A look at one of Paper Mario’s earliest designs

Making the first Paper Mario wasn’t easy for Intelligent Systems. First and foremost, the team couldn’t decide on the proper approach that should be taken for the game’s visuals.

Here’s one of the earliest designs created for the project:

As you can see, the title wasn’t known as “Paper Mario” at the time – understandably so. Instead, it was tentatively called “Mario RPG 64”. While it’s made of 3D polygons, according to Naohiko Aoyama, it features “an atmosphere like that of a picture book transplanted into a video game—with paper-thin 2D background and characters.”

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