Summary

  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has been nominated for a GLAAD Award for trans representation.
  • The original English version omitted Vivian's trans identity, while the 2024 remake restored it.
  • The game is competing for the Outstanding Video Game award against titles like Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Life is Strange: Double Exposure.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has been nominated for the Outstanding Video Game award at this year's GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Awards. The award nomination for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is tied to the inclusion of Mario's ghostly companion Vivian, a trans-female character who joins Mario on his quest.

The nomination is for the remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door released in May 2024. The game that it's based on was released in 2004, and while it also featured the shadowy Vivian as an enemy-turned-friend, her status as a trans woman varied depending on the region of the world the game was being played in.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door gameplay
Cut Content That Didn’t Make It Into Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door made some significant improvements over the original, but there were some content that was scrapped before release

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The media monitoring organization released its list of nominees for the 36th annual GLAAD Media Awards on January 22. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door's inclusion on the nominees list, while definitely tied to Vivian, may also relate specifically to the English-language version. In the original game from 20 years ago, all versions acknowledged Vivian's gender identity except for the English version, which left it out of the list of reasons she was bullied by her sisters. However, the trans representation in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door's remake was restored in the English version, much to the delight of the trans gamer community.

Nominees for the 36th Annual GLAAD Outstanding Video Game Award

  • Caravan SandWitch (Studio Plane Toast / Dear Villagers)
  • Dragon Age: The Veilguard (BioWare / Electronic Arts)
  • Dread Delusion (Lovely Hellplace / DreadXP)
  • Dustborn (Red Thread Games / Spotlight by Quantic Dream)
  • Fear the Spotlight (Cozy Game Pals / Blumhouse Games)
  • Life is Strange: Double Exposure (Deck Nine / Square Enix)
  • Minds Beneath Us (BearBone Studio)
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Intelligent Systems / Nintendo)
  • Sorry We’re Closed (à la mode games / Akupara Games)
  • Until Then (Polychroma Games / Maximum Entertainment)

The Nintendo RPG starring Mario is up against nine other games for the award, which will be handed out at the official awards ceremony on March 27. As in past years, several of the games on the nominees list are from independent development studios, but Paper Mario also faces competition from a couple other AAA titles. One of these is another RPG, BioWare's Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which allows players to travel with and possibly get romantic with Taash, a refugee Qunari warrior who comes to terms with their nonbinary identity over the course of the game. The other, time-bending adventure game Life is Strange: Double Exposure from developer Deck Nine and publisher Square Enix, acts as a direct sequel to 2015's Life is Strange and brings back timid photographer Max Caufield, who is bisexual, as the protagonist.

If Paper Mario manages to take home the award, it would mark the second year in a row that an RPG earned the trophy. Last year's awards ceremony saw Baldurs Gate 3 add another award to its extensive list, winning over Horizon Forbidden West and narrative adventure titles including Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical and Goodbye Volcano High. Prior to that, the awards ceremony in 2023 crowned hero shooter Apex Legends with its Outstanding Video Game award.

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Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2024) Tag Page Cover Art

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
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RPG
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Systems
super greyscale 8-bit logo
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Top Critic Avg: 88 /100 Critics Rec: 97%
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Released
May 23, 2024
ESRB
E For Everyone Due To Mild Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes
Developer(s)
Nintendo
Publisher(s)
Nintendo
Engine
Origami King's engine
Franchise
Paper Mario
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WHERE TO PLAY

PHYSICAL
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Join Mario and friends on an epic paper adventure: A classic story unfolds on the Nintendo Switch system.


Collect the Crystal Stars before the bad guys do: The X-Nauts are after the treasure behind the Thousand-Year Door! With a map from Princess Peach—and the help of a few locals—Mario must journey through a colorful world made of paper to find it first.
  Surprises abound in this deep and engaging tale, where everyone’s got something to say and it’s often not what you’d expect! Here are just a few of the colorful characters you’ll encounter along the way.

Master your badges and timing-based attacks to impress the audience in a theatrical twist on turn-based RPG combat. Make use of all the abilities that come with being cursed—er, conveniently made of paper—like folding into a plane to cross big gaps or turning sideways to slip through narrow openings.

Platform(s)
Nintendo Switch
Genre(s)
RPG
How Long To Beat
30 Hours
OpenCritic Rating
Mighty