Paper Mario: The Origami King is celebrating its five-year anniversary today, July 17, 2025. Below, we examine the ways the Paper Mario series has changed over the years, and how Origami King tried to recapture its early magic.

Though Mario’s platforming adventures are universally adored, the Paper Mario series has a much more mixed reputation. Its first two installments, Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64 and its GameCube sequel, The Thousand-Year Door, are widely regarded as Mario’s finest role-playing outings, enchanting players with their imaginative storybook worlds and irreverent humor. As the series progressed, however, it gradually deviated from its RPG roots, shedding many of the elements that had made the first two games so beloved. While the series has never quite been the same since, its Switch installment, Paper Mario: The Origami King, is the only one that has come close to matching the heights of the original titles.

Paper Mario’s identity crisis can be traced all the way back to 2007’s Super Paper Mario. Originally announced for the Nintendo GameCube, this particular entry effectively began life as an offshoot of an offshoot–one last hurrah for the aging purple console spun out of repurposed assets and ideas from The Thousand-Year Door. By that point, however, GameCube sales had flatlined and a new generation was on the horizon, prompting Nintendo to move the title to the Wii, where it became many new players’ introduction to the series.

As its moniker suggested, Super Paper Mario took a considerably different approach than its predecessors. Whereas previous games were turn-based RPGs with some platforming elements sprinkled in, Super Paper Mario inverted this formula; this entry was predominantly a platformer with some light RPG elements. Mario and company could still gain experience points for defeating enemies, which in turn increased their health, strength, and other attributes. But environments were largely laid out as side-scrolling stages, and the strategic, turn-based battle system of old Paper Mario games was gone; instead, players defeated foes by stomping on them in real time, a la the classic Super Mario Bros. games.

It was a stark departure from previous titles, though ultimately still an enjoyable one. Taken on its own, Super Paper Mario was a charming romp that retained the series’ signature humor while contorting its gameplay in interesting ways. But it also signaled a shift in direction for the franchise, one that downplayed its role-playing qualities in favor of simpler stories and more immediate gameplay.

This was borne out in the next installment, Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the 3DS. Although the game brought back turn-based combat, it removed party members entirely; this time, Mario faced off against foes solo, which completely changed the dynamic of battles. Moreover, many of the series’ hallmark RPG elements were either streamlined or excised. Coins effectively doubled as currency and experience, while badges and Flower Points were replaced with stickers that were consumed upon use. It was a novel attempt at deconstructing RPG mechanics, but it further strayed from the elements that endeared the series to so many in the first place, and it would be largely dismissed by fans.

Part of this displeasure also owes to the game’s unconventional structure. In an effort to tailor the adventure for a handheld system, Sticker Star divided up the interconnected world of previous Paper Mario games into a series of compact “levels,” which were laid out across a world map like a traditional Mario platformer. These were generally roomier and more puzzle-oriented than the platforming stages of Super Paper Mario, but they made the world feel less convincing. Early Paper Mario games were so memorable because they whisked players through whimsical locales populated by unusual characters, which imbued each area with a distinct sense of place–something that Sticker Star’s disjointed levels could never achieve.

Sticker Star’s eventual followup, Paper Mario: Color Splash for the Wii U, refined some of its more divisive elements, making for an overall stronger game that was better received by fans. But it also retained a few of its predecessor’s controversial qualities, namely its level-based structure and resource-centric battle system. The game was ultimately a step in the right direction, but it was nonetheless a vastly different experience from the series’ earliest titles, which reinforced the perception that Paper Mario had changed permanently.

It’s for these reasons that many fans greeted the announcement of Paper Mario: The Origami King with a mix of excitement and trepidation. As promising as the game initially appeared to be, the question of whether it would return to the series’ roots or continue the divisive experiments of more recent Paper Mario games loomed over every marketing beat. The end result ultimately falls somewhere in the middle. While The Origami King still follows the action-adventure direction of its immediate predecessors, it also channels the spirit of earlier games with its vast setting and quirky cast, making it the series’ best installment in over a decade–and a promising sign for Paper Mario’s future.

This shift is immediately obvious in the game world. The Origami King eschews the level-based structure of Sticker Star and Color Splash for a large, interconnected setting–one that’s much closer in scale and imagination to the first two Paper Mario games. Amid his travels, Mario visits a range of stunning and memorable environments, from the brilliant, red-and-orange papercraft foliage of Autumn Mountain to the opulent Shroom City–a gaudy oasis shining in the middle of a sprawling desert. Each area of the world is richly detailed and home to some hilarious denizens, which makes them feel much more like proper locales than the discrete stages of Sticker Star and Color Splash.

Crucially, Mario is also no longer traveling alone. The Origami King pairs the plumber up with a rotating cast of partner characters. While none of these companions quite match up to the beloved party members of the series’ earliest titles (and are much more limited in battle), they add color to the world and a heartfelt touch to the story. The adorable Origami sprite Olivia is one of the series’ more charming companions, playing a pivotal role in both combat and in moving the plot forward. Mario is also joined by several other characters at different points in the adventure, including an excitable Toad archeologist and even longtime nemesis Bowser, who spends much of the game helplessly folded up like a greeting card.

But most notable is Bobby, an amnesic Bob-omb who joins you during the game’s second major chapter. Despite his nondescript appearance (unlike Bombette and Captain Bobbery from earlier titles, Bobby is just a standard-issue Bob-omb minion, albeit one curiously missing his fuse), Bobby quickly becomes one of the most memorable companions in the entire series thanks to his poignant character arc, which culminates in a genuinely shocking and moving scene. It’s unexpected territory for a game about paper characters and office stationery to explore, which makes it all the more impactful.

The battle system, too, has once again been reimagined, and for the better. Moving away from the resource management of its two predecessors, The Origami King introduces a new panel-sliding system, which challenges players to rotate sections of the battle arena against a time limit and line up enemies for optimal damage. This makes every encounter feel like a rapid-fire micro-puzzle, and outside of the original turn-based battle system undergirding the first two Paper Mario games, it’s the most thrilling battle system the series has yet devised.

Certain aspects of The Origami King still fall short of the series’ best, but it’s thanks to these elements that the game comes closer to recapturing Paper Mario’s early magic than other recent installments. It remains to be seen if the series’ next eventual title will follow in Origami King’s footsteps or take inspiration from The Thousand-Year Door, which was also released on the Switch, in a lavishly remade form, in 2024. Whatever the future may hold, Paper Mario is in better shape than it’s been in many years.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com