While much of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Switch will be what players remember from the original GameCube release, there will be some areas that have been tweaked as well. Areas have been giving a visual overhaul, music has been revamped, and in the case of one portion of dialogue, Nintendo has completely changed a conversation.
In the original GameCube version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, there’s a segment where a group of Goombas cat-call Mario’s partner, Goombella. You can see how the original scene plays out below.
Goomba: “Hey! Hey, man! What’s up? Who’s the hottie you got there with you?
Paragoomba: “Wassup, baby? Why don’t you hang with us for a while? We play real nice!
Spike Goomba: “Man, what’s a FINE-lookin’ Goomba doin’ with a tubby mustache man like that?!?”
Goombella: “Oh, it is, like, SO sweet that you boys think I’m cute! Seriously! Yeah, guys like you make me feel like…TOTALLY BARFING! Now get out of our way!”
Goomba: “Ouch that was cold!”
Paragoomba: “What, you’re too good for us? Come off it, sister!
Spike Goomba: “Nobody zings us like that! Nobody! Let’s get ’em!”
For the 2024 Switch remake, Nintendo has seen fit to completely rewrite this scene. The cat-calling of Goombella is completely gone, and now the Goomba gang throws a flurry of insults at Mario and Goombella. You can see the new dialogue below.
Goomba: “Hey! Hey, man! What’s up? You think it’s cool to just waltz your way into OUR underground?
Paragoomba: “Typical! You surface-level snobs are so stuck-up. ‘OoOoh, I get to see the sun! I like to breathe clean air! OoOoh!’”
Spike Goomba: “Heh! Yeah! Come on over here, scruffy mustache man…We’re gonna teach you some proper manners…”
Goombella: “Leave him alone! Can’t two academics and a world-famous hero wander the sewers of a port town in peace? If this is your usual greeting to visitors, then you must have learned it down here…because IT STINKS!
Goomba: “Ouch! That was cold!”
Paragoomba: “What, you’re too good for a fight?! If you ain’t lookin’ to tussle, then stay out of the sewer!”
Spike Goomba: Nobody doesn’t start a fight with us! Nobody! Let’s get ’em!”
Nintendo hasn’t commented on why they made this change, but it’s likely they revisited the original bit of dialogue and found it to be a bit out of step with modern times. If Nintendo does offer more insight into this rewrite, we’ll make sure to share the reasoning with you.
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conangiga
The original dialogue was teaching boys and girls a valuable lesson: Girls how to react correctly in such a situation and boys not to be such dicks in the first place.
Removing this does actually a worse job in "protecting" the younger audience.
conangiga
11d agoThe original dialogue was teaching boys and girls a valuable lesson: Girls how to react correctly in such a situation and boys not to be such dicks in the first place.
Removing this does actually a worse job in "protecting" the younger audience.
mock turtle
11d agoI am begging the people who are upset about this to find something real to worry about.
zcomuto
11d agosmh they went and made Mario political, literally 1984. Why can't they made non-political games again like Bioshock, Fallout of Call of Duty.
OBVIOUS /S
the_crimson_lure
11d agoHaving lived in Japan for many years, I see first-hand that sexual harassment is far more normalized than even the U.S.
If this is a sign that modern sensibilities of people in Japan are changing, I welcome that Nintendo is leading by example.
As long as Japan also continues to put out the craziest porn known to humankind, it's a win-win-win for all of us.
conangiga
11d agoIt's funny to see many people who disagree with you reacting with either insults or sarcasm.
At least half of this planets problems are caused by people saying 'How dare you to have a different opinion than me!'.
For those of you who are wondering what the other half is: 'You have something that I want and I'm gonna take it by force'.
Indeed but they also need keep doing that because as some have admitted, they have no real skills to do anything, so if this culture war goes away they would be out of a job.
jdyqosbvtvsoab
10d agoGlad they changed this.
Was thinking about getting the original anyway =)
spiderfreak1011
9d agoFound this Japanese direct translation of the GameCube version, and here's a more rough translation of the original Japanese:
"Hey, I see you got a cutie with you."
"How about playing with us cutie?"
"Yeah, you can do better than those 2 fogies."
Goombella: Wow, you are really direct. I HATE men like you. Buzz off."
"Huh. You're really stuck up. You're gonna wish you hadn't said that."
So basically they just changed this to follow the more "politically correct" agenda of not doing this to women, even though the original (both Japanese and original GameCube localization) wrote things the way they did in order to teach kids that it's WRONG to talk to women this way. This just does a worse job of preparing kids for what real life is like, and is only conforming to push an agenda kids shouldn't have to be dealing with in the first place. Ridiculous.
Here's the link to the original GameCube Japanese script translation if people wanna check for themselves. Just Ctrl + F for "Hey, I see you got a cutie with you." to see the dialogue exchange for yourself : https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gamecube/920182-paper-mario-the-thousand-year-door/faqs/31620
You can worry about multiple and different levels of things... There's nothing wrong with having fictional characters that are bad.
nekotaku
9d agoThat's some cringe as usual with censorship. It's no big deal but it is sad how they feel the need to do this and thus people wont experience the original as it was intended.
I mean that's one way of looking at it.
But also considering a possible good reason to do this:
I know if I had to deal with this kind of crap in real life (unfortunately not an unrealistic circumstance for many), then when I sit down to play a Mario game the last thing I want to do is be reminded of it.
I don't think Paper Mario the video game was ever intended as a tool to teach kids about the rights and wrongs of social interaction; it's meant to be a form of play to bring the player joy.
So it's easy to see which course of action here between revising or keeping the original dialogue aligns with the ultimate goal of the game itself.
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