the Goomba has... not been one of them. On the other hand, it's not exactly like they've been good footsoldiers on Bowser's side.

You really have to wonder how far away people are "supposed" to be able to see. Maybe the "storybook" setting of the work means we're supposed to be reading the two characters being on-screen together as artistic license and Goombaria is really a sensible distance away.

The RPG formula involves a relative nobody going around to places that don't recognise him. The Mario RPGs have a bit of a novel issue regarding this: Mario is famous. Part of the reason many RPGs other than this one take place in a faraway kingdom, like Rogueport, the Beanbean Kingdom, or Pi'illo Island, is to allow Mario to go unrecognised for a few chapters. Since this game is in the Mushroom Kingdom, we're going to be recognised more than not.

Goombaria tries to get us to wake up- although it's not necessarily because we're Mario.

It's because, Star Spirits or no, we're unconscious.

Goombaria recognises that she is a child, and calls for people who probably can do something helpful: Her father, her grandfather, and her older brother. Her mother was probably a sensible ask, but she's a kid and she's panicking, cut her a little slack.

A Mario Story: Paper Mario 64

Paper Mario is a franchise shaped, in many ways, by its identity crisis. A once-beloved arm of the Mario franchise has never been the same since Sticker Star. And, in the simplest of terms, very few people exist who prefer the modern approach of Paper Mario to the classic. Many appreciate it (it may be pertinent to note I am not one of them), but even they wonder why it came at the expense of what came before.

One prominent argument, especially from those tired of seeing nothing but praise laid at the first trilogy's feet, is that these games weren't quite as good as they are looked back upon, for a multitude of reasons related primarily to the gameplay, mostly. I believe, however, that there are a number of narrative elements that go unchallenged- some of which explain why the series went in the direction it did, and others which lament the fact and sing of missed potential. Time to prepare your paper puns, because this journey is about to unfold.

Unlike most games I have covered thus far, all three Paper Mario games have lore and important narrative before the title screen appears. Consider the title screen used as a header above to be more for bookkeeping.

This is the key world-building stuff, you're going to want to note this down.

Early in development, the game we know today as "Paper Mario" began life as "Super Mario RPG 2". Super Mario RPG was a SNES game developed by Square of Final Fantasy fame, known mostly as "the game Geno is from", and although Paper Mario is not considered a sequel of any sort, a non-zero amount of influence lingers in the corners.

Both games are about the home of wish-granting beings living high above in the stars. Although Star Haven is different from Geno's Star Road, there is enough of a relation to stand on.

Again, we're not actually going to be meeting Geno, although I suppose we don't exactly know for sure...

Unlike in SMRPG, where the Star Road had the power to grant wishes innately, Star Haven's wish-granting power is focused on a specific treasure.

These Seven Star Spirits are responsible for using the Star Rod to grant wishes, although whether or not they do anything of their own volition is less clear. I suspect they don't.

This is your reminder that, story focused as it is, it is still a Mario game, and we're going to be just as focused on making you smile as we are telling a coherent narrative. This is going to be my thesis later, as weird as that is to say in conjunction.

This is the only time in which the fact every character in the story is made of paper is relevant to the narrative being told here in 64- there's a few visual gags later, but purely visual. Although we're not really led to believe that Bowser literally taped Kammy into this book to teleport her to Star Haven, this is more symbolic.

An alternative question is "what was the story the narrator was intending to tell"? All good narratives have a conflict, or at least a "something happened". But for the "and then", this story didn't seem to be going in any such direction.