Topic: Should the Paper Mario series split into two seperate series?

I saw some discussion about this and it makes a lot of sense. Miyamoto had little role in the Galaxy games and Odyssey, plus his involvement in Star Fox Zero practically ruined the game. I think I even heard once in an interview that he pressured Aonuma to make BotW much more gimmicky and stuff. He really shouldn't have so much power in Nintendo.

You're not wrong in your thesis, but that's a bit of a weird example when you consider it's a multi-million series and when stuff like Pikmin or Fatal Frame exists.

@MarcelRguez And THAT'S why you do research, kids.

The most recent Metroid spinoffs (Other M, Federation Force) haven't been doing too hot, I suppose? I don't know, I'm not a hardcore Metroid fan, I'm just trying to start some speculation on some series that haven't been doing too well.

@Kiolu100 Other M is not a Prime game. While Federation Force is and it sold terribly, it's also the exception within that sub-series. So yes, Metroid games not setting the world on fire in terms of sales is more of a recent thing. They used to do ok-to-good numbers, with Prime 1 sitting at almost 3 million units sold.

Sales of some titles:

(Keep in mind the Prime Trilogy had a very limited production run, which explains the low sales)

Now compare it to something like Star Fox:

@MarcelRguez As wrong as I was, this is getting a bit off topic. You get what I mean when I say that some Nintendo series that didn't sell well still got some support from Nintendo.

I didn't do my research into the sales of Metroid, but this is a thread about Paper Mario and where that series is headed.

@Kiolu100 Hey, it was you who asked.

But anyway, here's the inconvenient truth about Paper Mario:

Very out of date, but it only matters for Sticker Star. I don't think Color Splash broke a million, but I'm sure Nintendo isn't taking Wii U sales as a basis to define the future of any franchise.

@Kiolu100 I just hope they make him less sluggish. Most of the Paper Mario games he controls a little clunky outside of combat. Seems like something they should work on if they want people exploring large areas. The other stuff they have past precedence for and can reflect on since even the most recent Paper Mario games have had improvements they can take from.

@MarcelRguez I didn't ask anything.

And, if the NSMB games did really well, why did Nintendo think it would be a good idea to listen to the fans and make a large open world game like 64 and stop making NSMB as far as we know?

@Ernest_The_Crab Yeah, fixing that would make puzzles and exploring much more satisfying.

@Kiolu100

That's a question, my dude.

Because those two series (just like Metroid and Metroid Prime) do in fact coexist and cater to different audiences, and Odyssey existing doesn't rule out a 2D Mario down the line in any way, shape or form? If anything, it's Mario Maker what complicates things.

A better comparison would be sandbox Mario (64/Sunshine/Odyssey) vs. linear A-to-B Mario (Galaxy/3D Land & World).

@MarcelRguez Look, I'm not here to argue.

1. That's a rhetorical question. Plus, responding to it with a graph of sales of MAINLINE Metroid games doesn't exactly answer it.

2. That's what I was thinking, but I didn't exactly know how well 3D Land and World sold.

Anyways, this thread was supposed to be about what we want the future of the Paper Mario series to look like, not what's most likely to happen.

The series just needs someone new to lead it kinda like Koizumi with Mario Odyssey. Tanabe pretty much lost sight of what made the series great especially after taking Miyamoto's advice WAY too much to heart.

@PipeGuy64Bit Yeah, I'm more split towards either getting a more traditional Paper Mario or just a new lead for the series. I just thought that there could be some subseries including the good parts of CS and possibly getting some Metroidvanian Mario with the art style of CS would be rad, alongside a more traditional Paper Mario.

I just hope that they even make a real Paper Mario sequel again. I don't know whether there is any room for hope at all. I do know that Nintendo has said that they've decided the direction of the Paper Mario series and that the Mario & Luigi series is the RPG series now (however much the M&L series has become something different, too). However, my experience is that Nintendo frequently says one thing and does another.

Remember, in the Wii/Wii U eras, Nintendo was adamant that Super Mario Galaxy was the "exploration" sequel series to 64/Sunshine. It really looked like there was no hope whatsoever of seeing a 64/Sunshine style Mario platformer ever again. But then... They suddenly changed their minds. I remember they even made a big deal in the presentation about how Odyssey was following 64/Sunshine while Super Mario Galaxy was now lumped with 3D Land/World.

It was a "miracle" in gaming if I've ever seen one. I so desperately want to see it happen to Paper Mario, too. I loved that series as an RPG so much.

@Harmonie That's what I was thinking, but with a lot of their recent anouncements being things that fans wanted (Metroid Prime 4 and Samus Returns, Fire Emblem Shadows of Valentia, Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Tennis Aces, Xenoblade 2, etc.) I believe that there's a chance they'll listen and bring back traditional TTYD. It's not a huge possibility, but theres a chance that they's listen.

@PipeGuy64Bit I think one of the differences between Koizumi and Tanabe is that Koizumi is Miyamoto's trained successor for the main Mario series. There's definitely a certain level of trust between the two which probably doesn't exist in Tanabe's case.

Also, Tanabe despite having produced some pretty good games himself did so while having a host of other people overseeing them (the DKCR series for example had both Iwata and Miyamoto overseeing it). I have a feeling he might not be able handle being given too much freedom.

On another note, both Paper Mario and 1000 year door had Miyamoto as the producer. Ryoichi Kitanishi the IS president at the time (he's now the chairman) was also involved in all of the Paper Mario games up to and including Super Paper Mario (less so in the first game but as the second producer on 1000 year door and as the producer for Super Paper Mario). The series really diverged after both of them left their producing roles for the series.

IS probably doesn't have a real leader to fill in the gap left by both of them and being a spin off series probably means the studio doesn't get much priority for it.

They killed it, it's dead.

In theory, this is a fairly reasonable idea. First of all, it's been idiotic that they've been using JRPG turn based combat while directly stating that they don't want Paper Mario to be an RPG anymore. That's fine but like...then don't use things from RPGs that you aren't using to make the best action adventure-y Paper Mario game!

And 2nd of all, do you think anyone at Nintendo is thinking it's a risk to make a wide variety of MARIO games? Come on. Switch will probably be around for a long time, they've already put out three entirely different types of Mario games. And in the first place, Mario and Luigi's felt done as a traditional RPG based on what I've heard from people for a while. Yet inexplicably the Mario series that hadn't had a turn based RPG focus since 2004 was considered the one that shouldn't be an RPG series anymore. And they put out three Mario and Luigi games on 3DS and 1 Paper Mario game, so much for worrying about overdoing it.

And let's be honest, the huge gap in Paper Mario sales is entirely because of when they were released. Late N64 and mid GCN games were almost certainly never going to come close to early Wii and 3DS games for any game, let alone Mario. I mean, Titanfall and Watch Dogs were also massively successful games despite backlash from gamers, and guess what happened? Their sequels under-delivered at launch. And unfairly, since they were universally considered to be superior to the originals.

also, like a year or two after Sticker Star, Nintendo then went on to pretend critical acclaim was everything for their games, so...

Yes it should be split into an N64/GC-style series, and a later-style series. This will make it easier to drop the later-style series into the bin, where it belongs.

@Haru17 Did they ever publicly say this? I highly doubt that they've just killed it off entirely.

@kkslider5552000 I didn't really even think about it that way, though as I reflect on my own opinion about the future of the series, I'm just sorta believing that they'll make Paper Mario more traditional again. Nintendo's been bringing out a lot of games that fans wanted, and they've learned the lesson that listening to their fans will make them more money than trying to innovate every little thing within a series.

@noobish_hat In all honesty, I think that there's enough good from the later series that they could go on to make much better titles, seperate from the traditional Paper Mario series. The new team could just turn these good ideas into their own different series, possibly without the inclusion of Mario himself, given how many darn spinoffs he has already.

@Kiolu100 They killed it by making games like Sticker Star instead. Who knows if anyone is even skilled enough to make a puzzley RPG at Nintendo anymore, they stoped making decent singleplayer campaigns for all of their games by the end of the Wii.