Paper Mario[a] is a role-playing video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 home video game console. It was first released in Japan in 2000 and in the rest of the world in 2001. Paper Mario was re-released for Nintendo’s Wii Virtual Console in July 2007 as well as Wii U Virtual Console in 2015.
Paper Mario is set in the Mushroom Kingdom as the protagonist Mario tries to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser, who has imprisoned the seven “Star Spirits”, lifted her castle into the sky and has successfully defeated his foe after stealing the Star Rod from Star Haven and making himself invulnerable to any attacks. To save Mushroom Kingdom, rescue Peach, get the castle back, and defeat Bowser, Mario must locate the Star Spirits, who can negate the effects of the stolen Star Rod, by defeating Bowser’s minions guarding the star spirits. The player controls Mario and a number of partners to solve puzzles in the game’s overworld and defeat enemies in a turn-based battle system. The battles are unique in that the player can influence the effectiveness of attacks by performing required controller inputs known as “action commands”.
Paper Mario is the second Mario role-playing game to be released (following Super Mario RPG) and is the first installment for the Paper Mario series. Paper Mario is the predecessor to the GameCube game Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the Wii game Super Paper Mario, the 3DS game Paper Mario: Sticker Star and the Wii U game Paper Mario: Color Splash. The game received critical acclaim upon release, attaining an aggregate score of 88% from GameRankings and 93% from Metacritic.[1][2] It was rated the 63rd best game made on a Nintendo system in Nintendo Power’s “Top 200 Games” list in 2006
