I’m at my wit’s end here. I’ve already written up profiles for all of the characters that I am genuinely hoping to see in the newest Smash Bros. So let’s go in a slightly different direction this week and talk about a character who I’m not personally invested in, but other people seem pretty hopeful for.
~ Paper Mario ~
Yeah. I don’t know, I guess it’s a good idea. Certainly better than Dr. Mario anyway. And I say that as a big fan of the Doctor. The thing about Paper Mario is that he’d be a totally unique character from regular Mario, as opposed to just being a clone with a different projectile attack.
I’m thinking that most of Paper Mario’s standard attacks would revolve around his hammer. It’s never quite so versatile, but it is more or less his main method of attacking throughout all of the Paper Mario games. Next to jumping, anyway. And it’s hard to make a decent moveset around simply jumping. I suppose he could have some punches too, but I like making the hammer the main focus of the character.
All of his special and smash attacks would enlist the help of some of Paper Mario’s partner characters from the first two games. Forward smash would be Bow’s fan smack. Up smash calls Sushie to do a tail slap above Mario. Down smash has Watt appearing and sending out a low jolt of electricity on both sides. This is actually all falling into place quite nicely.
Up special calls Parakarry, who lifts Mario upwards. Anybody that they crash into as they ascend will take damage. Alternately, Lakilester could show up instead, and allow Mario to ride in his cloud for a couple seconds. The cloud would be controllable, of course. Mario would still be vulnerable while in the could, but wouldn’t be able to use any attacks of his own.
Neutral special could have either Goombario or Goombella show up and use a headbutt attack. Straight ahead, medium-range, medium damage. There really isn’t anything “special” about this special move, and I’d honestly considered that it just be the forward smash, but it sort of feels like it should be a special, doesn’t it?
Forward special has Paper Mario kick one of several partners forward, either Kooper, Bombette, or Koops. Kooper would function just like a regular shell and slide forward until he goes off the stage, passing through anyone he hits. Bombette would bounce forward a little and explode on impact, or after a few seconds if she didn’t hit anything. Koops would be like Kooper, but bounce off of any foes he hits, making it possible for him to ricochet around the stage for a while. I don’t know if these partners would cycle in a defined order like Olimar’s Pikmin, or if they would be randomly selected. Maybe each one is a different custom selection?
Down special calls in Madame Flurrie to use her gale force attack, which basically just blows other fighters away. Equally as useless as standard Mario’s FLUDD, but at least this one doesn’t need to be charged up first. And custom moves could give you the option of icy breath, which could freeze other fighters, and possibly some sort of hail breath, which would cause damage as well as blow them away.
Adding onto the idea of calling in friends for support, Paper Mario’s final smash would summon in Paper Peach, Paper Bowser, and Paper Luigi to chase around your opponents and beat them up. The paper friends would hang around for maybe 30 seconds or so before vanishing, and they’d be invincible during that time. You could hit them, sure, but they wouldn’t actually take damage, so it’d be hard to KO them. Paper Peach is obviously the quickest and weakest, and attacks with her parasol. Paper Luigi is the average and attacks with jumps and fireballs. Paper Bowser is slow but hits hard, and attacks with claw swipes and fire breath.
I didn’t include anything from Paper Mario: Sticker Star in here because… well, I just didn’t like it all that much. And Paper Mario usually has a vast repertoire of special abilities in his games, but I figured that it’d be more interesting if he relied on his partners for his flashier moves. Makes him stand out a little more, I feel.
And that’s about all I have to say. I’m not really rooting for Paper Mario myself, but he could certainly be an interesting character, and there are plenty of other ways that the Smash developers could go with him besides what I’ve written down. It’d just be a darn shame if he ended up being a flat clone of Mario. I wouldn’t worry too much about that happening, though.
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