After years of requests from fans, Nintendo has revealed that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is finally getting a remake that is currently set to launch in 2024.
Nintendo's final big Direct showcase of the year just finished and we got a look at a ton of new games, including Princess Peach Showtime, a remake of Mario vs. Donkey Kong, and, the best announcement of all, an amiibo for Sora's Smash appearance. Aside from F-Zero 99 breaking everyone's heart, it was a pretty good showcase overall, one that turned into a powerhouse with Nintendo's final doozy of an announcement - a remake of the GameCube classic, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
That's right, the undeniable best Paper Mario game is finally making a comeback after nearly 20 years. In fact, since the remake is planned for launch in 2024, it will actually have been two whole decades since the game was originally released in 2004. Combine that with Super Mario RPG releasing later this year, and there's never been a better time to be a fan of Mario RPGs.
The relatively short trailer for the remake didn't show off too much beyond giving us a look at its "enhanced graphics", but that's all we really needed to see considering how long fans have been asking Nintendo to do this. It's a little strange that we're seemingly just totally skipping the original Paper Mario (outside of its re-release through Nintendo Switch Online), but we'll give it a pass for now as The Thousand-Year Door is generally considered to be the best of the series.
Outside of the improved graphics, it's not yet been made clear if there's going to be anything else about the game that's changed for the remake. So far it seems as if it's just the same game, but it's worth noting that Nintendo does like to add in some extras and tweak some mechanics for a lot of its re-releases, like it did with all three of the HD Zelda games.
The press release shared by Nintendo after the Direct said this about The Thousand-Year Door remake, "In addition, a visually enhanced version of the Nintendo GameCube game Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was announced for Nintendo Switch, with more information to be shared in the future".
That does seem to suggest that there's a bit more to the remake than just a graphical upgrade, otherwise there probably wouldn't be that much more to share about it. Then again, it could just be on about a release date and more trailers, so we'll have to wait until 2024 to find out a little more.