Dante Posted March 24, 2007 Posted March 24, 2007 Wtf?! In Europe? A lot sooner than I expected. Bugger. Nope. Europe release date not been told but US & Japan is in arpil.
Fierce_LiNk Posted March 24, 2007 Posted March 24, 2007 Nope. Europe release date not been told but US & Japan is in arpil. Ahh, nice one for clearing that up. Hmm, wonder when we can expect it here then. Somewhere between June and September, I reckon.
DCK Posted March 24, 2007 Posted March 24, 2007 Nope. Europe release date not been told but US & Japan is in arpil.Oh damn. Might have to go for Blur anyway :wink:
Teppo Holmqvist Posted March 24, 2007 Posted March 24, 2007 Oh damn. UK Official Super Paper Mario Strategy Guide is coming out in 27.04.2007, so there is fair possibility that game is released same day.
Hellfire Posted March 24, 2007 Posted March 24, 2007 UK Official Super Paper Mario Strategy Guide is coming out in 27.04.2007, so there is fair possibility that game is released same day. Makes sense. One can hope.
RossK Posted March 25, 2007 Posted March 25, 2007 ooh cant wait , any more news on april 27th being the euro date?
ShadowV7 Posted March 25, 2007 Posted March 25, 2007 Well I really hope we get it in April then because we need to start getting the really good Nintendo games and just not 3rd party ones.
Gizmo Posted March 25, 2007 Posted March 25, 2007 If this comes out April 27th I'm gonig to explode by having to splti my time between this and Pokemon
ShadowV7 Posted March 25, 2007 Posted March 25, 2007 I'll have to split this and my studying,and I know exactly what's gonna happen if I get it 2 weeks before my exams...
Excelle Posted March 25, 2007 Posted March 25, 2007 Hmm, bad news. Super Paper Mario just got it's first listing on Amazon UK. They're quoting a release date of November 30th! If that is true, Nintendo are quite frankly taking the piss 7 months for a translation? Here
DiemetriX Posted March 25, 2007 Posted March 25, 2007 I really really want this game. Nintendo really need to release this game as soon as possible after US. I'm playing the paper mario now ( a bit late) and it's totally awesome.
Hellfire Posted March 26, 2007 Posted March 26, 2007 Well Amazon isn't really reliable for dates, but if it has a lot of RPG elements, translation would take long. Hurry up with a freeloader Datel!
Teppo Holmqvist Posted March 26, 2007 Posted March 26, 2007 Hmm, bad news. Super Paper Mario just got it's first listing on Amazon UK. They're quoting a release date of November 30th! Goddamnit people, it's an Amazon's standard placeholder date, because they don't usually know when game hits the shelves. Little common sense long way before posting everything you found from the net, thank you. And before someone says something about books, Amazon's book section is compiled by completely different team, and when it comes to release dates, is far more reliable and precise.
Excelle Posted March 26, 2007 Posted March 26, 2007 Goddamnit people, it's an Amazon's standard placeholder date, because they don't usually know when game hits the shelves. Little common sense long way before posting everything you found from the net, thank you. And before someone says something about books, Amazon's book section is compiled by completely different team, and when it comes to release dates, is far more reliable and precise. Well I didn't know that did I Almighty Teppo:bowdown:
ShadowV7 Posted March 26, 2007 Posted March 26, 2007 Poeple should never believe the dates on any website/shop unless it's been confirmed by the developer. I've fallen for it a few times myself,but just to be sure of things just wait untill their's an official confirmation and to avoid any confusion.
blender Posted March 26, 2007 Posted March 26, 2007 red steel 2 listed on play.com 01/06/2007 FACT Believe!
flameboy Posted March 26, 2007 Posted March 26, 2007 red steel 2 listed on play.com 01/06/2007 FACT Believe! play.com always have stupid release dates for stuff until recently they still had mario and metroid as 30th March.
Tellyn Posted March 26, 2007 Posted March 26, 2007 But here they've listed a game that hasn't even begun development yet.
flameboy Posted March 26, 2007 Posted March 26, 2007 But here they've listed a game that hasn't even begun development yet. It is under the code name of Fighting Steel....or something like that, they did confirm a sequel was in the works.
david.dakota Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 IGN have some new videos up, and its lookin sweet. I just hope and pray we're getting it in april.
Dante Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 CVG Preview: One of the best games we've ever played Works better on paper. A criticism? Not a bit of it. For all the joy of catapulting a near-spherical plumber around in 3D space, it's arguable that, sometimes, Mario really does work better when he's wafer-thin. Super Paper Mario is brilliant - and we've got hours of exclusive hands-on play to prove it. Featuring 2D characters in a 2D world, the game's closer in style to retro Mario than even New Super Mario Bros. Initially it's hard to recognise it as part of an RPG franchise stretching back to The Thousand Year Door on GameCube and the original Paper Mario on N64, as it's so heavily disguised with simple platform hopping and noggin-bopping combat. Even the controls are simple: you hold the remote sideways like a NES controller, so that you're only really employing the D-pad/two button setup that ye olde Mario titles would have required. Goombas, Koopas, shell-kicking, hidden blocks... this is all very familiar. Right? Wrong. Just as you settle in for some old-time fun, a tap of the A button brings the retro screaming into the future. A computer cursor materialises, drags a box around Mario and - hell's bells - flips the world into 3D. Any sense of familiarity with the 2D level furniture - the '?' boxes, the castles of 'your princess is in another' fame - is completely obliterated as you finally see what lies behind. Have a look at the screenshots on page 13: it's level 1-2 from the original Super Mario Bros - but now you've got the ability to literally step into your '80s memories and see what things looked like from Mario's perspective. It'll leave you floored. Suddenly, rows of piston-like 2D Thwomps are revealed to be merely millimetres thick, allowing Mazza to waltz by unharmed. In 3D, a row of ten coins can become a field of 50 - and a slowly descending spiked ceiling is revealed to be just half the width of the room, remaining dangerous only to Indiana Jones wannabes with a lousy sense of depth perception. They call him flipper And it's not always so obvious when the ol' plane of perception switcheroo is needed. A mountain gatekeeper, trapped side-on in the alternate dimension, is visible only by his forlorn tears: press A to spot him and cure his blues. In a great twist on Shigsy's old trick of hiding goodies beyond the 'end' of levels, you can often find hidden paths at the 'back' of the 2D levels' finals areas. And in chapter one's climactic stage - a dank, ruined castle with twirling flames that harks back to Bowser's fortresses in original SMB - the whole level is a satisfyingly befuddling optical illusion of secret routes and hidden doorways that can only be found with judicious perspective-switchery. The view-flipping truly revolutionises the platformer - why hasn't anyone thought of it before? - and demands you have your flipping wits about you. Plotwise, Super Paper Mario might surprise you. The game starts with - shocker! - Princess Peach marrying Bowser. The 'vicar', if you like, is the game's ubervillain, Count Bleck. He reckons the Bowser-Peach nuptials will fulfil the prophecy written in the Dark Prognosticus (author: C Bleck) and bring about the destruction of the universe. Quite the ambition. But that's not the real beginning of the game: because you're then dragged back in time to before the wedding, and Mario setting off on a quest to find the eight Pure Hearts that, together, can counter Bleck's future plans. After a stroll around Flipside - a town trapped between dimensions - the game's divided into chapters. So chapter 1-1's a retroesque revision session on Mario bricks, baddies, pixels and pipes (the latter pick you up and plonk you down at either end with a gorgeous block-by-block materializing effect). Chapters 1-2 and 1-3 are mountainous deserts, where you'll polish off your first miniboss: O'Chunks, a spiky boulder-boss who just about has the brains to jump, spin and land on Mario, and that's it. Then chapter 1-4 is the modern-day Bowser's Castle-alike - and culminates in a battle with Fracktail, the robotic dragon guarding the first Pure Heart. Of which more later. The Power Of Four Super Paper Mario isn't all about Super Paper Mario - as you'll discover after the Fracktail battle, when control suddenly switches to Peach as she makes her escape from Bleck's castle, a jaw-dropping pitch-black area where objects and lighting are distinguished only by white lines. You'll eventually unlock Bowser, too, and be able to switch between them all at any time (and revisit completed chapters with them). It's part of the game's absolute devotion to variety: by the time we were dragged away from the game, we'd dodged Bullet Bills and the new, improved version of those damned Hammer Bros; chugged through space controlling the cutest space-helmeted Mario you ever did see; had a bit of a Steve Irwin moment with The Biggest Blooper In The World (even counting Super Mario Sunshine's many-tentacled giants); and controlled... well, a certain Mario universe character we have to keep quiet about. Continuing the Paper Mario tradition of team-mates are the Pixls - semi-3D wire framed icons that hover behind Mario. The first two - Tippy (the butterfly) and Thoreau - are discussed back on page 12. Then there's Boomer, a bomb who will only join your party if you agree with his views on online shopping - he can be laid with the 1 button and detonated with a second tap to find secret passages and blast enemies. The fourth Pixl, Slim, twists Mario 90 degrees to the landscape, opening up skinny passages and allowing enemy projectiles to pass right through him. In chapter three - and this is one for the New Super Mario Bros fans - another Pixl lends you the ability to shrinky-dink down to mini-Mario size, which tallies perfectly with the super-pixellated retro look of the levels. As for dealing with enemies, long gone are the turn taking battles of past Mario RPGs, replaced with real time enemy bashing much closer in style to the traditional bonce-bash Mario formula. Each hit takes energy away from enemies and while earlier foes, such as Squiglets and the more traditional Koopas, are vanquished with a single bop, later enemies will require chains of hits to wear down their health. Every kill accumulates points which go toward levelling up Mario with improved health and attack power (he's got RPG-style Hit Points rather than the traditional one/two-hit kills system). By tilting the remote and shaking after striking a death blow, Mario pulls off a stylish 'NICE!' aerial pose gaining him even more points - as shown in the screenshot below. Bigger enemies or vast amounts of smaller enemies - we came across a veritable colony of 15 Squiglets at one point - require the use of items, like POW Blocks and Fire Bursts (a multi-damage fire bomb). Other enemies need some Wii remote work. The pink, bubbly, floating Cherbils which pop up in chapter two blast you with sleeping gas given half a chance - at which point, you literally have to shake the snoozing Mario awake with the controller. Annoyingly, some enemies in the second chapter don't actually do you any harm - but if they manage to grab you, they'll chuck you right back to the start of the level. The gits. Still, odds are evened with Catch Cards which give you attack boosts against the enemy type printed on them (hint: a Koopa Troopa card's hidden at the back of a level). Collect multiple cards and the boost is multiplied. Picking up pixels During the awe-inspiring boss fights, all these elements come together. Take that face-off with Fracktail atop Mount Lineland. He's a huge dragon, attacking Mario with sweeping dives, and flipping the world reveals its wide back plates. Hopping on whips you into the skies, where Thoreau is needed to chuck squiglets at the beast's towering antennae - an encounter as glorious as any boss you'll meet in Twilight Princess. Later bosses include another of Count Bleck's lovely 'assistants' - a ostensibly sweet-looking girl named Mimi who has a very nasty surprise up her sleeves. Or, to be more precise, eight of them. When Super Paper Mario's not knocking your socks off it's tickling your feet. Whether fighting a giant arachnid while a witch attempts to knock it out with an incantation from a nearby toilet cubicle, or simply watching Bowser's stubby legs jiggle under his hulking frame, you're smiling from start to finish. Then there are hidden in-jokes, and fan-pleasing nods such as the remixed Mario tunes and the green pipes leading to secret underground rooms. It's a love letter to Nintendo. To play Super Paper Mario is to know what an epic, many-layered adventure it sends you on. We don't want to give too much away, so take an earlyish bit as a case in point. While you're still reeling from the cleverness of the whole dimension-flipping thing, chapter 2-1 plonks you in a big mansion that's overflowing with trap doors, switches, coins and puzzles that twist the formula in countless new ways - it's like some kind of giant wooden puzzle toy. But just as you're mopping your brow at the relentless ingenuity of it all and sure that the game just has to have a lull coming, you're flung into chapter three, which has the pixelated look of a TV screen you've got your nose pressed up against, and plays brilliant homage to original Super Mario Bros with hidden pipe paths, hammer-chucking Koopa Troopas, and Bowser waiting at the end in one of his traditional 1985-era three-storey castles. It's genius. No-one will be able to resist entering the Paper fold. The verdict Why has Nintendo been keeping this so quiet? From GameCube exclusive to Wii-GameCube joint release to Wii exclusive - all in the course of a month - Super Paper Mario always seems to have been neglected by Ninty's Promotional Megamachine in favour of its starry-eyed neighbour, Super Mario Galaxy. But know this: Super Paper Mario is easily brilliant enough to make you forget that there's even another Mario game on the way. It's visually dazzling. The colours are so sharp you may just cut your eye open on them. It's crammed with familiar Mushroom Kingdom characters. The writing has all the silliness and wit we've come to expect of the series. It's huge. And, in the perspective-shifting mechanic, it's got a fresh and breath-catchingly ingenious central idea that, in Intelligent Systems' hands, is exploited in a bewildering array of ways. Simply: it's brilliant - and one of the best games we've ever played.
flameboy Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Well that all sounds pretty awesome...all I can say is I hope the passing of the fiscal year gives us some release dates!!! EDIT One quote I just had to put in: To play Super Paper Mario is to know what an epic, many-layered adventure it sends you on. Yes finally my next Wii game to get my teeth into, something that hasn't happened since Zelda.
Mike Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 I'd always assumed that the dimension switching would get boring quickly, as it seemed that if you ever got stuck, a quick switch would reveal another path. That CVG preview has certainly upped my level of anticipation, though. Hope we do get it next month!
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