The game got good reviews, but critics largely considered it a failure of imagination after the scope and depth of TYD. And less integral but just as fun, SPM’s best minigame is a platform you balance on but gently tip the Wiimote to tilt left or right. Where TYD had button cues for “stylish moves,” SPM lets you shake the Wiimote (this is also how it works in Mario Kart Wii). Combat items have you point at the screen to draw circles or squiggles, branching from mechanics introduced in the first two games. You explore items of interest by pointing the Wiimote like a flashlight. Unlike Zelda, where the Wii mechanics feel a bit tacked on, SPM has integral gameplay that used the Wiimote. Like the Zelda game, SPM was developed with the GameCube in mind and adapted. It was the first Mario title for the Wii and the second major Nintendo property after Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It’s not an understatement to say this all changed my life, and SPM was the perfect gateway game. After that, I was ready for Super Mario RPG and then Final Fantasy VII. After we both beat SPM, my friend lent me Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. The other best friend you can have is one who takes the controller to beat a difficult boss for you. The secret of life, it turns out, is to find a friend who makes a copy of their save file for you so you don’t have to sit through the game’s introduction again. I watched my friend play for a while, but I’d never seen a Paper Mario game and fell in love with the art at first sight. Super Paper Mario came out in April of our senior year, a moment when I did not need much help to wander away from my real work. I just slowly got better while the other seven people in the round raced ahead of me. What’s surprising and nice in hindsight is that no one minded how terrible I was at it, and they also weren’t patronizing about it. In college, I played a Mario Kart game for the first time: the “nerdy frat” had a basement lined with recliners and squashy couches where we played Double Dash for hours. I chipped away at Crash Bandicoot and slept over as much as I could with the friend whose family had a Super Nintendo. My family had a Nintendo when I was too young, and we had an original Playstation but no games I really liked. But after that, where else could they go?Īs a kid, I didn’t really play video games. Nintendo threw everything they had at the third Paper Mario game, an ambitious and creative Wii showpiece with an enormous scope and story.