AgentMuffin
Koopa Troopa
- Pronouns
- they/she
I thought it would be fun to review these designs. I'm personally taking factors like series suitability, other appearances, and Sticker Star redesigns into account. I'm interested in seeing other opinions too.
Goomba: It may sound obvious, but this is THE Paper Mario enemy design to me. It's just as much of the series' visual identity as Mario or Bowser and just as worthy of being grandfathered in like their designs. It looks like a Goomba in PopJoy (the dialogue font). Great refinement of the Yoshi's Island and PM64 sprites; surprisingly colorful, bold, and distinct while still being immediately recognizable. No notes. If they did want to modernize it, they could tweak the eyebrow shape while keeping it just as thick, but I really don't think the rest ever needed fixing.
Blooper: That sure is a Blooper. The eyes are pretty cute, I guess. The sprite-based design used since Super Paper Mario is also absolutely fine. I don't know what they could do to make it stand out more, if that would even be a good call.
Koopa Troopa: Another very solid stylization of the design. The shape gets the turtle-like design across instantly, and the proportions on Paratroopas are very appealing. Maybe the head could be touched up a bit, but definitely not to the extent of the redesign. As cool as the sunglasses and Bowser-style studded trinkets are, though, they always struck me as a less-than-ideal way of distinguishing friendly and enemy Koopas, since we usually see them as enemies without those adornments. I think it would make a bit more sense for the NPCs to accessorize in a way that says something about their settlement's culture, while members of the Koopa Troop are expected to give that up to serve as footsoldiers. On the other hand… Koopas in snazzy, mischevious shades… maybe I shouldn't be complaining.
Fuzzy: Yep, you'd have to be really splitting hairs to mess with the nice simple shapes and bring this more in line with the main-series design, so I'm not surprised this one was carried over.
Dry Bones: I am really fond of this one. It's got the bold, slightly offbeat style that I associate with Paper Mario, and I believe it's pulling from the Super Mario World sprite so it's not exactly baseless. That aside… this isn't exactly the skull shape most people will think of when you say "Dry Bones", is it. I can see why they'd want to change it. But even though it keeps features like the floating hands, the Sticker Star redesign loses all of the charm (and has a pretty garish take on the color palette, to boot). Maybe they could stylize the standard look better to retain the appeal of the TTYD design. Maybe they could crib from some other early Dry Bones designs to reach a middle ground. Unfortunately I don't have anything specific to suggest.
Piranha Plant: Another stylization that was basic enough to survive the great Paper Mario reboot. I really like the shape language here, though. There's a nice curvature going down the stem and through the leaves that reminds me of that blobby, bottom-heavy 60s–70s lettering. Like, flower power, man. Any intentional or unintentional grooviness aside, this design also has that Paper Mario big-headedness compared to the long stem of the main-series Piranha Plants. The one thing that was changed in Sticker Star was whitening those teeth, because of course that slight deviation from the base design just could not stand. Personally, I think the yellow helps the teeth stand out against the lips. Maybe they found it gross (I'm pretty squeamish and it doesn't bother me), or were worried about promoting poor oral hygiene or something? I can't tell whether that feels like a stretch. Do Piranha Plants brush?
Pokey: So is this what they were going for in Super Mario 64? I like it, I think it fits the series style. It's a bit catty with the :3 mouth and whiskers. I don't think I'm super attached to this specific design, though. I just don't like the specific replacement they went with. The redesign's face is giving a bit Carson Dellosa, the tiny little spines and the head segment's dots are way too fine details, and it generally feels too symmetrical and sanitized. This probably has to do with the head-on portrait angle and the artstyle's conservation of detail, since I like the design just fine in other games. As far as Paper Mario is concerned, I could go for a middle ground between these two designs. (And if I knew I could have my way, I would ask for the flower to be incorporated somehow.)
Spiny: The general shape is good, but the wide eyes and cloven hooves look quite off. I wonder how far you could get just by swapping in the Sticker Star claws and cutting the top of the TTYD eye shape down to an angry chevron.
Lakitu: It looks like Lakitu's only ever had the one design (not counting the noseless, hairless version in its SM64 model), and this is a perfectly pleasant interpretation of it with nothing obvious to change. I like how little of its body we see as it seems to be resting into its cloud instead of just sitting there. It looks comfier, and it's a neat subtle way of making it cuter and squatter to match some of the other Paper Mario designs. And with that, I've scrounged for all I can say.
Bandit: That's just a Yoshi's Island design with a really clear translation to this style. I've said it before, but I love the Yoshi influence that Paper Mario used to have. I know it's for historical reasons of positioning YI as a main-series Super Mario sidescroller, even as Super Mario World 2—reasons that no longer apply since the Yoshi platformers spun off into their own identity and the Super Mario series has nailed down more recent and consistent designs for the pre-YI cast of enemies—but it was a fun change of pace, and it established a lot of the Paper Mario artstyle, you know? It's silly that these designs are grandfathered in for the Yoshi series, and yet it became off-limits for PM to keep the designs that another wing of the franchise was still perfectly fine using. But yeah.
Bob-omb: It's kind of bizarre that this of all designs has been carried over. Like, yeah, it's still obviously a Bob-omb, but that's a glaringly off-model Bob-omb as far as the main design is concerned! All the colors besides the main circle are wrong! I'm not just saying this to point out hypocrisy; I think the Paper Mario design looks pretty lumpy and undercooked, with the blobby, undetailed fuse and boots. …which are also the same color for some reason. And you have to admit the golden wind-up key would make them pop. If there were ever a design to experiment with modernizing, this is it. Of course, the accessorized characters are exempt from these sorts of criticisms. (Sorry for going after you by proxy, Bobby.) I also do like the size variation in TTYD.
Swooper: To be honest, Swoops might have one of my least favorite designs for this kind of mainstay Mario enemy that pops up all over the place. They've been through so many designs and even color schemes, and yet I scarcely ever have anything to latch onto. I do prefer the purple Paper Mario palette to that garish blue they eventually landed on—even Sticker Star and Color Splash agree, inexplicably enough. But my only fondness for this design is by association with jokes like "do a triple flip and meow" or the Kamek Eekhammer softlock that made the fandom lose its minds. By all means, "Mario bat enemy" ought to be a top-tier design with just as much appeal as your Koopas and Yoshis, and I think the franchise should take this back to the drawing board.
Buzzy Beetle: I don't dislike it but it is kind of just a blob with nails. But as for the redesign, the eyes look like they're positioned by tracing a 3D model, and have pretty bad contrast with the shadowed face. At least make like a Twilighter and use pure black shading, comic book style.
Magikoopa: Another design where it works across eras of the series and I just don't have much to say. Something about seeing this design used for Kamek doesn't gel with me, but it's probably just some permutation of the character design accessorization and sterilization and "they already had Kammy!" rambles you've more than likely heard before.
Hammer Bro: Okay, what HAPPENED here? Why is every piece of armor a different color? I'd say they fixed the weird puffy feet from PM64, but why do all of their variants have red shoes? Where did this all even come from? Why is this practically just a recolor (and again, an all-over-the-place recolor) of a Koopa, with no regard for the different posture or proportions? Or how the beak breaks up the way you read the face? It just looks like their nose and cheeks are swollen—or like they pasted a slightly shrunken Koopa Troopa face in front of their head, but with a lower eyelid twitched up like they just saw something freaky(probably a mirror). The Sticker Star redesign features way more fine detail, which really makes this style just degenerate into franchise-wide (if inexplicably legless) promotional artwork, but I might actually prefer it to the original for once. I don't know how it's this bad. And instead of fixing this in Super Paper Mario, they left it unchanged and tried to 1UP themselves with the Koopa Striker, a Koopa whose eyestalks were replaced with the mascot of Robotnik Pringles. How does this happen. How do you draw some of the most stylish takes on Mario characters and in the same breath come up with this. There are duds, but this… this is fascinating.
Chain Chomp: It's fine. I also don't mind the changes made for Sticker Star. This is a really hard design to position and size the facial features exactly right.
Crazee Dayzee: Maybe the color palette could be updated but it's another clean translation from the Yoshi's Island design.
Boo: Finally, another design that feels quintessentially Paper Mario. I've talked about this on here before, how I like the fudged sense of perspective, with the floating eyebrows and exaggerated mouth sticking out to influence the silhouette, and how the redesign falls flat due to ironically cranking up the sense of curvature (and being rather inexpressive). And as I've said, I do think they could stylize the modern design to include these features and generally mesh better with the Paper Mario artstyle. An obvious minimal change would be teasing the TTYD Boo's brow into a curlicue shape. However, I think an alternative approach would be to bring out the Yoshi's Island inspiration more by conforming the mouth shape to that sprite—still a narrower mouth, but more unique and with an appeal of its own. The Atomic Boo's mouth is closer to this shape, but still misses the mark a bit.
Lava Bubble: This is another one that I have no fondness for. The shape never looked very appealing to me. It's really narrow and frayed, which makes it look out of place next to other Mario species. The eyes are downright perplexing, with many other Lava Bubbles having the mushroom-style bead eyes that Paper Mario loves (just look at Mario himself), or at least eyes that are otherwise wide and vertically oriented. This feels like some random piece of clipart that sucks. Now, the redesign does look pretty blank, with most of the charm owed to the pleasant blobby shape rather than a sense of personality, and with the flat coloring of Color Splash hitting it particularly hard. But while it may not be the ideal replacement, I'm not losing any sleep over this change.
Bullet Bill: This one looks a bit off, with the eye placed strangely high up, and the nose being far less rounded out than I'm used to. The Sticker Star redesign straight-up looks like generic Mario promotional art, so there has to be a good middle ground that leaves the Bullet Bill toonier and more stylized while retaining the appeal of the predominant design.
Goomba: It may sound obvious, but this is THE Paper Mario enemy design to me. It's just as much of the series' visual identity as Mario or Bowser and just as worthy of being grandfathered in like their designs. It looks like a Goomba in PopJoy (the dialogue font). Great refinement of the Yoshi's Island and PM64 sprites; surprisingly colorful, bold, and distinct while still being immediately recognizable. No notes. If they did want to modernize it, they could tweak the eyebrow shape while keeping it just as thick, but I really don't think the rest ever needed fixing.
Blooper: That sure is a Blooper. The eyes are pretty cute, I guess. The sprite-based design used since Super Paper Mario is also absolutely fine. I don't know what they could do to make it stand out more, if that would even be a good call.
Koopa Troopa: Another very solid stylization of the design. The shape gets the turtle-like design across instantly, and the proportions on Paratroopas are very appealing. Maybe the head could be touched up a bit, but definitely not to the extent of the redesign. As cool as the sunglasses and Bowser-style studded trinkets are, though, they always struck me as a less-than-ideal way of distinguishing friendly and enemy Koopas, since we usually see them as enemies without those adornments. I think it would make a bit more sense for the NPCs to accessorize in a way that says something about their settlement's culture, while members of the Koopa Troop are expected to give that up to serve as footsoldiers. On the other hand… Koopas in snazzy, mischevious shades… maybe I shouldn't be complaining.
Fuzzy: Yep, you'd have to be really splitting hairs to mess with the nice simple shapes and bring this more in line with the main-series design, so I'm not surprised this one was carried over.
Dry Bones: I am really fond of this one. It's got the bold, slightly offbeat style that I associate with Paper Mario, and I believe it's pulling from the Super Mario World sprite so it's not exactly baseless. That aside… this isn't exactly the skull shape most people will think of when you say "Dry Bones", is it. I can see why they'd want to change it. But even though it keeps features like the floating hands, the Sticker Star redesign loses all of the charm (and has a pretty garish take on the color palette, to boot). Maybe they could stylize the standard look better to retain the appeal of the TTYD design. Maybe they could crib from some other early Dry Bones designs to reach a middle ground. Unfortunately I don't have anything specific to suggest.
Piranha Plant: Another stylization that was basic enough to survive the great Paper Mario reboot. I really like the shape language here, though. There's a nice curvature going down the stem and through the leaves that reminds me of that blobby, bottom-heavy 60s–70s lettering. Like, flower power, man. Any intentional or unintentional grooviness aside, this design also has that Paper Mario big-headedness compared to the long stem of the main-series Piranha Plants. The one thing that was changed in Sticker Star was whitening those teeth, because of course that slight deviation from the base design just could not stand. Personally, I think the yellow helps the teeth stand out against the lips. Maybe they found it gross (I'm pretty squeamish and it doesn't bother me), or were worried about promoting poor oral hygiene or something? I can't tell whether that feels like a stretch. Do Piranha Plants brush?
Pokey: So is this what they were going for in Super Mario 64? I like it, I think it fits the series style. It's a bit catty with the :3 mouth and whiskers. I don't think I'm super attached to this specific design, though. I just don't like the specific replacement they went with. The redesign's face is giving a bit Carson Dellosa, the tiny little spines and the head segment's dots are way too fine details, and it generally feels too symmetrical and sanitized. This probably has to do with the head-on portrait angle and the artstyle's conservation of detail, since I like the design just fine in other games. As far as Paper Mario is concerned, I could go for a middle ground between these two designs. (And if I knew I could have my way, I would ask for the flower to be incorporated somehow.)
Spiny: The general shape is good, but the wide eyes and cloven hooves look quite off. I wonder how far you could get just by swapping in the Sticker Star claws and cutting the top of the TTYD eye shape down to an angry chevron.
Lakitu: It looks like Lakitu's only ever had the one design (not counting the noseless, hairless version in its SM64 model), and this is a perfectly pleasant interpretation of it with nothing obvious to change. I like how little of its body we see as it seems to be resting into its cloud instead of just sitting there. It looks comfier, and it's a neat subtle way of making it cuter and squatter to match some of the other Paper Mario designs. And with that, I've scrounged for all I can say.
Bandit: That's just a Yoshi's Island design with a really clear translation to this style. I've said it before, but I love the Yoshi influence that Paper Mario used to have. I know it's for historical reasons of positioning YI as a main-series Super Mario sidescroller, even as Super Mario World 2—reasons that no longer apply since the Yoshi platformers spun off into their own identity and the Super Mario series has nailed down more recent and consistent designs for the pre-YI cast of enemies—but it was a fun change of pace, and it established a lot of the Paper Mario artstyle, you know? It's silly that these designs are grandfathered in for the Yoshi series, and yet it became off-limits for PM to keep the designs that another wing of the franchise was still perfectly fine using. But yeah.
Bob-omb: It's kind of bizarre that this of all designs has been carried over. Like, yeah, it's still obviously a Bob-omb, but that's a glaringly off-model Bob-omb as far as the main design is concerned! All the colors besides the main circle are wrong! I'm not just saying this to point out hypocrisy; I think the Paper Mario design looks pretty lumpy and undercooked, with the blobby, undetailed fuse and boots. …which are also the same color for some reason. And you have to admit the golden wind-up key would make them pop. If there were ever a design to experiment with modernizing, this is it. Of course, the accessorized characters are exempt from these sorts of criticisms. (Sorry for going after you by proxy, Bobby.) I also do like the size variation in TTYD.
Swooper: To be honest, Swoops might have one of my least favorite designs for this kind of mainstay Mario enemy that pops up all over the place. They've been through so many designs and even color schemes, and yet I scarcely ever have anything to latch onto. I do prefer the purple Paper Mario palette to that garish blue they eventually landed on—even Sticker Star and Color Splash agree, inexplicably enough. But my only fondness for this design is by association with jokes like "do a triple flip and meow" or the Kamek Eekhammer softlock that made the fandom lose its minds. By all means, "Mario bat enemy" ought to be a top-tier design with just as much appeal as your Koopas and Yoshis, and I think the franchise should take this back to the drawing board.
Buzzy Beetle: I don't dislike it but it is kind of just a blob with nails. But as for the redesign, the eyes look like they're positioned by tracing a 3D model, and have pretty bad contrast with the shadowed face. At least make like a Twilighter and use pure black shading, comic book style.
Magikoopa: Another design where it works across eras of the series and I just don't have much to say. Something about seeing this design used for Kamek doesn't gel with me, but it's probably just some permutation of the character design accessorization and sterilization and "they already had Kammy!" rambles you've more than likely heard before.
Hammer Bro: Okay, what HAPPENED here? Why is every piece of armor a different color? I'd say they fixed the weird puffy feet from PM64, but why do all of their variants have red shoes? Where did this all even come from? Why is this practically just a recolor (and again, an all-over-the-place recolor) of a Koopa, with no regard for the different posture or proportions? Or how the beak breaks up the way you read the face? It just looks like their nose and cheeks are swollen—or like they pasted a slightly shrunken Koopa Troopa face in front of their head, but with a lower eyelid twitched up like they just saw something freaky
Chain Chomp: It's fine. I also don't mind the changes made for Sticker Star. This is a really hard design to position and size the facial features exactly right.
Crazee Dayzee: Maybe the color palette could be updated but it's another clean translation from the Yoshi's Island design.
Boo: Finally, another design that feels quintessentially Paper Mario. I've talked about this on here before, how I like the fudged sense of perspective, with the floating eyebrows and exaggerated mouth sticking out to influence the silhouette, and how the redesign falls flat due to ironically cranking up the sense of curvature (and being rather inexpressive). And as I've said, I do think they could stylize the modern design to include these features and generally mesh better with the Paper Mario artstyle. An obvious minimal change would be teasing the TTYD Boo's brow into a curlicue shape. However, I think an alternative approach would be to bring out the Yoshi's Island inspiration more by conforming the mouth shape to that sprite—still a narrower mouth, but more unique and with an appeal of its own. The Atomic Boo's mouth is closer to this shape, but still misses the mark a bit.
Lava Bubble: This is another one that I have no fondness for. The shape never looked very appealing to me. It's really narrow and frayed, which makes it look out of place next to other Mario species. The eyes are downright perplexing, with many other Lava Bubbles having the mushroom-style bead eyes that Paper Mario loves (just look at Mario himself), or at least eyes that are otherwise wide and vertically oriented. This feels like some random piece of clipart that sucks. Now, the redesign does look pretty blank, with most of the charm owed to the pleasant blobby shape rather than a sense of personality, and with the flat coloring of Color Splash hitting it particularly hard. But while it may not be the ideal replacement, I'm not losing any sleep over this change.
Bullet Bill: This one looks a bit off, with the eye placed strangely high up, and the nose being far less rounded out than I'm used to. The Sticker Star redesign straight-up looks like generic Mario promotional art, so there has to be a good middle ground that leaves the Bullet Bill toonier and more stylized while retaining the appeal of the predominant design.
