I've tried to tackle a few Mario platformers over the last few years, trying to get into one enough to finish it, but eventually yielding to the harsh frustration that platformers in general present. I could get good enough to push through, I suppose, but time is too precious to throw myself at that level of repetitive failure just to get a few more levels into them.
Instead, I took on Paper Mario, the late-to-the-party Nintendo 64 classic that launched the Paper Mario franchise in 2001. In 2001, I was deep into Ultima Online and the N64 at this point was starting to gather dust. I jumped aboard the series later with the Gamecube sequel Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and later the Wii entry, Super Paper Mario.
Everything that was great about those sequels started here, in a fun and polished package that presents enough of a challenge to not be annoying, enough surprises to keep players moving forward, and enough humor to make the journey enjoyable.
The pacing is great and at no point did I have to grind to level, although I did grind items for a time to increase my wealth. Levelling means raising hit points, mana, and badge slots. Badges are important attack and defense boosters and configuring them is a constant concern, as their various uses can be situational.
I may never take on a classic heavy duty JRPG, but the simplicity and overall lightness of the Paper Mario games, including this first one, makes for a rewarding experience whenever I want to scratch that itch.
Now, I had originally purchased Paper Mario on the Wii Virtual Console, along with a few other games, and had abandoned them all when I packed the old Wii up a decade ago. For the rest of the 2010s I stuck mostly to the Sony and Microsoft consoles and paid little mind to what Nintendo was doing, which was releasing their own new consoles, the Wii U followed by the Switch.
Since the old days, I have gone with one philosophy as to whether or not to buy a console, and that is simply "Is there a game exclusive to it that I want to play?" For the Wii U, that answer was no, so for the first time ever, I skipped a Nintendo console, but later in the 2010s, I did purchase its successor, the Switch.
My last gaming friend in the world, Jimbo, is a Nintendo loyalist though, and he was quite disdained by Nintendo abandoning the Wii U when the Switch came out. He encouraged me repeatedly to pick one up, and when I kept putting it off even when the used Wii U consoles were cheap, he took the initiative and gave us one as a present in a deal he got from a co-worker who was ready to abandon it.
And while there was still nothing of note I wanted to play on it, it was backward compatible with the Wii, and offered a way to bring one's Wii data over, including those 5 games I had purchased on the Virtual Console. I dithered for over a year an a half on that, knowing it would be tedious work to perform the transfer.
Finally in December, I dug the Wii out and hooked it up to the internet to begin the process. While the Nintendo online store thing was a ghost town, the app the do the transfer was still there and ready to download. Keep in mind, in late 2020, the Wii U has been totally left behind by Nintendo in favor of the Switch, so I was actually amazed that the mechanism to transfer stuff was still in place. One wonders how much longer players have to do that.
All of the work and frustration melted away when I was presented, during the transfer, with this:
Little robot guys actually moving the files, to load them on a spaceship/SD card for their journey to the Wii U. Once the card is loaded and inserted into the Wii U, the robots unload them with similar animation.
Somebody took a lot of time at Nintendo to make all this. No doubt that it was a selling point for some Wii users when the Wii U was released in 2012. In spite of the Wii U's failure in the marketplace, I'm glad they have left the infrastructure in place in 2020 so us late adapters can still make the move. Playing the few Wii Virtual Console games was my main selling point, but having the Wii U installed in my upstairs setup allows me, when I feel the need, to revisit the our Wii game library or try a Wii U hidden gem at some point.
As always, the more the merrier when maintaining a vast videogame backlog.
