Paper Mario: The Origami King Launching This July

July 17 cannot come fast enough for longtime Paper Mario fans as Nintendo plans to release the next iteration in the franchise, Paper Mario: The Origami King. Like many of Nintendo’s titles of late, cute, cardboard and paper graphics are going to shine through when players finally get the explore the beautiful world. Look at Yoshi’s Crafted World – there is a new cute paper game on the market.

From Nintendo, “The kingdom has been ravaged by an origami menace! Join Mario and his new partner, Olivia, as they team up with unlikely allies like Bowser and the Toads to battle evil Folded Soldiers.”

From the brief trailer (seen below), we can begin to guess at what the layout of The Origami King might look like. Previous Paper Mario titles have used a level and world system, much like the plumbers various 2D titles – it looks like over worlds are still a thing (note the driving in the dessert and the boat), but there doesn’t seem to be any indication that each world is broken down into levels. If true, that is a huge step forward from previous titles, in our opinion.

Paper Mario titles have always been fun because Nintendo gets to bring in new and wacky mechanics that help our loveable main character to traverse the complicated landscape. While Nintendo seems to be promising many unique special moves, they have highlighted one in particular, and showed it off in the trailer. From Nintendo, “Use the 1,000-Fold Arms ability to extend your arms to interact with the environment and solve puzzles. In battle, line up scattered enemies and plan your attack to maximize damage with the new, ring-based battle system that requires both puzzle-solving skills and a quick wit.”

There is much to glean from the trailer, and I’m sure our friend Abdallah will be breaking it all down for us soon, so stayed tuned for a posting of that video, and more details, as well as some initial thoughts from our own Daniel Fugate!