We have a surprising new rumor about Nintendo’s next upcoming video game remaster.
PiminSnezkov posted this on Famiboards a few hours ago:
“Good evening Fami, hope you all are having a brilliant day : )
I usually don’t do this, as I don’t like attention. And I hope even after this we will focus on the game, not me.
As some of you know, I do hobby journalism behind the scenes and research various things for fun. Some accurate Nintendo rumors that were reported by YouTubers and other sites in the past partially were based on my research. As I said, I don’t like attention and thus always asked everyone to keep me private, which I intend to continue remain private in those stories.
However, now I have something super excited that I’m aware of. Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door Remaster is finally happening and coming out soon!
I have been in touch with 3 sources with this. One of them redirected to me to the third source, who I hadn’t interacted before so it was just me cold messaging them on LinkedIn. Because this third source wouldn’t acknowledge the release date I had heard from the previous two sources, I’ll just leave it as “coming soon.”
I informed both @NintendoPrime and @NateDrake about this privately. There’s one more person I have informed, but they wish to remain anonymous.
I personally had always wished for TTYD remaster. I never played it on GCN so I’m over the moon excited to finally play it on Switch soon.”
We don’t know PiminSnezkov so we can’t vouch for his reputation, as this site has for the likes of Jeff Grubb and Tom Henderson. A quick check of his posting history in Famiboards indicates he is on the level of how he introduced himself.
PiminSnezkov has chimed in on several discussions about other rumors and speculation, sometimes sharing knowledge he found for himself. In one post, he shared pics of a Thunderbolt based dock for the Nintendo Switch from a patent. In another post, he confirmed his belief that an earlier rumor about an upcoming 3D Donkey Kong game is correct.
PiminSnezkov also cites other members of Famiboards who would seem to back up his claims. He also claims he has a release date, but won’t reveal it until he confirms it with a third source to be sure.
So it would seem PiminSnezkov has put forward at least a semblance of someone who found this rumor in earnest, and felt confident enough to reveal it. If this remake already has a release date, then it may already be far gone into development, if it hasn’t already gone gold.
As for his rumor, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is a good choice for a remaster. While Paper Mario is one of the more popular spinoff franchises for Mario, it hasn’t received many of the rereleases that other Mario franchises have.
If the reason for this dearth of rereleases is that Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is a GameCube game, and future games were on GameCube and more advanced software moving forward, Nintendo can’t rely on that excuse anymore. It’s a particularly ripe time for the nostalgia cycle to hit the Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation.
The original Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door are the only Paper Mario games that are primarily RPGs. Starting with Super Paper Mario on the Wii, the franchise moved more into being a platformer and action game franchise with RPG elements.
While Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is generally well regarded, it joins that list of Nintendo GameCube games that are currently hard to play because the system is old enough that they’re hard to find.
Nintendo has moved to alleviate that issue with Metroid Prime Remastered, Super Mario Sunshine in Super Mario 3D All-Stars, and even a Baten Kaitos anthology. But Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door hasn’t had that opportunity for a rerelease yet, and now is as good a time as any for it.
