Although 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Paper Mario has since branched into a series in its own right, what a lot of people don't know is that it was once intended to be a continuation of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Considering the direction the paper-themed series took, who could blame them? The two games ended up with starkly different art directions, and even completely different game developers in charge of producing them. Let's take a look at how one cult classic RPG gave rise to a whole new Mario franchise.
A sequel to Super Mario RPG was announced at Nintendo's 1997 Space World event with the title "Super Mario RPG II". The Space World event was an annual trade show that Nintendo hosted from 1989 to 2001, formerly called "shoshinkai". Nintendo demoed many of its games and consoles in public at the annual event, so the announcement of a sequel to the exceptionally well-received Super Mario RPG was no surprise. What did surp𝓰rise was the way the sequel looked: like a children's pop-up book.
Even before deciding to refer to the game as Paper Mario, the art direction was shifted away from the 3D graphics used in Super Mario RPG, noteworthy especially considering that the 3D in RPG, while of course not up to today's standards, was very well-received. It's possible that someone at Nintendo saw tꦗhe value in making stylized games - something visually distinct, even if not on the cutting edge of what their consoles made possible, might hold up better in the future. It's also possible that it was simply an eclectic design decision intended to appeal to much younger kids.
But after its announcement, the project flew under the radar for several years. Fans knew that a sequel was coming, and that it would look different from the first Super Mario RPG, and that was it. Paper Mario ended up releasing in 2000, three years after the announce of "Super Mario RPG II", for an entirely different console than intended, developed by an entirely different company. Squaresoft had developed the first Super Mario RPG game, but legal fallout saw the RPG giant leave the project. In Squaresoft's wake, Intelligent Systems (best known for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a certain tactical RPG series...) stepped in to take the creative reins, and released the Paper Mario we know and love today.
Some images (such as the title screen above) indicate that the project didn't become 'Paper Mario' until fairly late in the development cycle, though, leaving some room for speculation as to why they chose to make it an entirely new series. Did they decide to reset the franchise as a whole because of Squaresoft's departure? Or was the RPG franchise going to consist of separate storylines with each installation, and it simply manifested into different Mario spinoffs like the Mario & Luigi series that debuted in 2003?
The original Super Mario RPG has become such a cult classic that some fans are still 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:begging for rep in Super Smash Bros, even though it's long since been apparent that Nintendo's only remaining tie to the game is the occas𓃲ional SNES nostalg﷽ia package re-release.
With a reputation like that, it's only natural that everyone would be curious about the 'lost' sequel - and how much, exactly, was lost in the transition from RPG II to Paper Mario, never to be seen or heard from again. But considering some of the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:frankly ridiculous limitations being put on the creative team behind the Paper franchise, if Legend of the Seven Stars had spawned its own lasting series, would it still be a🎉s beloved today? Or would it have declined? We have no way of knowing, especially without the lost beta version of the game to draw comparisons to.
What we do know is this: whatever happened to the sequel, fans probably still want Geno in Smash.
(Source: i)