Special Concept Art and Music Galleries Revealed For Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door

When it comes right down to it, one of the simplest ways to make a remaster/remake memorable is by adding in little things to make it feel even grander than it was before. Previously, we told you about how Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door was adding a special mechanic for you to swap out partners on the fly without having to go into menus. Today, Nintendo dropped a special post on Twitter highlighting another new addition to the upcoming remaster: galleries you can unlock. Specifically, art and music galleries that you can unlock via collecting certain items in the game that you might have taken for granted before.

As you can see below, Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door will have some special galleries dedicated to both the game’s concept art and the music that is played throughout the title. By finding and collecting Star Pieces and Shine Sprites, you’ll slowly get to unlock them all until they’re all revealed!  It should be a fun little side quest for gamers who love unlocking hidden stuff and seeing how the game came together:

What’s nice about this is that it gives a new purpose to Star Pieces and Shine Sprites. In the original game, Star Pieces were special items that you would collect to buy specific things from key shops that only dealt in these items. It made them important, but only if you were willing to buy some of their items, which wasn’t always a guarantee. As for Shine Sprites, they were used to upgrade your partners so that they could unlock new abilities and gain a boost in both health and SP. 

Nintendo made it clear a while back that the upcoming remaster would include quality-of-life updates, and now we’ve seen a few of them in action. How many more are coming is unknown, but it is exciting to think about, given how they’ve improved other RPGs starring Mario.

While most gamers are excited to get their hands on the beloved RPG, complete with visual and gameplay improvements, many hope the release will lead to more than sweeps of praise. Specifically, they want the franchise to “reboot” from this point and move forward in a way that maintains its RPG roots. Nintendo significantly changed the franchise after the Gamecube entry, and fans never wanted that. Thus, their hope is that if this remaster does well, Nintendo will make a true sequel and keep the franchise alive.