...out of 6! What do you take me for?

Silly scoring drama aside, I just wanted to share my first few hours with the game. It's wonderful and very much like a bigger, badder version of Mario and Luigi. I mean, almost everything is the same, from the quirky humor, to the fighting elements, to the in-game puzzles.

Let's humor the haters for a moment though. Let's take these "kiddie" accusations seriously. I think it's pretty amazing, what Nintendo has going here, because almost every game has this unbelievable appeal to small children. It's not just the bright colors, because other games have them too. There's something unique to the first party GameCube games that can keep a child of any age absolutely riveted for hours. It reminds me of how a psychology-major friend of mine told me that the reason small babies stare at my face and giggle is not because I'm particularly funny looking, but because they are engaged by the stark contrast of black and white. Being Greek and a hermit, you get in me about as strong a contrast of black and white as is physically possible.

I'm old enough now not to be insulted by any accusations of childlike behavior (in fact I'm so old that I'm starting to really welcome it). When someone tells me that I like a game that is "kiddie", I have to wonder what they mean by that. While mature often takes on two meanings (1. old enough to view the violence 2. complex and intricate--mature in a really snobby sense of the word), I think "kiddie" rarely is. Paper Mario is an intricate game with some very diverse elements, that happens to have a coating of sunshine on top. It's mature in almost every aspect except the color palette. And in turn, I'm mature enough to be okay with that.