Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GameCube)

It may have less cool than Fonzie after he jumped the shark, but Paper Mario is set to be remembered as one of the best GameCube games ever. Its immediate predecessor on the N64 suffered from a similar lack of street credibility but won people over with its gentle charm and unusual RPG style gameplay.

The story in this new game involves Mario touring the whole of the Mushroom Kingdom and beyond to once again rescue Princess Peach. Little explanation is given for why all the characters in the game appear to be made of paper (it just looks cool!) but more is at least made of it in the gameplay this time, as Mario is able to fold himself up, origami style, to become a paper dart and other useful shapes.

The combat sees Mario teaming up with a group of wild and wacky partners in a turn-based system that subverts the usual staid conventions of the genre by allowing you to inflict more damage, or defend against it, by timing a button press with the movement of the characters. However much fun this and the other sub-games are though the greatest joy with Paper Mario remains the witty dialogue and the fantastic graphics.

In a world of under-designed blandness Mario’s unending series of bizarre characters – from a room full of hundreds of dry bones (skeletal koopa turtles) to a hilarious pastiche of Super Mario Bros. where you get to control Bowser this is pure Nintendo magic from beginning to end. --David Jenkins