The Origami King Is Now The Fastest-Selling Paper Mario Game Ever

Zool will be raging!

Relative to most of Nintendo's switch games, it did pretty mediocrely. Loved the game, underrated.

I imagine the percentage of buyers that never even heard of the previous games is significantly high, wouldn’t surprise me if the attach rate for Mario games on Nintendo systems would have the Switch in the top 3.

@N8tiveT3ch It's too bad, because as a TTYD fan, this is a pretty good game. But hey, your

@HotGoomba___Rebrand I'm just joshing. I'll play it at some point maybe after Metroid 4 or Bayonetta get released.

@N8tiveT3ch Oh ok lol those games seem pretty good too lol

@HotGoomba___Rebrand Why does that look like an album cover by like Wire or New Order lmao

Well, it's a step in the somewhat right direction, so I guess I'm glad that sales followed suit numerically, but hopefully Bug Fables gets it through Nintendo's heads to make a freaking PM1/TTYD-formula game.

Makes sense, the Switch is their most popular console right after the Wii.

Glad to hear, most people that have actually played the game say it's awesome. I'm looking forward to try it out, but I have a lot of backlog lol. Trials of Mana and Ni No Kuni are everything I need right now.

Good, I hope this shows Nintendo those vocal "fans" who keep whining about it are just really a minority that should not hold back the franchise if the devs want to try something different. I for one am happy with the way the series has been evolving.

@HotGoomba___Rebrand What does that picture mean, if anything?

It’s a great game!!
I higly recommend!

That is great! I’m still working my way through but I am having a blast. I was worried it would have legs in sales. Guess I was wrong.

Nice! It was definitely a 2020 highlight for me. In a doom n gloom year, its really what I needed at that time.

@theiRiS But Metroid is a "big game" even though it never made any of the beest numbers of Paper mario?

I’d rather have this game sell well instead of the series never getting a new entry if it flopped.
Ttyd 2 would be great, don’t get me wrong, but Origami King is way better than getting nothing at all.
Which is what is more likely to happen when people boycott this game than getting ttyd 2

On a side note:
Nintendo achieve 5 billion games sold (not counting digital sales on the Wii, Dsi, and in some degree on others systems).
Very impressive!

https://www.resetera.com/threads/nintendo-software-and-hardware-sales-data-from-1983-to-present.2725/

@theiRiS
Paper Mario sales are not disappointing whatsoever.

Great news. Here for the inevitable meltdowns. 😂

To this day, I’m on the fence as to whether or not I should buy this game. I’ve read and watched reviews. I’ve looked at people comments on it. I’m still undecided. 🤷🏾‍♂️ I’ve only played the Wii Paper Mario. I LOVED that game! It wasn’t until the release of King, that I’ve noticed a lot of people don’t like the Wii entry in the series. I might end up getting it, based on my experience and how others felt about Super Paper Mario.

Cool. Not my thing, but cool.

@N8tiveT3ch Your loss, because it is an amazing game still, original characters even if most npcs are toads, lots of humour, looks beautiful, has so much emotion, and is fun af to 100%, unique battle system but that's the only questionable thing since that's more preference based ig, oh yeah and the music slaps hard

@N8tiveT3ch nevermind I saw ur later comment lmao, well in that case dw you have something to look forward to

@outsider83 You really should honestly, I never have touched a paper mario game before (only watched the story on youtube to a few), but the gameplay is amazing (battle system is the only questionable thing since its about preference), the music is amazing, visually its amazing, and the humour and emotion is nothing like I thought it'd be, story too even, fr it's worth it, fun to 100% as well, the characters all are amazing, the npcs, heroes and villains

@TG16_IS_BAE, it's apparently a meme called "loss", thus it ends their sentence that missing out on the game is the other poster's "loss".

The only reason I know that is that awhile ago there was an article on this site about a, fabricated, report of it being included in a Pokemon game.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/03/random_did_game_freak_sneak_the_loss_meme_into_pokemon_lets_go_pikachu_and_eevee

2020 I really needed a game like this. I loved it. Great game

This game was my refuge from the stress of the real world for about a month straight, and it was a blast the whole way through, barring some minor annoyances. Beyond the tone and writing changes, I've noticed that the devs have been trying to implement puzzle solving into battles, and Origami King feels like the most successful one. As much as I'm hoping for an eventual return to the classic Paper Mario style, I REALLY hope they don't abandon the ring system. The combat system is a bit rough for regular battles, but I want to see them try taking it further, it feels like there's a lot of potential there. The boss battles were great, I only want to se how else they can expand the ring combat there too. Otherwise, the art direction, music, and writing is top notch, with a few jokes actually making me laugh out loud, a rare thing for me from a video game. I'm happy that this silly, and sometimes surreal game earned its due

I just 100%d the game last week, which was surprisingly quite difficult to do. I enjoyed it, but the battle system just got extremely annoying for me.

I've never liked solving little puzzles like that and to have to do it hundreds of times throughout the game, for every battle, on a time limit is torture and I will most likely never play through the game again because of it.

@HexagonSun If the devs ever go back to the original Paper Mario style, it's practically mandatory that they implement Origami King's over world into it to some extent. It's genuinely the most fun I've ever had just exploring in a Paper Mario game.

Remember though guys. This is the worst paper mario next to sticker start right? Well right? Funny how people are still rushing to buy it. Oh and if you like thousand year door so much than nobody is stopping you from playing it. There's always emulation, buying it online or a hacked Wii that can solve that problem real quick.

@RR529 I had a feeling it was something like that. Thanks for clarifying.

i wonder if the fan's boiling point on the game will have any affect on future titles. i liked TOK but i dont see any replayability in it, with each battle system being a gimmicky novelty not fun for a 2nd playthrough

@Andrew5678 theres a high chance they wont bring back ring battles. they said in interviews they want to do something different each game, which just leads to a mixed bag of quality imo

Not really a surprise, given the success of the Switch overall and the lack of new first-party releases this year.

It's not a perfect game, but I was pretty darn happy with TOK, all things considered. It's vastly better than Sticker Star, at least, and the level design and exploration are quite a bit better than in TTYD.

@nessisonett now that I look at it, it does lol

I loved this game.

Low sells for the switch install base. After all the drama, it's clear it could have sold more if it were a real mario rpg game. Nintendo is just trying to say "hey guys, we did good! Trust us!"

@HotGoomba___Rebrand Bwahahahaha, good one!

The game deserves it. I love Hundred Year Drawer but Origami King is a promising example that new Paper Mario CAN be fun. (Just bring back EXP yo)

It's a good game and I am glad it is doing well. This is also indicative of how well the Switch itself has sold and the sheer number of gamers that have it.

@Umario251 thanks for that! I’ll go ahead and get the game, once I make my way through at least half my backlog (almost finished with Okami!) One question. Why do you find the battle system questionable?

It's a good game but it would had been a fantastic game had it go the Thousand-Year Door route.

And this is how Nintendo receives the wrong message in what a good Paper Mario game is.

Oh well. RIP this series.

Excellent and very well deserved.

@Yosher Sorry but there's more than one way a game in a series can be good. It's not a case of right and wrong messages if two different ways are both successful.

Would love a switch version of TTYD. Please make it happen Nintendo!

Great game, a lot of fun! Glad to see it's doing well.

@Dr_Lugae Of course there's more than one way, Super Paper Mario already proved that.

I just really do not like how they drift so far away on what made the series so enjoyable back then, it is very unenjoyable for me as it is right now and I really really wish they would go back to having an actually fun and involved story and non-generic NPCs and actual fun boss designs rather than having real life objects function as bosses. Not to mention the gimmick fights that are mostly pointless.

..and yes I know this is a me problem, I know there's people still enjoying the game. Why people are enjoying it, I have no clue, but they are, and that's fine, and I'm happy for them. But as far as I'm concerned this is giving Nintendo a wrong message as the series has lost that special feeling it once had.

It truly feels, to me, like they took Mario, put him in the most generic clothing known to man, shaved his face, made his nose normal, gave him a normal posture, made him talk in a 'normal' voice, took away his superb jumping capabilities etc etc, turning him into a generic every-day man with no outstanding features whatsoever. That's what this game is IMO. Generic. Nothing wrong with generic, but there's nothing special about it.

Just goes to show the power of the Switch brand, and it's very high software ratio on first party Nintendo titles.

Not a bad game, still wish they would bring out the first 2 on switch.

Also the idea of Super Paper Mario, the switching between 2D and 3D was amazing, wish they would do a sequel to that with the similar mechanics.

They should remaster TTYD to make hardcore fans happy. That way, everyone would be happy XD
For the next game though, I'd like a more tradicional battle system. It's the only reason why I haven't played the game yet (I will, of course). We don't have Mario & Luigi anymore, so they don't have more excuses.

It's kind of depressing for those of that enjoyed the first couple of PM games. They could at least get someone on a new Mario and Luigi to replace what was lost.

Figure's, you can show almost anything you want to with a bit of juggling.😁

I'd never played a Paper Mario game before, so I had no expectations. I really enjoyed it! The story was great - and funny too. The graphics and music were really nice. I thought the vellumental boss battles were particularly enjoyable.

@Yosher I see where you're coming from but I can't agree that there's a wrong message being sent.

I think a good case can be made for Origami King storytelling of the games. The story keeps flowing as you go from location to location. A lot of the scenes are action packed, and the dialogue the characters say is charming, witty and informative. The conflict is more personal for Mario and co.

Think about the inbetween chapter segments. So like the scene where you meet Bobby in Origami King which leads right into Autumn Mountain and other ones(spoilers), versus the 8 exposition dumps by Frankly or Merlon in TTYD/SPM. If we removed the context of Paper Mario storytelling to revisit the same hub 8 times for exposition compared to a story that progresses alongside the journey.

It's fair to prefer one or the other. But if you hold all the games side-by-side and compare the seperate elements people like you're never going to find 1 single game that is the best at everything. You could tick a box for character diversity in PM64/TTYD/SPM, but whether the story is funner is a toss-up because there's legitimately aspects that Origami King does better than any previous game.

I'm a bit over 10 hours into the game and am having a blast. It's definitely one of my favourite first party offerings on the Switch. Like many I am a big fan of TTYD but TOK is just as good imo.

Ehhh, still not going to buy it until disgustingly cheap (probably won't be until the end of the Switch's life cycle). I've been burned twice in a row (Sticker Star, Colour Splash), and it still looks too similar to those games for me to trust that third time is the charm. To those who have brought it and enjoyed it, I hope you continue to enjoy the new direction.

I 100%:ed the game a month ago. Great overall experience.

I’m surprised an indie dev hasn’t made an homage to TYYD sans Mario, to scoop up the audience that isn’t getting it from Nintendo. My guess is that there aren’t many people getting into game dev because of paper Mario, unlike Metroid, Pokémon, regular Mario, Zelda, etc.

@Dr_Lugae Unfortunately I fail to see a single thing that Origami King does better.

...

..okay that's not true; obviously the visuals are better. And by that I mean purely because it's in HD. The game does look really beautiful. But if either of the first three games was given the same graphical fidelity then those would look better to me still if only because they have smoother animations, they don't have the dumb white outlines around certain characters, and the whole paper aesthetic isn't pushed in your face quite as much.

I'll admit I haven't played the game yet, as the game seemed to build further upon the disappointments that were Sticker Star and Color Splash, both of which I DID play. I do want to give this game a try sometime in hopes of being pleasantly surprised but absolutely not for full price, the game is far too stripped down of what made the series so special for me to justify buying it at full price. So maybe when I do play it I'll see more that this game does right outside of just visuals.

But as it stands, judging by the trailers I have seen of the game, it just took the concept of the previous two unfortunate entries and ran with it which is just incredibly saddening to a long time fan of the series.

@NinChocolate Bug Fables exists, that is essentially old-style Paper Mario sans Mario.

Nice. It's a great game, even if it's not as great as the first three.

Good to see as it's a really great game. Loved the dungeons.

@KryptoniteKrunch Me too, they're starting to flow...I shall check back in later.

@Yosher I’m now informed. Very interesting. Indie development pulls through for the forgotten once again.

Good! Great game

Still need to buy this game. Along with some of the gems from 2019.

I've been playing this game and so far I am really enjoying it. I like solving puzzles so I have been enjoying the ring battles so far, to the extent that I haven't really gotten fatigued by fighting normal enemies like I do in most RPG's, of course maybe by the end I will be tired of it. Of course the variety and quality of the rest of the game really helps it shine as well.

@NinChocolate this is exactly what they did with Bug Fables.
It would be interesting to see the sales figures for that game vs the latest Paper Mario.

I didn't pick up TOK as im not a fan of puzzle games and the combat wheel put me off as its so integrated into gameplay.

@KingBowser86 Has Bug Fables outsold The Origami King?

@Fulgor_Astral By that logic, almost every game on the DS is an astronomical disaster because they have "Low sells [sic] for the [DS] install base". Doesn't work like that though.

@Dog I doubt that it will, but that's to be expected from a new IP that isn't made by a developer with massive marketing clout.

@KingBowser86 I don't know if we'll ever get a TTYD/PM64 game ever again tbh.

But I can see more experiments which more closely borrow again from these games. In ways, moving around in Origami King even reminded a bit more of the original Paper Mario 64 with it's various pathways of connected world(especially early regions with connections to each others like the tram/etc) than Thousand Year Door which was relatively more disconnected visually with how every parts of it's world was apart from Rogueport and each others... I loved TTYD, but sometimes I wishes Rogueport wasn't the massive connecting hub of it's disparate world and I'd thus often wished the many different regions had more connections to each others than "yet another trip to Rogueport to travel to another region". Origami King was oddly "fresh" in that way in that though every regions was connected to Toad Town... it was actually possible to travel between some regions -without- making a trip back to Toad Town.

Also, though still small I like how there were stuff like the friendly koopas at the Velumental Temple or the Snifit town and all which -really- helped to shake up a bit the overwhelming presence of Toads as the previously "only" friendly NPCs in past games.

So in that way it definitely felt like it was starting to borrow a bit more from earlier older games. I could see other games still experimenting with new battle system though. For example I noted that for all it's hub-bub about puzzle battles, Origami King also experiment with some basic action battles with the Paper Machos enemies... down to even making some into outright boss fights that existed outside of it's puzzle battle mechanics.

I could see a future Paper Mario game thus playing more on that style of play, but literally turning it into a Paper Mario-styled clone of "classic" Zelda games while also still doing like Origami King and borrowing a bit more again from older Paper Mario worlds designs/etc.

And who knows.... Paper Mario 64 is getting old enough I wouldn't put them against a possible remaster/remake with updated graphics. And they DID borrow a bit more from it's world design ideas(regions connected to a hub, but with some connections between each others again) with Origami King after all. After all, it's always a classic to go "You have enjoyed the latest game? Now time to see where it all started!".

@theiRiS Maybe you and I have a different definition of "most", but it's already the 20th best selling game on the system and likely to climb as high as 15th, possibly better. That seems like a resounding success to me. In the past, Nintendo has made it quite clear that any game that sells over a million copies is something they consider a modest success, and anything over 2 million is a hit. This is nearly at 3 million and it had a lot of controversy around it and it's in a niche genre that often doesn't sell well. For what it is, it sold amazingly well. It's sold better than Final Fantasy XV did on PS4 and nearly as well as Persona 5. And while there's debate about how RPG-like the series is now, it's still seen by most (especially those that didn't buy it) as an RPG series.

@Deltath yeah you're right, I should rephrase, it didn't do great relative to most mario games. It did well for a video game but idk that it lived up to Nintendo's expectations.

@theiRiS I guess that's kind of my point, though. It isn't really a Mario game in the traditional sense. But when compared to some of the other Mario games that aren't the big boys like Odyssey or even the A3D All-Stars collect, it did as well or much better than Super Mario Maker 2, New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe, Mario + Rabbids, Luigi's Mansion 3, Captain Toad, Yoshi's Crafted World, Mario Tennis Aces. And better than most other first party games in their first quarter. I think the bigger question will be how much of an evergreen title it turns out to be and if it will continue to climb.

I really do think Nintendo is likely pleased with it. Especially after news outlets would have had you believe Paper Mario fans were going to practically boycott it. Yet it sold millions. We'll see though how it does this holiday season.

Oof, I guess some people are enjoying it. Wish I could.

Screw Origami King. Until Nintendo gets their asses in gear, I refuse to touch anything Paper Mario and it turns to its RPG roots and doesn't shove the paper gimmick in our faces.

I started to play Kami Kind a few days ago and love it. But I also love Color Splash, Sticker Star, Paper Jam and have never played the N64 and GameCube version (because TTYD is way too expensive right now). Love these games as well as the Mario and Luigi games. Paper Mario doesn't need to be like Mario and Luigi games, in my opinion.

Thousand year door was still the best.

Definitely, not my favorite Paper Mario game but I enjoyed it.

@nab1 Or maybe, and hear me out here, fans of the old games just really hate how the gameplay feels far more simplified compared to the older games which were very much a cases of easy to learn but hard to master, the stories have become more shallow, and character designs have become far less unique compared to the old games.