Happy Wii owners haven’t exactly been swept away by a deluge of quality titles for Nintendo’s eccentric console. It’s to be expected, this close to a launch, but what every Nintendo fanboy wants to know is: When do we get Mario? The plumber that built the House of N has been set to go for crazy, crazy rides through space and more space with Super Mario Galaxy but that’s still in development, with no concrete release as of yet.
Enter Super Paper Mario to make everything better! Contrary to what the title might make you think, SPaM isn’t a Virtual Console title; it’s the new saga in the popular Paper Mario franchise, which last surfaced on the Gamecube. In fact, Super Paper Mario was intended to be a Gamecube title, too, but now it has gone fully the way of the Wii.
The Go Nintendo blog, by way of Nintendo Power, is reporting on some of the confirmed data regarding this sure-to-charm adventure. First and foremost is that it will be coming out in April, which is only a couple of months away. Do hype machines spin up that quickly? Also of note is that "Mario gains the ability to change perspective at will, switching from the normal side scrolling 2d view to a 3d view of the 2d ‘paper mario like’ world." This was a mechanic that was also recently announced for Sega’s PSP platformer Crush.
We’re instructed to expect a little less in the way of RPG elements from previous entries (most notably absent are the turn-based battles), and a bit more of the classic sidescrolling adventure of yore.