Title Debate: Paper Mario 2

^

  • The Thousand Year Door

  • Paper Mario 2

  • Paper Mario GameCube

  • (never played it)

Results are only viewable after voting.
I call it Paper Mario RPG. Just kidding, I usually call it The Thousand Year Door.

Thank you for reading.
 
I know this may be unpopular, but frankly, I prefer Paper Mario 2. "The Thousand-Year Door" is a generally unappealing subtitle to me and is part of what turned me off the game for so long (alongside the equally dull box art). At least "Paper Mario 2" hammers in the fact that it's the direct sequel to the first Paper Mario, whereas "The Thousand-Year Door" gives me a dull image of archaeology. Maybe "Paper Mario 2: The Thousand-Year Door" would work, but frankly I'd rather them have stuck with their original name for the game.
 
If I'm in a hurry sometimes I'll say Paper Mario 2 but usually it's TTYD or Thousand Year Door.

Side note: the subtitles in the series (when they have them) are very indicative of the priorities of the games themselves. TTYD has a story-based subtitle indicating the focus on that aspect, while the 3DS and Wii U entries have silly ones related to the main gimmick of the game. If the original game and SPM had subtitles I think they'd go as follows:

Paper Mario: A Plea from the Stars
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Paper Mario: The End of All Worlds

I hope the series goes back to the point where these kinds of titles would fit again.
 
I'm extremely juvenile and I still call it by my 10 year old's given name: Thousand-Year Butt.
 
winstein said:
I call it Paper Mario RPG. Just kidding, I usually call it The Thousand Year Door.

Thank you for reading.
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The game's Japanese title always confused me because you can't tell that it's related to the first Mario Story at all just by looking at the titles. You'd actually have to know something about each game. It's even more strange because the first Mario Story was an RPG too, and Paper Mario RPG also has a storybook setting. It's probably the biggest naming discrepancy I've ever seen between a game and its direct sequel.

But yeah, as unappealing as "The Thousand-Year Door" might be to me, it at least still keeps the original game's name in the title. The same cannot be said for Japan.
 
Doctor Healmore said:
The game's Japanese title always confused me because you can't tell that it's related to the first Mario Story at all just by looking at the titles. You'd actually have to know something about each game. It's even more strange because the first Mario Story was an RPG too, and Paper Mario RPG also has a storybook setting. It's probably the biggest naming discrepancy I've ever seen between a game and its direct sequel.

But yeah, as unappealing as "The Thousand-Year Door" might be to me, it at least still keeps the original game's name in the title. The same cannot be said for Japan.
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I like to think that they called it Paper Mario because they were impressed by the title used overseas ("Paper Mario" for the Nintendo 64) that they decided to call it Paper Mario from then on, not to mention how they double down on the paper aspect of the games. It amuses me that Japan explicitly labeled Paper Mario as an RPG, like as if the Japanese wouldn't know a series is a Mario RPG without labelling a such (Mario & Luigi is called "Mario & Luigi RPG" as well).

thank you for reading.
 
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