The Mario video game franchise, created by Nintendo, is one of the best selling video game franchise of all time. With Mario serving as the company’s mascot and the main protagonist for the majority of the game series, he has become a popular icon well recognized in society. Many Mario games have simple plots, typically with Mario rescuing the kidnapped Princess Peach from the primary antagonist, Bowser. This is generally a typical Mario game, however there have been many variants of Mario over the years, ranging from creative game mechanics, new break-through animation, or even in the case of Super Mario Galaxy, it’s unique physics is what makes Super Mario Galaxy a game that can stand alone for being very memorable. Another variant of the typical Mario games would be Paper Mario. The second game in the series, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, originally released in Japan as Paper Mario RPG, is one such spin-off variant of typical Mario games. This game shows its uniqueness through its paper-themed environment where the flat, paper look and nature of objects in the paper world of Paper Mario, makes the player's mind accept things that we normally view as impossible, due to the whimsical charm, humor, and the physics handled in this game.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has a unique visual style. The graphics consist of a mixture of three-dimensional environments and two-dimensional characters who look as if they are made of paper. At different points in the game, Mario is "cursed" with abilities that enable special moves in the universe, all of which are based on the paper theme. Mario can fold into a boat or a paper airplane by standing on a special activation panel, and roll up into a scroll of paper or become paper-thin. Mario is even able to "gently" float down like actual paper (due to real life air resistance) from a great height, and not gain any collateral damage from the fall. These paper abilities of Mario would be normally impossible in reality, however because players understand that the world has a paper theme, they are viewed as plausible for “paper” Mario to be able to roll up, fold, or crease into paper planes and boats. This is also a contradiction in itself. Mario being "paper thin" means that he is easily flimsy, and in the real life would not be able to stand or move upright on his own.
The game's environments also follow the paper theme such as when illusory objects that conceal secret items or switches can be blown away by a gust of wind due to the environment's paper-like qualities. The gust of wind is this came is generated by one of Mario’s teammates who blows air from her mouth. The physics in general for this move is unrealistic for any creature to be able to blow paper peelings off the background. The animation is smoothly animated however, down to the paper peeling away thus giving the players the illusion that it is believable. There are many other mechanics in the world for the player to explore and experiment with as well. One environmental mechanic that was noted was the bubble mechanic located during the Great Tree stages which worked by having normal transient bubbles floating from the ground is somehow dense enough to carry 101 solid animals called punies across a large gap on the floor. This stood out to me because the idea of bubbles being able to be dense enough to carry solids inside them and also being able to float is unrealistic in the real world, however we believe it because of the whimsical feel of the mechanic along with the realistic animation.
The classic trademark of going in and out of green pipes (and toilets) continues in the Mario franchise, however the plausibility of being able to warp through places via pipes is not unfamiliar to viewers, and is easily accepted for what it is. Still, the idea of plunging into a toilet and coming out on the other end perfectly fine, is a gross concept if it were possible in real life. It is interesting to note that even though green pipes will all always appear in Mario, only in Paper Mario does the entire screen scrunch-up like paper, to reinforce the element as being part of a paper universe.
Perhaps the most defying real life physics in this game are the move-sets of Mario and his fellow teammates. For example, Mario can shoot his turtle teammate, Koops, outside of battle over gaps on the floor to obtain hard to reach items on the other side. In real life, the shell will not travel in a straight line and back like a boomerang over a gap on the floor, and would instead fall due to gravity. The same can be said for the dinosaur Yoshi character on the team, who can float across gaps in the floor by rapidly moving his legs in the air. In real life a dinosaur, even a baby dinosaur, no matter how hard he runs, cannot float in a straight line while carrying Mario on his back across an open gap on the floor. Mario himself has his classic moves transferred over from other games. It is impossible for Mario to do a "spin jump" realistically which allows him jump, spin, and land on his butt causing a hole to rip in the ground because his body is mimicking the likeness of paper, and he cannot simply break a panel in the floor. However, despite how unreal these physics all are, the overall animation of the "spin jump" is executed well enough as if Mario was never made out of paper in the first place, and therefore causing the overall action to be believable. Being believable is what sells what one normally wouldn’t perceive as realistic to be so.
The concept of a "paper world" was pushed throughout the game causing many laws of physics to be broken especially with the idea that these paper characters can move on their own. The paper mechanics in the world is what makes this game so entertaining, fun and challenging for players turning a typical Mario game into something new again. Without the whimsical characteristics of the paper-like quality of the environment and characters, as well as the overall smooth execution of the animation in the game, the physics of this world would not be as believable as it is.
