Poll: Box Art Brawl - Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS)

Europe/Japan for me. NA looks a bit like someone just emptied their pockets.

I voted USA because I got USA version in year 2013.

This really is a case of which turd got polished to a better shine, but it doesn’t matter: a turd’s still a turd.

Anyways, EU/JPN is better. Cleaner composition whilst being more true to what the game really is.

Possibly my worst ever gaming purchase.
I did rent Bubsy 3D once, think that's the only expenditure that could rival it.
The Balan Wonderworld demo thankfully didn't cost anything.

The US version is the more violent of the two covers. Europe/Japan just looks like his is trying to complete his Panini album.

I still think that Sticker Star is a good game, it's just not a good Paper Mario

kinda off topic but id love if a new PM game looked as good as the sticker star boxart, seeing the felt material and shadows overcasting the layered paper looks so cool. it was a shame this was when they started the choppy animations and removed the layered look of characters, up until the remake anyway

@boxyguy

I will say the game looked lovely, and I really wanted to like it.

I chose EU, but can’t say I’m a fan of either. The box art of the first 2 games showed off a ton of unique characters and felt like it had so much personality, but Sticker Star’s box art just has a few basic characters and stickers (which were the the most tedious things in the gameplay)

I ended up buying the game digitally entirely due to Donkey Kong Original Edition and I very much regretted it.

That said Sticker Star was kind of less a game I loathed while playing it and more one where after I finished I had a moment of, "Wow, I didn't enjoy any of that." Though I will give it that it is one of the best-looking games on the 3DS and the soundtrack is very underrated.

The EU/JP box art has more of a diorama feel than the NA box art, so EU/JP gets my vote today.

@Uncle_Franklin yeah! its divisive but i really like the paper craft aesthetic the newer games have, its very pretty and they managed to make these worlds feel alive and lived in by TOK.

i think what ruined it was when the game mechanics and characters had to rely on paper jokes and gimmicks too, it should stay as a visual aesthetic and not overtake the games identity

I really hope that Thousand Year Door does well. And I really hope it finally leads to Nintendo making Paper Mario 3.

I find it so funny that Nintendo Life gave Sticker Star an 8/10 back in the day - and the only criticism it got in the 2012 review was that it was "playing it safe", and it being "more of the same"...??? in no way are those the actual issues with the game lol.

When I played it at launch, straight away I felt such a betrayal from the game, for abandoning everything that made Paper Mario special, and I didn't need a decade's worth of hindsight and two mid-tier followups to come to that conclusion. I knew right away what was missing.

The reason I say I find it funny is because I read statements in modern NLife articles about Sticker Star such as: "Now, it's safe to say that this one probably doesn't top the ranking of 'Best Paper Mario Games' (in fact, we know it doesn't),"

...Nintendo Life is definitely aware of the game's shortcomings nowadays, it seems, hmm? Does that make me feel vindicated for disliking the game from the start? To be honest, I'm not so sure.

...More recently, I disliked Princess Peach Showtime straight away too, yet that one is also inexplicably getting high scores. I'm genuinely curious to see how the perception of Peach Showtime will change over the years.

Anyways, regarding the box art, sure the USA one is more interesting to look at, but seeing this game in any form just makes me sad, so I'm not going to even vote.

Paper Mario: Stinky Star, am I right?

This was my first Paper Mario, before I had experience with the amazing M&L games. Started twice, could not finish. Maybe should give it one more chance.

This was a far better game than spirit tracks

@Uncle_Franklin Maybe I'm just a freak, but I didn't hate my time with the Balan demo. I still plan to play through that game someday--especially since it's free on PSN.

Both are pretty good. The NA box art is more exciting.

I generally prefer the non US one, for the diorama background and color choice, but the US one represents the game a bit better: a jumbled broken mess of stickers. So in a rare twist I voted for the "worst" version of the worst Mario RPG's box art.

I think the Europe/Japan art has a deeper background, and it pronounces the foreground to greater effect than the NA boxart.
Europe/Japan for me!

I think they're both pretty good for what they are, but I went with the JPN/EU art (giving Japan first billing over EU since it's the region of origin, which is how it should be done when two regions share the same art. The article makes it sound like Japan is using EU art, when it's the other way around).

Ignoring the fact that this game is absolute hot garbage from the bottom of the absolute filthiest barrel known to man, the EU/JP one looks leagues better because it doesn't show any of the many random Things the game contains that are part of what makes this game such a trash heap in the first place, so I like it for that.

...okay maybe I failed to ignore that part a little bit. 🤔

Japan/EU for this hypothetical, imaginary Paper Mario game that I've never heard of. At least that one isn't as brutal an assault on the senses.

This game was nowhere near as bad as people made out.

@Baker1000

Correct.
It was worse.

I voted for the European/Japanese boxart.

They’re bother stellar, really. I prefer North America’s though.

i despite Paper Mario Sticker Star(this game was responsible for the awful state, the Paper Mario franchise is right now

I like the yellow background better, so I voted NA, but I hesitated because the cover is too busy.

I just now realized the background in more detail to the cover art for the NA one after all these years.

The NA version is very chaotic. When it comes to this game is this platform, I consider this a plus!

Box Art Brawls Current Total:

Europe: 76

Japan: 73

North America: 85

Australia and New Zealand: 1

I think it's worth mentioning that for the Kirby battle last week, the NA and Euro covers split the vote. As they were both the same concept with a different color, the overall concept of those two may be preferred to the odd Japanese one.

For this one, both covers are extremely busy. However, I voted for NA for what I consider to be vastly superior composition and more interesting visual choices. For the Euro cover, Mario's pose is odd to me, probably because he looks like he's jumping but his feet are together. Mario is featured prominently in the center, but there's so much extra stuff around him that it feels very cramped visually. I look at it and the cover feels crushed from the stuff from all sides. For the NA cover, all the clutter is at the edges. Mario using the hammer is more interesting. There's some breathing room in the center of the NA cover which I think makes it more pleasant to look at. I also like the choices for the various bits around the edges such as baby Bowser in that flying pod from SMW, the scissors, the sombrero, and the maneki neko(lucky cat), which all make it more fun to look at.

Regarding the game, I'm on the belief that it's a good game, but not a good Paper Mario game. It was the game I got with my 3DS in 2017 (by then I already knew about the controversy surrounding it, but still went ahead), and in all honesty, I'm glad I did.
If I had dismissed Sticker Star, I probably would've dismissed Color Splash, The Origami King, their clever writing, the jazzy music and the evolved aesthetics as well.
Even if I ever consider this game bad, there's a place for it in my collection. I did get some enjoyment out of it.

Not wanting to get political, it was Origami King that convinced me that Bowser also has "mañaneras", much like the current president of Mexico.

It was not my first 3DS game. I got my first and only 3DS in 2017 but I had had Super Mario 3D Land, Kid Icarus: Uprising and LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begings since 2013.

Anyway, I think I went off a tangent. About the box arts. If the European/Japanese one had a background, I'd vote for that one. Almost looks like a diorama. The North American one has too many Stickers. Maybe if you remove the Paratroopa and the "3D for ages 7+" disclaimer it would look better.

Cartridge art

North America (Europe is similar, but with different logos)

Japan (shared with the Taiwanese version)

@Ultimapunch

"I really hope that Thousand Year Door does well. And I really hope it finally leads to Nintendo making Paper Mario 3."

(question: Super Paper Mario not Paper Mario 3?)

I like the yellow and orange tones in the American one

I like the yellow background in the NA cover more than the blue background in the EU cover.

I remember the first time I played Sticker Star, having loved the first three games in the series. But I quickly dropped it because of the lack of a proper experience points system. Without it, the battles just didn't feel worth it if all I was getting as a reward was coins to buy more temporary sticker attacks, rather than getting a permanent upgrade to my stats.

It's for this same lack of experience points that I never played Color Splash or Origami King, despite the good things I've seen and heard about them in other aspects like the graphics and dialogue. So I'm very excited for a return to experience in the upcoming Thousand-Year Door remake.

both are good. NA maneki neko gives off more chaotic energy, but I already voted EU out of habit

Neither, the game is complete and utter disaster and easily the worst game Nintendo has ever put out. If it wasn't for Sonic Forces, PM Sticker Star would definitely be my most disliked game of all time. Horrible, horrible experience.

It doesn't matter when they're both reminders of the worst Mario game on 3DS.

@EarthboundBenjy Peach Showtime is definitely better than this abomination. How much better is up to you, but it is definitely better.

@batmanbud2
Oh, no disagreement there, for sure. I happen to think that Sticker Star is quite literally the worst product Nintendo has ever released. Or at the very least, it's my least-favourite game by Nintendo, by far.

Is there a game that has so collectively disappointed Nintendo fans?

Definitely the biggest disappointment I've experienced from the company.

I don't really get the hate for Sticker Star. I mean sure, it has tons of faults and is easily the weakest one of the series, but I still thought it was a pretty fun game.

@EarthboundBenjy Is it worse than amiibo Festival? Or Urban Champion? Or Wii Music? Or if the Pokémon games count, Pokémon Dash, any of the Rumble games, Hey You Pikachu, or Pokémon Channel? How about Warrior's Way for the StreetPass Mii Plaza? Freaking WarioWare Snapped? What about Donkey Kong Jr. Math or Popeye no Eigo Asobi? Solar Striker? I also think Yoshi and Yoshi's Cookie are very bland puzzle games. Or, speaking of Yoshi, Yoshi Touch & Go?

I mean I think Sticker Star is better than some better games, but at least it's pretty hard to argue that Sticker Star is not better than any of these.

@Krisi
The quality of the actual game itself is only one piece of the Sticker Star-hating pie. There's also the matter of Nintendo's hubris and complete disregard for their fans... as well as their disregard to the entire concept of creative freedom in game development.
The environment that creates a game like Sticker Star is a place where overzealous brand-protecting executives interfere with the creative process to such an insane degree, that only the most sterile shell of a game can come out the other end. It is the embodiment of "executive meddling".

Alrighty, I'll go through each of your listed games to see how they compare to Sticker Star, if I must.

Urban Champion: It's definitely not so great, but it's fun for a few minutes. It was probably overpriced on its initial release compared to the few other black-label NES games that were available at the time, but I'd say it's inoffensive.

Wii Music: This game has the amazing honour of giving us that infamous E3 moment, there's no way I can hate a game that has provided the internet with something like that! The game itself is kinda just a nothing casual game, and I have no problem with its existence.

Pokémon Dash: Haven't played it, but IIRC it's a touchscreen-focused racing game? I think it was also a gen 3 game that introduced some gen 4 mons for the first time? I guess it had some value there. I don't see what's so offensive about this game.

Pokémon Rumble: Haven't really played them. But the Wii U one did give the Wii U NFC sensor a purpose before amiibos were introduced, I guess that's something...?

Hey You Pikachu: How can you hate a game where you get to insult Pikachu lol. It might not be great, but it definitely has the potential for creating a lot of silliness.

Pokémon Channel: I actually played this one to completion because I wanted the free Jirachi lol. It's cute, and I enjoy that it includes some emulated Pokémon Mini minigames too. The game preservationist in me gives it some props for that alone. Yes, the gameplay is mostly just watching TV with Pikachu, but it was a chill time.

Warrior's Way: I dunno, StreetPass games were never really supposed to be proper games, they were just fun ways to interact with your StreetPass hits, weren't they? I don't particularly remember this one - maybe I never bought it lol. But its existence is fine with me.

WarioWare Snapped is pretty awful, I agree. I think it should not have marketed itself as if it was a true WarioWare game, that much I definitely agree with. The game itself is tiny and barely functions. Definitely a bad one, but IMO Sticker Star is guilty of much worse.

DK Jr Math is funny. I enjoy the fact that it exists because it's just so absurd lol. It's not fun to play, but that doesn't stop it from being fun to think about.
Not familiar with that Popeye game, but it sounds equally funny.

Never heard of Solar Striker before, I'll have to look into it.

Yoshi's Cookie and Yoshi were fun puzzle games, I thought. Nothing particularly special, but fun timewasters. What's wrong with them?

And Touch & Go... Sure, it's bland. It's an early DS game made before they really figured out what the DS was gonna be like, I guess. I dunno. I'm struggling to think of something to say lol.

So yeah. After considering every one of those games... I still dislike Sticker Star the most.

EDIT: Whoops, didn't notice that you also brought up Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival ... I agree that Amiibo Festival is definitely up there as one of the worst games Nintendo has produced. And it was also a huge disappointment to its fans, much like Sticker Star - that much is true too. However, it didn't completely kill the series like Sticker Star did. So while Amiibo Festival is pretty dismal, I will say that I dislike Sticker Star more. Animal Crossing has since thrived with huge acclaim with its very next mainline entry on the Switch - but Sticker Star was itself supposedly a mainline Paper Mario game, and its awful new style superseded the original style. That's a much bigger problem to me than Amiibo Festival being a terrible game. Amiibo Festival didn't affect the rest of its series.
But yeah, Amiibo Festival really does represent one of the most dire times in Nintendo's history.

I just realized I bought this game and never opened it. Haha

I wonder where it is now. I had best buy rewards dollars and picked it up because I loved the paper mario on Wii. I guess I need to find it and give it try.

@Krisi I'm with you, while it's not the best game in its series it's still a good game. I liken it to Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hour Glass. To me those are the worst mainline Zelda games but with that said they aren't bad games. I much prefer to replay Sticker Star over either of those 2 Zelda games if that's saying something.

You could also include 2 Metroid games to that list Other M and Federation Force. I will never play Other M ever again but I think FF gets a bad rap because it wasn't Metroid Prime 4. It also wasn't a bad game, just not what people wanted.

I'm going with North America's for the overall vibe of it taking place on a "sheet" of sorts for stickers to be put on. Europe's box art had its own appeal on certain angles, but its background just kind of clashes on the overall sticker theme for me; still liked its box art, though.

Now, it's safe to say that this one probably doesn't top the ranking of 'Best Paper Mario Games' (in fact, we know it doesn't), but it still has its charms.
No, but I still (personally) enjoyed Paper Mario: Sticker Star for what it was and though it wasn't exactly the 3DS entry I expected, I played worse games in other series that "mocked" their predecessors like this game did (Super Neptunia RPG, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, The Legend of Dark Witch Episode 3: Wisdom and Lunacy, etc.).

Why do they even do different box arts? Like, does NOA actually think games will sell more, if the boxart is less "cutesy"? Like, why does Kirby always have to be "angry"

This was posted almost exactly as Kit and Krysta posted this. ⁠
https://www.instagram.com/p/C6B17CFRA__/?hl=en

@EarthboundBenjy It won't. Princess Peach showtime is exactly what is advertised on the box and is its own thing. Most people who buy it want to see Princess Peach cosplay and be mildly entertained for a few hours. If the other Paper Mario games didn't exist, Sticker Star would be an odd novelty for Mario spin-offs with undercooked mechanics. Unfortunately, it wasn't. It wasn't just a sequel to a JRPG series, but a popular and highly renowned JRPG series that even JRPG haters often loved thanks to its wit, charm, and plethora of characters.

I feel Princess Peach Showtime will stay a forgotten yet positively remembered flash in the pan for most people, like Codename Steam was for me. Sticker Star will forever be known as the fallen tree that derailed a once beloved franchise.

North American covers always have to be angry or violent, even in franchises like Kirby or Mario. Tells you something...

Pretty sure I got this game still in the wrapper lol

This is a pretty close one for me. I ended up voting for the Japanese/European variant though since it has that beautiful blue background. The yellow background of the North American variant didn't look as pleasing to my eyes.

That's tough.
I want to say the US one is better but the EU JP one is better at explaining what the game is about. Still voted for the US in the end.

I love this game as its own thing, even if it doesn’t fit with the rest of the series. I will die on that hill.

Tough one, but I think EU/JP? I just love the tactile look of both of them (minus the 3D objects, which are as ugly as ever).

Played the game to the conclusion. It was fine. Good music, pretty, but not the follow-up to Paper Mario we wanted. I thought it was fine as a handheld spinoff, and if that was all it was, we'd have moved on. But it's fundamentally changed the franchise as we know it.
And it doesn't help that it was part of the wave of Mario games that sterilized the franchise, which didn't let up until Mario Odyssey finally put more than Toads into the game.

@Uncle_Franklin it really wasn't a bad game in any sense. You can be disappointed the battle system wasn't traditional (as I was) but it was still a solid game and closer to traditional Paper Mario than anything SPM was.

Holy hell you guys are really pulling the knives out on this game. I’ve seen criminals called nicer things then what y’all are calling this game. Personally speaking I liked the game as in I can acknowledge it’s probably not a great game but I liked the game. As for my pick here I gotta go EU/Japan. I like that ots more open and looks like a shot from the game.

Oh man this one was hard, so I just trusted to my American patriotic and voted for my country. 'MURICA!

@EarthboundBenjy So your main problem with Sticker Star is how vanilla and creatively bankrupt it is because of the meddling of higher ups? So you hate it more for what it represents, rather than what it actually is?
I can agree with that, it does have quite some aspects that are inferior to the previous games, but as a game, it's still much more interesting in my opinion than games like New Super Mario Bros. 2 or Wii. Those are at least as sterile as Sticker Star, and at least Sticker Star was a somewhat unique experience. Plus they have started to stray from its aspects, so it's not like it has changed the course of the Paper Mario games forever.

@EarthboundBenjy And about Pokémon Dash... It's probably the worst game I've ever finished. It's incredibly bad. Like I am absolutely shocked how anyone in the development team thought it was worth releasing. How anyone expected it would even reach the quality of a 2/10 game. And I've beaten horrible games like Super Monkey Daibouken for the Famicom and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon for the Game Boy.
It's a racing game, you've got that right. You only have one character, Pikachu, no special moves or anything you could think of or anything. It pretty much has nothing to do with Pokémon except for the fact that all the racers are Pokémon sprites. You could change them to little cars or something and the game would not change a bit. I think a Pokémon game has to do at least something that relates to Pokémon in some way, or it's just a shameless cash grab trying to milk the name recognition for more sales.
But yeah, that part's just insulting. The really horrible part is everything else. You race by sliding the stylus rapidly on the screen in the direction you want to go. It's not fun at all, does not add anything to the game, and destroys your touch screen. It took me like 2 hours to finish the game, and the film on my screen had become noticeably much more scratched just in that amount of time. So it's a game that actually has negative impact on your hardware.
But would it be even decent with normal controls? No way. It has just a few cups, and each cup works like this: you have a stage you have to traverse, and it's fairly small. Then the next stage is the exact same, just expanded a bit. Then again. Then again. With very poorly designed stages that have no real roads or obstacles, only stuff that slow you down, placed down without too much thought. At the end, you navigate through a really large stage with checkpoints randomly thrown around it, and finding them in the correct order can be pretty confusing as well. And even with this much padding, it's extremely light on content. Which I think is the only positive trait of the game, because at least you can just finish it in one sitting and never touch it again. No wonder it was made by Ambrella - their best Pokémon game is probably Channel, which is is extremely sad, given how many games they have made.

So in conclusion, not only is it short, shallow, boring, confusing, featureless, and just overall unfun, it actively harms your hardware, and has nothing to do with Pokémon except for a few sprites. It's really a game I can't imagine anyone having even a sliver of fun with. The other games I listed all have quite some positive qualities, I can absolutely see someone having fun with any of them. Pokémon Dash, however, is irredeemable. It simply has absolutely no reason to exist other than cheating money out of children's pockets. It's the ultimate "just ship it, the stupid kids will buy it because it has a popular character on it" game.

...Sorry, Pokémon Dash gets me ranting like little else.

@Krisi
Wow, I respect the Pokémon Dash criticism. That sounds impressively awful, beyond what I would have expected. Haha, that's amazing.

Neither is bad for me. It's just that I can barely tell that the North American one has to do with stickers in any way as opposed to Europe and Japan, if you'll excuse me, sticking the landing.

Both look nice, but I went with Japan/Europe

I love the japanese box art. Such a shame that is for a very crappy game,

@Baker1000

I don't know if you're deliberately being obtuse, or if you're merely ignorant, but the issues are well documented and go beyond the battle system (which in any case is worse than battle systems in other non-RPG Paper Mario games).

Origmai King lacks the traditional Paper Mario elements but is a decent game.
Sticker Star isn't:

-Very little story, even for a Paper Mario game.
-Tired and overused world themes (grass, desert, etc.)
-An extreme amount of backtracking.
-No Bowser dialogue.
-Too linear, and yet at the same time how to progress is often obscure, opaque, and lacking direction. Worst of both worlds.
-Slow pace.
-Very small, largely empty, hub town.
-Rewards for collecting all the stickers are meagre.
-Lack of sidequests.
-Stickers gameplay is deeply flawed. The ordinary stickers have little to no value. The feedback loop of getting coins to buy stickers to win battles in order to get coins... is not satisfying and does not encourage you to take part in battles.
-Lack of XP/levelling up isn't necessarily a problem in of itself, but they didn't replace it with anything else that gives the player a sense of progress.
-Key stickers are easy to miss, and quite easy to not have space for if you do find them.
-You don't know how big a sticker will be, and therefore how much space you need to free up, until you get the sticker.
-Little to no indication what key sticker is needed for a boss until you get to the boss.

A lot of this goes beyond taste; it is poor game design.

@Uncle_Franklin in your opinion