This adventure isn’t quite concluding just yet, so we have time for another aside.
What To Do In The Mushroom Kingdom: A Tourist’s Video Guide, Pt. 2
*Tape resumes* …You’re still here? What the ever-flying dickens are you doing here visiting the kingdom while Bowser has the Star Rod and has eliminated everyone’s wishes and everybody’s feeling down and- I’m fine. I swear! I’m fine. Perfectly fine. So, you may be wondering what else there is to do in our great, beautiful Kingdom. Well, I have some answers!
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| Yum! |
Tayce T.’s Gastronomy Stop: When everything seems bleak, a nice meal will raise your spirits! That’s the specialty of Tayce T., a wonderful grandma Toad who can whip up something nice out of, well, almost everything you can find on your travels. She can cook with only one “ingredient” per se at first, and will usually give back better items as a result. Bring a mushroom that restores 5 HP, and get in return a friend shroom that restores 6 HP as well as 2 FP!
Whatever that's supposed to mean... Once she retrieves that cookbook that she seems to lose all the time, she can make even better recipes with two items instead of one, leading to even better healing items for your journey. Worst case scenario, you bring up incompatible items and you’ll receive a Mistake, which can be sold for money! Tayce T. is the best. Too bad she can’t cook something to insta-whoop Bowser’s spiky bum. But, speaking of our lovely elders…
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Oh great, what is he gonna ask for this time...
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Helping the elderly: When the Mushroom Kingdom isn’t in grave danger (so, roughly three days out of every month), people like to help each other. You could lend a hand, too! One of our most enduring elders, Koopa Koot down at Koopa Village, always needs aid with something. Go by!
We’re seriously sick of dealing with the guy. He always has some requests to make, to the point where you’ve gotta wonder if he’s not trying to abuse of everyone’s niceness. He also pays like a miser… well, sometimes he hands out Star Pieces, so there’s that. Also, he keeps losing everything.
It’s time we put that old windbag in the retirement home. Other than that, you can also…
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| Only two attractions? This place kinda blows. |
Try your luck at the casino: Yes, we have one of those too. But it’s quite plainly tailor-made for good jumpers who wield hammers. Nintendo of America told us we couldn’t have slot machines. They cracked down hard on that over in Kanto and Johto. Nah, instead you smash question blocks and rack up rewards until you get a Bowser face. Or do the same by hitting boxes with hammers to gather Peach icons (we love our Princess), while avoiding obstacles like Bob-Ombs and Fuzzies. We promise that the critters we use for these games are trained, well-fed professionals, and totally not slaves kept in dark, dirty basements.
Raising Oinkys: The weirdest thing in Toad Town… well, aside from that bizarre toy box… may be our Li’l Oink dispensary. The Oinks are little pig-like creatures with the amazing ability to carry items. Create eggs and drop Oinks in the pen, then keep on hatching more Oinks. You can have up to 10 Li’l Oinks in the pen, and when you create one more, the oldest you made will flee, leaving an item behind. If that item is good enough for you, well – go ahead and grab it! It’s free items! It’s a wonder we haven’t destroyed our economy with those things.
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Can't even feed them or play with them or
have funny interactions with them.
They kinda blow too, if you ask me. |
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With the Kingdom in danger, perhaps Mario
should be doing other things at the moment. |
Help with the mail: And if after all that you’re not sure what to do, well, you could always help in delivering the mail. We have a rather incompetent mailkoopa who keeps losing mail, but he’s on an adventure with Mario right now, so it’s time to look for lost letters and deliver them to their proper recipients. Is this paid labor? Ha! Yeah, right, we pay you with experience! Well, okay, sometimes mail recipients are happy to get their mail and will give items in return, like Star Pieces… so it’s not entirely worthless, right? There might even be a very nice reward if you help with a long chain of letters among multiple folks across our world.
That covers about it all now. Be sure to get a souvenir from the gift shops, make our economy roll, and most especially… GET ME OUT OF THIS MADHOUSE! WE DON’T SPEND A WHOLE WEEK NOT AFRAID THAT SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN TO THE KINGDOM! I CAN’T STAND THIS ANYMORE! GET ME OUT OF HERE! I WISH SOMEONE GETS ME AWAY FROM THIS CURSED PLACE! *grabs and shakes camera, foaming at the mouth* HELP ME OUT HELP ME OUT HELP M-*static*
Chapter 7: A Star Spirit on Ice
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I feel like I walked into an Ace Attorney case.
Then again, more like "Ice Attorney", amirite?
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We don’t have any clues as to where the final Star Spirit is, but we soon find out: Merlon has a guest from the far-off land of Starborn Valley, and that guest invites Mario over. We go there through a pipe in the Toad Town Tunnels that was unreachable without Lakilester, and come out into Shiver City, a town of Bumpties (they’re penguins). To leave, Mario needs approval from the Mayor, but he finds the hat-wearing penguin seemingly dead. He’s instantly labeled the prime suspect by both the Mayor’s wife and a patrolling detective, and must prove his innocence by fetching the local mystery novel author... Herringway. This pointless scene ends when, after finding Herringway and taking him to the Mayor’s place, the Mayor regains consciousness and gets up; he had just fallen, broken his back, and fainted while trying to retrieve a present for Herringway that he bought in Toad Town.
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Hey, the Bumpties, two words: Pulse. Check.
Maybe you'll stop accusing heroes of killing
people that aren't even fucking dead. |
Fun fact: Barring the Paper Mario titles, Bumpties pretty much never appeared outside of the Yoshi’s Island series of games. They don’t appear in icy areas of Mario platformers. So seeing these penguins in both this game and its sequel is unexpected, but very nice.
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Did this kid go to Magikoopa School in the time
it took me to complete one chapter of the game? |
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| Looks like a boss... hits like a Goomba. |
So we finally leave Shiver City and head towards Starborn Valley, which includes yet another encounter with Little Shit, who’s now gotten his hands on a magic wand. Great, the bully’s got spells now. And even further, we encounter a boss-looking monster that looks threatening, but it turns out to only be a bunch of Star Kids trying to protect their land. Mario enters the Valley; this is where Star Kids are born before they ascend to Star Haven. Twink, who currently helps Peach, is the last one to have risen before Bowser attacked. From the resident shadow-faced wizard, Mario learns that the final Star Spirit is hidden in Crystal Palace, which can only be accessed by owning a scarf and a bucket.
We get the scarf, but have to backtrack all the way to Shiver City to get the bucket from the Mayor. God damn, this game loves its backtracking. So we get the bucket, return to the hidden spot of the Crystal Palace, use the items to solve a puzzle involving snowmen, go in, and make our way through Shiver Mountain towards the Crystal Palace.
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Meet the white Clubbas: The cold is keeping
them awake, so they're better guards than the
green ones ever were! |
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| The music here is relaxing... time to reflect. |
The gimmick in the Palace is really cool; several rooms have a panel of glass (that sometimes behaves like a mirror), and Mario has to navigate the maze by finding ways to cross to the other side of the glass. The dungeon also introduces Duplighosts, creatures that can mimic one of Mario’s partners and use their attacks. Outside of combat, these baddies love to pull that prank as well, leading to a handful of fun scripted events. You also encounter white Clubbas and the occasional Magikoopa, which can cast a spell that depends on the color of their robe. You know the old tabletop RPG trope of “killing the wizard first”, which eventually got applied to a couple of games too? Yeah, that applies here. Beat the Magikoopas first.
At the end of the dungeon, we encounter the Crystal King, who also lacks much of a personality. This boss is pretty cool, and much like many others, it uses sweet gimmicks. It can summon Crystal Bits, which it can then use as ammo against Mario. It can also heal itself. Later in the fight, it tires of that move and instead will start summoning illusory copies of itself, which have the same amount of HP as it does. The copies cannot be damaged, however. How to tell them apart? Simple: Use a target-all attack that will reveal the only one that can be harmed. That’s clever.
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Let's see if we can find the real one!
Lakilester... Spiny Surge! |
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Bowser, you're lucky at this moment that
Peach's language is bound by a PG rating. |
By defeating the Crystal King, Mario receives the final Star Spirit, Kalmar. The new Spirit’s ability, “Up & Away”, can turn enemies on the field into stars, effectively ending the battle prematurely; handy to avoid a battle, but the enemies removed that way don’t award any experience in Star Points.
We then get a new scene in Peach’s Castle, where we see Bowser learning about Mario’s impending arrival. After another failed attempt at having a conversation with his prisoner, the turtle-dragon instead captures the Princess and has her tied in a rope. Twink comes out of hiding to try and rescue her, but Bowser merely swats the Star Kid away like he was nothing.
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| A pretty place, but there's little to do here. |
The path is rather straightforward from here: Back to Shiver City, back to Toad Town, and over to Shooting Star Summit. If you want to, you can go and finish any of the bonus things you can do in the game. After this, with the help of the Star Spirits, a beam opens on the Summit that takes Mario to an upwards path, then to Star Haven. This place even has a shop and an inn! Which is fine, really, we’re gonna need them. At the temple, the seven Spirits give two things to Mario. The first is a new attack, the Star Beam; its sole purpose is to break Bowser’s invincibility. The second is a brand new Koopa Clown Car-shaped vehicle with a star on it, to reach Bowser’s castle.
Chapter 8: A Star-Powered Showdown!
The final confrontation is coming. We can feel it in the air. Bowser’s Castle stands proud… with Peach’s Castle, dominant, over it. I always knew Peach would dominate Bowser. …I really should watch my phrasing here. Mario leaves his Star Car in the dock, then heads into the castle.
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| It's dark in here! Watt, I'm gonna need your light. |
Some adventure games tend to have final dungeons where the player has to use most, if not all, of the tools and skills they’ve acquired throughout their journey. I know it happens frequently in The Legend of Zelda, at least. In the case of Paper Mario, first we have Mario’s badges, some of which are pretty much necessary against a couple of enemies. The one that allows Mario to stomp spiked enemies comes in handy against the Koopatrols. Second, we have Mario’s party members, most of whom have abilities that become necessary in one or more rooms:
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| Intangibility power, activate! |
-Goombario’s Tattle is technically not necessary, but very good if you’re stuck in a puzzle;
-Kooper’s shell is needed to activate at least one switch;
-Bombette gets to blow some more walls up;
-Lady Bow’s ability can make Mario invisible, but also intangible, which allows him to pass unharmed under a cascade of lava;
-Watt is required to illuminate a few rooms shrouded in complete darkness;
-Sushie is needed in the rooms of a puzzle that involves flooding rooms with water;
-And lastly, Lakilester can float above lava, letting Mario cross large gaps.
Mario can also find himself stuck in the prison where the Toads from the Princess’s castle were thrown, which also serves as a handy (if uncomfortable) inn. Hell, there’s also a shop nearby, with a spiky Goomba shopkeeper who, for some reason, doesn’t recognize the plumber, and will sell his wares regardless if you have coin. Capitalism, uh, finds a way I guess.
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| Yeah, that is... uh... totally NOT Mario. |
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| If Mario spoke, he'd probably say he's screwed. |
After going through room after room of puzzles, we get to a Bowser door that decides to let the group pass if they answer questions: Three out of five correct, they pass. If, however, they fail three… The door will release THREE ANTI GUYS. Yeah, remember that lone one from the Toy Box? Now there’s three. All I can say is: Good luck. I hope you know how to use your options to their best. This fight is scary, because it’s one of the hardest optional battles in the entire game. I’d argue it’s even harder than the last battle against the Master at the Toad Town Dojo, or the final fight against Bowser. The reward isn’t even that great if you do win (a lot of experience, mostly), but players who thrive for this kind of challenge will love it.
Yeah, I think I’m gonna stop here for now. Let’s close this in Part 5, shall we?
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