Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door review: A Switch remake (mostly) befitting a masterpiece

It’s criminal that there’s been no way to play Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for over a decade. The only way to experience the original 2004 Gamecube title was on that console or the Wii, which thankfully supported Gamecube discs (something that feels like a genuine miracle now). There was no Gamecube hardware support on the Wii U, unfortunately, and The Thousand-Year Door never popped up on its online store. So here we are, 20 years later, with a complete remake for the Switch. It’s fantastic, befitting a game that was already a masterpiece — it’s just a shame that Nintendo took so long to revisit the game.

Here’s some sobering perspective: I first played through The Thousand-Year Door as a senior in college, where my roommates and I made it a communal adventure. Now I’m married with two kids but I still lament the loss of Gamecube titles almost daily. Where’s Eternal Darkness, one of the best horror games ever made? Where’s Skies of Arcadia, an RPG I adored on the Dreamcast and which was later re-released on the Gamecube? I realize re-releases take work, but surely there’s an audience for these beloved titles!

Anyway, back to the remake of The Thousand-Year Door: It’s great, you should play it. It’s an easily accessible RPG for newcomers with a cute setup: Princess Peach has been kidnapped (of course), but this time it's by aliens! It's up to Mario and a group of friends — including a treasure-hunting Goomba named Goombela, and Koops, a cowardly Koopa — to save her by solving the mystery of an ancient civilization.

• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

  Nintendo Switch

  $60 at GameStop

Like Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario before it, Thousand-Year Door is sort of a hybrid action RPG. You get to explore worlds and level up characters like an RPG, but battles also involve some responsive button mashing to keep you on your toes. A well-timed button could let you jump on an enemy's head more than once, or counter incoming attacks. It's an innovative approach to RPG