Playing Paper Mario now, the similarities to the Mario & Luigi games are obvious. Not just in terms of the mechanics – attack an enemy in the overworld to get the first hit in battle; turn-based combat with timing enhancements; use items to enable special moves – but also in terms of the humour and interaction with other characters. In this game, Mario’s sidekick is one of a selection of bad-guys-turned-good, subverting the usual assumption that goombas and koopas are only there to be bounced on, and lending specialist skills to open new paths and collect more badges. That’s not to say that all enemies are converted, and the game hasn’t quite yet reconciled the fact that Goombario, for example, has so far seen a hundred of his peers being brutally slaughtered.

The game starts off quite slowly, with a lot of story to cover. Bowser has obtained a star rod, which makes him look like a fairy but more importantly allows him to have any wish granted. He has taken this opportunity, not to make Peach fall in love with him or to have Mario disappeared from existence, but rather to just kidnap Peach and her castle wholesale. Back to a standard plot, then. Mario has to find seven star people sprite things, which are all over the kingdom, and to do that he has to collect new abilities and get stronger to face stronger enemies.

So far I have found one.

The first part of the game took ages to play through due to there being so much conversation, which of course you can’t just skip over because there is the odd line that is important at telling you where to go. I started playing this back on 6 November, and because I have very little time to play and also because of the slow pace, I didn’t reach Chapter 1 until 12 November.

I explored the village and pathways first, finding a number of badges and coins and star pieces, before venturing into the Koopa Brothers’ fortress. The puzzles inside weren’t at the level of Ocarina of Time’s water temple, but it was refreshing to see a bit of clever design which required little backtracking. Halfway through I rescued Bombette, who coincidentally was able to blow up cracked walls, of which I had noticed a couple throughout the dungeon.

Bombette is relatively handy in battle as well, though her special move of Bomb uses a fair amount of FP (flower points?) which means I am more likely to be found with Blue Koopa accompanying me; his special move allows you to attack all the enemies on the ground at once.

I battled up to the Koopa Brothers, and then the fight against them was the most difficult so far; I had to use some items to regain health since I couldn’t work out the timing to mitigate against their attacks. It didn’t help that Goombario’s Tattle skill – which gives information about an enemy and then unlocks a health bar beneath that type forever more – only worked on one of the four brothers at a time. Nevertheless, they eventually fell, and I rescued big moustache star man thing.