Paper Mario World Demo from late 2001 found.

[Namedude]

I like researching about old MFGG games. It's a weird interest for me, as someone who wasn't there in the early days of MFGG. One of these games is Paper Mario World, one of the worst recieved games on MFGG as a whole. It actually has quite the history and I've spent the past few days trying to find out more about it. Why I want to recover stuff from such a terrible game? Not sure! Just general interest in this kind of stuff. After spending last night going through dead links from the Wayback machine and digging through Superadammario's old Geocities website, I was able to find a demo for Paper Mario World from late 2001. For those who don't know, the version of Paper Mario World we all know and love(?) isn't the original version. It's a modified version called Paper Mario World Gold created by Yoshiman, attempting to make it even slightly better. As far as I know, the original Paper Mario World was only up for a few months, and it's download link simply goes to a 404 page on the Wayback Machine. If, by a one in a million chance that someone downloaded the original and had it on an old hard drive between March and August of 2002, please send it over as a reply in this thread.

Something I'm even more interested in is Paper Mario World 2 (Not the one by GeneralGuy. The actual Paper Mario World 2 by Superadammario.) There was a demo made for Paper Mario World 2 that was eventually scrapped, according to both the wiki article, an old video from 2009 of Superadammario playing the demo, and a Commander Keen fangame he made with a broken PMW2 Demo button, this demo could exist somewhere out there. According to the thread, the PMW2 demo was given to Yoshiman and posted it.. somewhere. (It's unknown if it was actually posted in 2005, as the wiki pages for PMW 1 and 2 get quite a few dates wrong.) All of this might be considered weird and kinda stupid. But hey, I'm just trying to archive MFGG history.

[VinnyVideo]

Wow, this is quite an interesting find - thanks for sharing this with us.

I am glad that another generation is finding things in the PMW preservation scene! I'd never seen this demo before.

Course clear! You got a card.

[Vitiman]

The greatest irony of Paper Mario World is that in its unique ability to stand out by a perceived lack of quality (which yes, realistically speaking, the game isn't particularly good on its own merits), it has managed to have a legacy that far outlasts the majority of weird oddball fangames that it was contemporary to. Who is talking about Dodge the Shy-Guys in 2024? How about Yoshi Gone MFGG? Games that are far more broken and unplayable than PMW but mostly blown away by the sands of time. Oh, how cruel is fate to be to our creative pursuits.

I love Paper Mario World. Nearly completely unironically. What does it even mean to like something "ironically"? Like you like it because you hate it? You hate that you like it? Nah man, I'm running the Paper Mario World fanclub. Nobody else will. I'd eat a Paper Mario World sandwich if they made one. I tried remaking it once to prove that underneath its amateurism was the potential for a fun little platforming challenge, but then I got a job and forgot about that for way too long. Oh well. Maybe one day, if the stars align.

I'm glad I wasn't the only person who noticed PMW's only record online appears to be an adjusted/updated version. This is in dire need of correction. Somebody contact Lost Media YouTubers, maybe they'll go find it for us. While you're at it, also ask them about "Mario & Luigi's Two-Man Circus". That isn't a joke. That's another real lost fangame. It sounds incredible. I give any of you permission to personally PM me a copy of that if you happen to stumble upon it. I need it so badly.

[Namedude]

I'm glad you appreciate PMW as much as I do. I agree with Vitiman in that it most certainly could work as a fun little game if it had some more polish. It's a shame that most fan projects kinda fell apart. (Excluding GeneralGuy's PMW2, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the first game.)

On that topic, the fact that Paper Mario World is one of the only fangames that gets fangames just shows the cultural impact it's had on MFGG. The premise is fun, and I think people know that. Hopefully, one day, a Paper Mario World remake or sequel will come about. Who'll make it? Who knows! Anyone can do anything; you could make it, I could make it! I feel like it's bound to happen one way or another.

[TonyBalonneViper]

Interesting find.

         

[DJ Yoshiman]

I'll get in contact with Adam and see if there's any remote possibility he still has that old demo. I hit the restart button on my life a number of years ago, including wiping and selling my old computer, so I don't have many old files from... say, 2012 or so or before.

[Namedude]

Yoshiman! Didn't expect to see you in this thread, haha. Yea, let us know if he gets back to you. It'd be a huge memento of MFGG history.

[Q-Nova]

Nice find, Lenolol! What a coincidence, considering that I was thinking about Adam's work just before this thread. It's interesting to see early parts of PMW without Yoshiman's contributions (voice-overs, flashy effects).

I find it strange that the wiki article for PMW2 said that the demo (Adam's version) has five levels, when the video you linked only has two or three levels, depending on whether you consider the "boulder" chase sequence to be a separate level. Was it an overestimation, or are there some levels we have yet to see?

Also, I'm very curious on whether the demo for that Commander Keen fangame was all that's left or if Adam made more progress that wasn't shown to the public. It's probably the former since the footage shown in the Return to Paper Mario World documentary only shows what's seen in the demo, but who knows. I'd love to see what other game worlds Keen would visit! (Also, I got a good laugh when I first saw Keen flying with the pogo stick! )

@Vitiman I played PMW a few years ago, and while it's indeed not a good game, it's certainly very entertaining and memorable! I think what makes PMW stand out from other contemporary low-quality fangames is that there's clearly some ambition and passion put into the game that just somehow ends up being a beautiful mess. I think it's the same reason why some people love cheesy B-movies such as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, except that PMW has far lower production values. It might also be due to the fact that it's often labeled as the "worst" fangame, which makes it seem more intriguing to people.

By the way, while Dodge The Shy Guys doesn't seem to get mentioned much in 2024 (which we're not even a quarter in, to be honest ), it had quite a legacy. It was going to have a fan-made sequel, and I think most of us believe that the second minigame in Mario Minigame Mayhem (which also got a fan-made sequel) was inspired by Dodge The Shy Guys.

Quillax Ship - Where you can download all of my cool, keen mods and super-marvelous fangames!

[Adamgamer]

(This is superadammario here)
Oh wow, did not expect the original demo to be unearthed, I thought it was lost to time. I mentioned to Yoshiman that I might have the pmw2 demo somewhere on a burned dvd in my closet somewhere so I'll take a look whenever I'm free!

[Namedude]

Adam! Thanks for stopping into the thread. Yea, I thought the demo was lost to time as well, especially since the actual game wasn't archived. Let us know if you ever find that DVD! The possibility of it being out there is pretty exciting, haha.

[VinnyVideo]

@Adamgamer Oh cool... we summoned a very special guest! I haven't heard from you in a while, so I hope life's treating you well!

Part of the appeal of PMW is its sincerity - it's obviously made by someone who was having fun making games. As a game developer - especially one who's making a living making games or wants to go pro - it's all too easy to stray from the fun of loving what you make. PMW has a lot of cool ideas (a variety of gameplay styles and even full narration), even if the execution is lacking. It also helps that PMW has a reasonable difficulty level and few major bugs - many fangames of PMW's era are difficult to complete for those reasons.

Course clear! You got a card.

[Namedude]

This is sorta unrelated to the thread, but I decided to try my hand at my own PMW fangame! I've been working on it for about a day and a half, if I get any more progress done on it, I'll make my own thread on it.

Sorry to take the spotlight away from Adam, just wanted to show this off.

[Vitiman]

It is completely insane to me how many fangames this fangame has received/could have received. I mean, wasn't Yoshiman himself working on a Paper Mario World game at one point? Super Paper Mario World, right? Man, I'd kill to play that, it looked really cool for the time (this was like 2007/2008-ish, when SPM itself was very new).

[Adamgamer]

@VinnyVideo
Doing well! Sadly haven't been doing much creative things lately though since life and gaming get in the way :P

It's still awesome and humbling seeing all this interest in PMW 23 years later as it was a way for me to try creating a game as a 12 year old. I did actually brainstorm a potential second version of PMW2 back around 2009/2010 when I was still helping out with NCFC. It would of a meta sequel where it would be about me trying to create PMW2 many years later and some craziness would happen. It would of been a FMV point and click game mixed in with some traditional 2D platforming sections where you'd be playing the actual PMW2. Sadly real life issues put it aside and I never went back to it.

[TonyBalonneViper]

(This is superadammario here)
Oh wow, did not expect the original demo to be unearthed, I thought it was lost to time. I mentioned to Yoshiman that I might have the pmw2 demo somewhere on a burned dvd in my closet somewhere so I'll take a look whenever I'm free!

Oh my Buddha its adammario! surprised to see you still around during these years.

         

[DJ Yoshiman]

It is completely insane to me how many fangames this fangame has received/could have received. I mean, wasn't Yoshiman himself working on a Paper Mario World game at one point? Super Paper Mario World, right? Man, I'd kill to play that, it looked really cool for the time (this was like 2007/2008-ish, when SPM itself was very new).

I'd... just push some one to slightly inconvenience their trip, not outright kill, to play it and look at it's source in MMF 1.5 again. I still remember the trailer I made, and the title screen animation I made. It was pretty cool, I admit. Mecha had shown off his animation for limbless characters and I adapted it to Paper Mario's arms and legs for walking. The control style was WSAD & Mouse, and you could do things like draw terrain for Mario to walk on and a few other concepts. It would be nice to see that demo, again. But I'm certain it's gone, unless any one archived all the demos from NCFC 2007/2008.

[GeneralGuy]

Interesting and cool find! Paper Mario World is definitely one of the more funny fangames on MFGG, which is one of the reasons why I made an unofficial sequel to it.

(This is superadammario here)
Oh wow, did not expect the original demo to be unearthed, I thought it was lost to time. I mentioned to Yoshiman that I might have the pmw2 demo somewhere on a burned dvd in my closet somewhere so I'll take a look whenever I'm free!

Hey! It's nice to see you, superadammario!

[Q-Nova]

To think, long before I played Paper Mario World, I tried to make a fangame series that has a similar concept to the aforementioned fangame. Like, Mario (and Luigi) go on an adventure, there's crossovers with other game series (like Kirby), the story is presented in a linear fashion with cutscenes sprinkled in-between the levels, you switch to different characters throughout the story, the characters get upgrades (like more health), and the gameplay is like a platformer with some very light RPG elements mixed in. Even the title screens I made were very similar to the one from Paper Mario World 2 (jumble of clashing official artwork).

I was very heavily inspired by the Mario RPGs and the Subspace Emissary mode from Super Smash Bros. Brawl. None of the those games were ever finished, but I remember making some decent progress on a Christmas one; wish I knew what happened to that...

Thunder Dragon's MarioQuest series shares many similar ideas as well. In fact, when I played Paper Mario World, I noticed a lot of parallels to the original MarioQuest (such as the fireball shooting mechanic and various parts of the story). I bet the latter left quite a mark on Adamgamer! I wonder if he was also inspired by the Sonic Adventure series, since those games have some similar ideas too. In fact, Sonic was going to have a role in Commander Keen in the Earth's Chaos and Paper Mario World 2, judging by their title screens.

Even Mushroom Kingdom Fusion has a little bit of that Paper Mario World DNA if you really think about it, whether it was intended or just a mere coincidence...

I mentioned to Yoshiman that I might have the pmw2 demo somewhere on a burned dvd in my closet somewhere so I'll take a look whenever I'm free!

Doing well! Sadly haven't been doing much creative things lately though since life and gaming get in the way :P

It's still awesome and humbling seeing all this interest in PMW 23 years later as it was a way for me to try creating a game as a 12 year old. I did actually brainstorm a potential second version of PMW2 back around 2009/2010 when I was still helping out with NCFC. It would of a meta sequel where it would be about me trying to create PMW2 many years later and some craziness would happen. It would of been a FMV point and click game mixed in with some traditional 2D platforming sections where you'd be playing the actual PMW2. Sadly real life issues put it aside and I never went back to it.

Have you looked in the closet yet? Were you able to find the DVD? It'd be cool if you did!

Also, that Sega CD idea is ingenious! I've never heard of a fangame idea like that before!

This is sorta unrelated to the thread, but I decided to try my hand at my own PMW fangame! I've been working on it for about a day and a half, if I get any more progress done on it, I'll make my own thread on it.

Sorry to take the spotlight away from Adam, just wanted to show this off.

That looks neat! As Vitiman said, it's truly astounding that Paper Mario World gets as many fangames as it does! I like how it's made in TGF!

It is completely insane to me how many fangames this fangame has received/could have received. I mean, wasn't Yoshiman himself working on a Paper Mario World game at one point? Super Paper Mario World, right? Man, I'd kill to play that, it looked really cool for the time (this was like 2007/2008-ish, when SPM itself was very new).

Let's also not forget that if it weren't for Paper Mario World, we would've never had the legendary 2015 thread, a little help?, by a troll named Mariofan1122! I remember being around at that time, and it was so hilarious! What a legacy this game has!

Quillax Ship - Where you can download all of my cool, keen mods and super-marvelous fangames!