A mod for Paper Mario
TTYD64 is a PM64 romhack that adds TTYD's gameplay into the original Paper Mario plus all new items, badges, and recipes from that game, and a lot of new areas to explore plus other additions.
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Wanted to replay one of my favorite games of all time and felt this was the perfect way to add a little spice to it. Love all the new badges and areas. While they made everything a little easier the gameplay was super fresh. Great hack.
My family traveled a lot for work. Flying from state to state, resting in a variety of hotel rooms. Back in the early 00s, some hotel rooms came with game systems. For $10 an hour, you could play from a short selection of N64 or Gamecube games. In the 2010s, these would be replaced with PS3s and you would have to rent from a nearby Redboxes. And by that point, my brother had his Xbox he'd lug across the country and I had my DS. But those 00s were a very specific era for us in hotel gaming. My brother often got frustrated with wasting any precious second because there was such a hard financial limit to how far we could play. I was well aware that my parents were never going to approve anything past the $20 mark. But I couldn't help but dither around in these worlds. The first two hours of Paper Mario 64 and TTYD are permanently etched into my mind. I remember every corner, every NPC conversation, every polygonal line and invisible wall. Its impossible for me to be objective when it comes to Paper Mario.
Which is partly why this game hit such a strange euphoria for me.
TTYD64 primarily involves adding TTYD mechanics into 64. That's already a great sales pitch. The gameplay flows smoother and there's more intent to unravel in how you approach the game. Accounting for partner health and additional badges adds such an important spice to the game's feel. I feel like I'm planning more than before and making considerations on top of that.
But elDexter and his modding team go above and beyond. To unlock the new badges or upgrades, they aren't content to simply give those skills to you. Instead, new areas are carefully crafted into this game's world. And suddenly, my perfect memory of this game runs up against entire new ideas. A hole in the ground that didn't exist before, a crack in the wall, a new path in the forest, a back alley in the shopping district. Filled with puzzles or characters or even recreated TTYD level screens, there's so much elaborate care in this game. Its not front-loaded or back-loaded, its carefully measured out across the game's entire length.
The game has other important features, things that ease the game's pace. Difficulty modes, cutscene skipping, randomizers, challenge modes, New Game +. All carefully built to provide more to a game people love. To a game I love. You can truly feel how deeply the team cared about this game and wanted to provide every bit of polish possible. Just like me, they could play this game a million times and still find joy in discovering something new.
I can't be objective about anything Paper Mario. Its carved into my soul. Seeing other people who feel the same way leaves a special mark in my heart. It doesn't matter if this mod rules or if it sucks (hint: it rules). That feeling of pure creative joy is gonna stick with me for a long time. Worth the price of admission for that.
Which is partly why this game hit such a strange euphoria for me.
TTYD64 primarily involves adding TTYD mechanics into 64. That's already a great sales pitch. The gameplay flows smoother and there's more intent to unravel in how you approach the game. Accounting for partner health and additional badges adds such an important spice to the game's feel. I feel like I'm planning more than before and making considerations on top of that.
But elDexter and his modding team go above and beyond. To unlock the new badges or upgrades, they aren't content to simply give those skills to you. Instead, new areas are carefully crafted into this game's world. And suddenly, my perfect memory of this game runs up against entire new ideas. A hole in the ground that didn't exist before, a crack in the wall, a new path in the forest, a back alley in the shopping district. Filled with puzzles or characters or even recreated TTYD level screens, there's so much elaborate care in this game. Its not front-loaded or back-loaded, its carefully measured out across the game's entire length.
The game has other important features, things that ease the game's pace. Difficulty modes, cutscene skipping, randomizers, challenge modes, New Game +. All carefully built to provide more to a game people love. To a game I love. You can truly feel how deeply the team cared about this game and wanted to provide every bit of polish possible. Just like me, they could play this game a million times and still find joy in discovering something new.
I can't be objective about anything Paper Mario. Its carved into my soul. Seeing other people who feel the same way leaves a special mark in my heart. It doesn't matter if this mod rules or if it sucks (hint: it rules). That feeling of pure creative joy is gonna stick with me for a long time. Worth the price of admission for that.
DISCLAIMER: This playthrough was completed on real hardware using version 0.9.2 of the mod. There may be bugs or issues mentioned in this review that have been remedied in a more recent update. Please check the patch notes of the mod for any updated information!
When you first hear the title Paper Mario TTYD64, you'll probably assume that this is someone's effort to recreate all of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64. In this case, your assumption would be wrong. Rather, Paper Mario TTYD64 is a hack that aims to take elements of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and inject them into Paper Mario. These elements include things such as giving partners HP, removing the caps on stat growth when leveling up (for example, you are no longer limited to having a maximum of 30 BP), and super-guarding. This mod also adds new locations to the world, some of which are re-created areas from The Thousand-Year Door. Alongside that, you are given access to many badges from that game, including partner versions of some badges. There are also new cooking recipes, items, a Pit of 100 Trials, and new hiding locations for star pieces, so veterans of Paper Mario will have many new things to look forward to here.
As for how the game plays with these new additions, I would say it plays a little bit better than the original, especially since now you don't have to complete the prologue before getting access to action commands. Having these in your toolkit from the get-go definitely helps to speed up the intro, making new playthroughs feel snappier. Having access to the super-guard also makes things more interesting, as you now have a riskier but more rewarding way to counter enemy attacks. Sadly, I did not use it as much as I would have in The Thousand-Year Door, if only because it is much more difficult to use than regular guarding, especially in a game that runs at a lower frame-rate than the game where this mechanic was introduced. I also found it weird that in the tutorial for action commands, Twink never goes over this maneuver. I feel like this should be added in a later patch, as there is always the chance someone new to this mod will not know it is there.
Being able to increase the three core stats (HP, FP, and BP) beyond the regular limit is very rewarding. By the end of my playthrough, I had over 70 BP to use, allowing me to become the powerhouse I always wanted to be in this game. With these limitations removed, the level cap is also increased, allowing you to level beyond level 27, as the game will make sure you get at least 1 star point from every encounter, much like the sequel. Now, you would think that this means you can go to Petal Meadows and fight Amazy Dayzees over and over and level up until the cows come home. Sadly, that is not the case here. Once you hit level 27, all enemies stop giving star points when defeated. This means that when you hit level 27, you go from getting 37 star points off of an Amazy Dayzee to just one, which is extremely saddening. I am not sure if this is an issue carried over from vanilla Paper Mario or an intentional move from the mod creator, but I do hope that in a later patch this is fixed and players can continue to grind levels off Amazy Dayzees after hitting level 27.
Enemies can now also hold items and badges, changing how encounters play out immensely. Are you going to target the enemy holding a thunder rage first? Or will you attack the one holding a dizzy dial? While there may be fights where the amount of items being held by enemies causes a truly daunting challenge, overcoming said challenge can feel very rewarding. Also, along with the aforementioned addition of HP for party members, Parakarry has been given a new move called Parcel Check, which allows him to steal items and badges from enemies. If an enemy is holding something, you can take it! This is very handy as it will allow you to quickly grow a varied badge collection, allowing for all sorts of interesting builds.
There are many new locations sprinkled into the world of Paper Mario in this mod, one of which being the Pit of 100 Trials, first introduced in the sequel to this game. While many will find the pit's challenges daunting, it is very much worth exploring until at least floor 50. Veterans of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door will know why. Of course, the deeper you go, the more arduous the battles become. Thankfully, like in the sequel's pit, there is an NPC called a mover that will move you a handful of floors for some coins. I was thankful enough to encounter many of these in a row in my journey to the bottom of the pit, chaining 4 of them in a row on the later floors. I had to change tactics during the final stretch, however, aiming for a "Danger"-based build to maximize evasion and damage output. Despite how stressful the final encounter of the pit was (I won't be spoiling it here), it was definitely a great challenge that I recommend players attempt when playing this mod.
Funnily enough, it was after completing the pit when I learned of a new problem I had with this mod. There is a limit on how many badges you can have in your inventory at any given time. This should be fine, as badges can be sold and re-bought at any time in this mod. However, there is no way to actually know how many badges you have without stopping to count each individual one. The game does not show you a number of badges in your inventory, nor does it show you the limit on how many badges you can have. When you find a new badge while your inventory is full, the badge is sent to Rowf's shop, where you can buy it for a specific amount of coins. I did not know this when I cleared the Pit of 100 Trials and kinda freaked out. Seeing it in the shop made me breathe a sigh of relief, but never being informed about these mechanics is an issue that I hope is addressed in an update or is one day included in a Readme file with the mod.
Another part of this mod worth noting is the music. The title screen music and some battle tracks have been replaced with re-creations of songs from the sequel. There are also specific areas where tracks from the sequel are played. While the inclusion of these is nice and fits the mod, I do feel that some of the new tracks are louder than the older ones, making the audio balance in this game feel off. Aside from that, the tracks make it over to this game mostly fine and are nice to hear in this format.
This mod offers a healthy amount of replayability in the form of new difficulties and modes. During my playthrough, I kept to the normal difficulty with no additional modifications and had a pleasant time. I do not think I would replay this game on a higher difficulty since I do not come to this game for a harsh challenge, but there are some added modes that caught my eye. These modes are one where your only party member is the character Bow, who is made stronger to compensate for the limitation, and there is also a mode that randomizes the placement of items and badges. Both of these modes sound interesting, and I will definitely check them out after this mod receives some updates.
My only other complaints with this mod are that there's no real way to tell what new recipes are in the game without referring to a guide (I would assume most Thousand-Year Door recipes work but I did not want to risk wasting items I wanted to use to find out) and that there are some small bugs scattered through the mod. One notable example of a bug I encountered was when I was fighting the Chapter 1 boss. I had used Kooper's Power Shell move during the second phase, which got locked into place, causing the move to never finish and soft locking the game. Another issue I ran into is that the game crashed when attempting to start a New Game + file, which I am sure will be fixed in a later update.
Overall, I found Paper Mario TTYD64 to be a delightful revisit to a great game adding mechanics and items that help spice things up in ways I did not think possible for this game. If you're a fan of both Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and want to experience what it would be like to have the quality-of-life features of TTYD in the game that started it all, look no further than this mod!
When you first hear the title Paper Mario TTYD64, you'll probably assume that this is someone's effort to recreate all of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64. In this case, your assumption would be wrong. Rather, Paper Mario TTYD64 is a hack that aims to take elements of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and inject them into Paper Mario. These elements include things such as giving partners HP, removing the caps on stat growth when leveling up (for example, you are no longer limited to having a maximum of 30 BP), and super-guarding. This mod also adds new locations to the world, some of which are re-created areas from The Thousand-Year Door. Alongside that, you are given access to many badges from that game, including partner versions of some badges. There are also new cooking recipes, items, a Pit of 100 Trials, and new hiding locations for star pieces, so veterans of Paper Mario will have many new things to look forward to here.
As for how the game plays with these new additions, I would say it plays a little bit better than the original, especially since now you don't have to complete the prologue before getting access to action commands. Having these in your toolkit from the get-go definitely helps to speed up the intro, making new playthroughs feel snappier. Having access to the super-guard also makes things more interesting, as you now have a riskier but more rewarding way to counter enemy attacks. Sadly, I did not use it as much as I would have in The Thousand-Year Door, if only because it is much more difficult to use than regular guarding, especially in a game that runs at a lower frame-rate than the game where this mechanic was introduced. I also found it weird that in the tutorial for action commands, Twink never goes over this maneuver. I feel like this should be added in a later patch, as there is always the chance someone new to this mod will not know it is there.
Being able to increase the three core stats (HP, FP, and BP) beyond the regular limit is very rewarding. By the end of my playthrough, I had over 70 BP to use, allowing me to become the powerhouse I always wanted to be in this game. With these limitations removed, the level cap is also increased, allowing you to level beyond level 27, as the game will make sure you get at least 1 star point from every encounter, much like the sequel. Now, you would think that this means you can go to Petal Meadows and fight Amazy Dayzees over and over and level up until the cows come home. Sadly, that is not the case here. Once you hit level 27, all enemies stop giving star points when defeated. This means that when you hit level 27, you go from getting 37 star points off of an Amazy Dayzee to just one, which is extremely saddening. I am not sure if this is an issue carried over from vanilla Paper Mario or an intentional move from the mod creator, but I do hope that in a later patch this is fixed and players can continue to grind levels off Amazy Dayzees after hitting level 27.
Enemies can now also hold items and badges, changing how encounters play out immensely. Are you going to target the enemy holding a thunder rage first? Or will you attack the one holding a dizzy dial? While there may be fights where the amount of items being held by enemies causes a truly daunting challenge, overcoming said challenge can feel very rewarding. Also, along with the aforementioned addition of HP for party members, Parakarry has been given a new move called Parcel Check, which allows him to steal items and badges from enemies. If an enemy is holding something, you can take it! This is very handy as it will allow you to quickly grow a varied badge collection, allowing for all sorts of interesting builds.
There are many new locations sprinkled into the world of Paper Mario in this mod, one of which being the Pit of 100 Trials, first introduced in the sequel to this game. While many will find the pit's challenges daunting, it is very much worth exploring until at least floor 50. Veterans of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door will know why. Of course, the deeper you go, the more arduous the battles become. Thankfully, like in the sequel's pit, there is an NPC called a mover that will move you a handful of floors for some coins. I was thankful enough to encounter many of these in a row in my journey to the bottom of the pit, chaining 4 of them in a row on the later floors. I had to change tactics during the final stretch, however, aiming for a "Danger"-based build to maximize evasion and damage output. Despite how stressful the final encounter of the pit was (I won't be spoiling it here), it was definitely a great challenge that I recommend players attempt when playing this mod.
Funnily enough, it was after completing the pit when I learned of a new problem I had with this mod. There is a limit on how many badges you can have in your inventory at any given time. This should be fine, as badges can be sold and re-bought at any time in this mod. However, there is no way to actually know how many badges you have without stopping to count each individual one. The game does not show you a number of badges in your inventory, nor does it show you the limit on how many badges you can have. When you find a new badge while your inventory is full, the badge is sent to Rowf's shop, where you can buy it for a specific amount of coins. I did not know this when I cleared the Pit of 100 Trials and kinda freaked out. Seeing it in the shop made me breathe a sigh of relief, but never being informed about these mechanics is an issue that I hope is addressed in an update or is one day included in a Readme file with the mod.
Another part of this mod worth noting is the music. The title screen music and some battle tracks have been replaced with re-creations of songs from the sequel. There are also specific areas where tracks from the sequel are played. While the inclusion of these is nice and fits the mod, I do feel that some of the new tracks are louder than the older ones, making the audio balance in this game feel off. Aside from that, the tracks make it over to this game mostly fine and are nice to hear in this format.
This mod offers a healthy amount of replayability in the form of new difficulties and modes. During my playthrough, I kept to the normal difficulty with no additional modifications and had a pleasant time. I do not think I would replay this game on a higher difficulty since I do not come to this game for a harsh challenge, but there are some added modes that caught my eye. These modes are one where your only party member is the character Bow, who is made stronger to compensate for the limitation, and there is also a mode that randomizes the placement of items and badges. Both of these modes sound interesting, and I will definitely check them out after this mod receives some updates.
My only other complaints with this mod are that there's no real way to tell what new recipes are in the game without referring to a guide (I would assume most Thousand-Year Door recipes work but I did not want to risk wasting items I wanted to use to find out) and that there are some small bugs scattered through the mod. One notable example of a bug I encountered was when I was fighting the Chapter 1 boss. I had used Kooper's Power Shell move during the second phase, which got locked into place, causing the move to never finish and soft locking the game. Another issue I ran into is that the game crashed when attempting to start a New Game + file, which I am sure will be fixed in a later update.
Overall, I found Paper Mario TTYD64 to be a delightful revisit to a great game adding mechanics and items that help spice things up in ways I did not think possible for this game. If you're a fan of both Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and want to experience what it would be like to have the quality-of-life features of TTYD in the game that started it all, look no further than this mod!