There's apparently been a recent and slightly odd discovery in the Wii release, Super Paper Mario. It's all tied to the 2009 South Korean version of the game. YouTube channel GamingIntus, which was able to sift through the files, found unused levels and content that had no resemblance to anything else in the game.
About halfway through the video, you can see non-interactive human-like cats in these unused levels. As noted by Gaming Reinvented, these character models look out of place in Mario's world. What's incredibly weird about this discovery is how these models and levels are only present within the Korean version of the game, which was released more than two years after the original Japanese game.
It's hard to believe additional unused content would have been added into this more recent version. GamingIntus believes Intelligent Systems might have been working on a different title until it got a Paper Mario reskin, but that doesn't really explain why the content can only be found in this particular release. Take a look for yourself below:
What do you make of these recent findings? Tell us below.
[source youtu.be]
Comments 28
Fascinating! I wonder why they were never touched on again.
I actually saw those cats some time ago on Twitter. Someone tried to identify them.
Ugh, yet another retro catroidvsnia with tacked on RPG elements
Neat. Finally beat this game last week. Kinda wish I knew what these would have ended up like
I really liked this game, I remember trading it in before I beat it to get the mighty Super Mario Galaxy... what a game
There seems to be an element of Animal Crossing about this, perhaps some sort of crossover type title was mooted?
That was an entertaining watch! Curious stuff. I love content like this.
It's interesting to see the title that marked the end for Paper Mario in the eyes of its earliest fans was (likely) initially planned as a different title. Should Nintendo decide to bring Paper Mario to the Switch, I hope it follows the incredible formula of the first two games.
Paper Mario was a fun franchise to play. I hope Nintendo decides to bring it back to the switch and not the 3Ds. I might even play the Wii U version since I never picked it up the first time around.
Don't see how you can definitively say these cats are "out of place" in a game that's so intentionally a hodgepodge like Super Paper Mario. Still weird tho.
Talking of Paper Mario - would absolutely LOVE a remake (or just straight re-release) of Thousand Year Door on Switch. Please Nintendo!
This game along with the first two Paper Mario needs to me remastered for the Switch.
@retro_player_22 I'll keep it to the first two thanks.
Ok Nintendo time for a sequel!
@Kainbrightside Intelligent Systems is currently working on Fire Emblem Three Houses, so hopefully once that is complete.
Hearing Super Paper Mario’s World 1-1 theme makes me feel like a kid again... Now I wanna go back and play it again and finally beat it! 😃
The cats could have made for a great game. Bring that cat game to Switch!
@Baker1000 I’ll second that. SPM was where they started pulling the series away from the things that made it great. It was admittedly better than the two that came after... but it began the trend.
I’d love a new traditional Paper Mario but I doubt that will ever happen so I’d rather the series just sleep than we get another Sticker Star or Color Solash...
If this is a beta element, I imagine it was meant to appear in either Fort Francis (the dude was obsessed with cats and anime) or King Sammer's kingdom in Chapter 6. Super Paper Mario is one of my favorite games of all-time, so newly-discovered unused code is awesome to see.
Edit: I suppose a third possibility is that this is the predecessor to the Lucky Cat thing sticker from that one game we don't talk about...
From what I've seen about this game, people either love it or hate it. I'm not against a series trying something new/different as long as it pays off.
My theories are that the files are from another game the Korean localization team worked on, or someone on the team was messing around with the engine and they got mixed in with the game's release on accident.
@ShadJV exactly my reasoning. I just remember finding SPM so hard to get through because I was just so uninterested in the format and the world. After Thousand Year Door, with it's brilliant party of characters, SPM just felt boring. I'm sure it's a great little game in it's own right, but it's just what Paper Mario is for me, and you're right, this is when the series started being messed about with too much. They've never recovered from that huge shift in format, and the series is still a ways off it's traditional roots and what made it so good in the first place.
@Baker1000 SPM wasn’t a bad game (mostly... I’m looking at you, minigame where you just held right for 6 minutes in a hamster wheel) but it took almost everything great from the series and dropped it. The writing was alright at times, but not as consistently good as TYD, and the lack of real partner characters was a huge shot in the foot. Dropping most of the RPG mechanics was horrible. I’d understand if it was a spin-off of Paper Mario, but it was just the start of turning the series into an odd experimental franchise when the first two were excellent. And Nintendo has made it clear they don’t want to bring the original style back (as they “already have another Mario RPG series), so I don’t really have any interest in whatever they do with the series. But I’d be down for remasters of the first two.
Does look like characters from a prototype, that eventually became a Mario Game.
And might have become a Mario game on short enough notice that all the new characters had to be a bunch of rectangles, rather than the spectacular efforts made in both characters and utilisation of the paper crafting theme in Thousand Year Door.
Not that I am incapable of appreciating Count Bleck and Francis, mind!
As to why they'd only be present in the Korean version, it's possible the only complete set of project files they could find when starting that version, was from a slightly earlier date, where the prototype levels hadn't been removed. And they forgot.
Things like that happen quite often in game development, when you have to re-open development of something you thought you wouldn't be touching again.
Super Paper Mario is my favorite in the series. This was my first Wii game. Bought it first even before twilight princess. If they out Wii games on Switch this is one I'd like. I have it on Wii U but that's boxed up. And takes so much equipment to play.
I have say that yes, this really is random.
It's so foreign from Paper Mario it kinda frightens me, what was going on to make these kind of out of place levels in the first place? We might never know...
My theory: Someone from the Korean debug-team did throw them in for fun. Nice find by the way.
Oh wow paper Mario just wow.
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