Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door On Switch Makes Long Overdue Correction To Key Character

has finally come to the Nintendo Switch, and many fans have proven just how excited they are for the game in the buildup to release, including a key change revealed during the game’s review embargo lift. For example, places like Amazon and Walmart have had to cancel pre-orders, presumably because of the demand for the beloved RPG. Furthermore, many are hoping that the potential success of the remake will lead Nintendo to make a proper sequel versus changing what made this game great once again. Yet, the character Vivian is on people’s minds.

Ever since the release of the original GameCube version of , Vivian has been one of the fan-favorite characters that people loved to have paired up with Mario in battle and beyond. Vivian is always portrayed as a kind soul who is constantly bullied by her sisters, Beldam and Marilyn, until she accidentally joins Mario to save him from a shadowy fate. She eventually becomes a full member of his party; however, the GameCube version made one fundamental localization change in 2004 that was officially undone for the Switch version.

The early reviews for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door could lead to the series reaching a highpoint via the remastered Switch version.

In the original Japanese text, as delved into in full by the University of Perugia’s Francesca Di Marco in "" on a topic about the localization of Japanese games,Vivian was first written to be a transgender woman. This can be seen in full via quotes from the original text or certain European localizations that kept Vivian as transgender and provided slight alterations to the original Japanese translation. However, it was specifically the United States and German localizations that erased all mention of her trans identity, shifting the bullying from Beldam to being about Vivian being “ugly,” versus constantly talking about gender.

There are other ways to see this localization change within the various versions. For example, Beldam, Marilyn, and Vivian had their