Paper Mario is one of the more unique franchises in the Nintendo library, thanks to the interesting recording about images. Although the aesthetic papers are now standard, it was quite a whole new idea when the original Paper Mario was launched. However, it turns out that the game will not always use a paper approach!
A classic interview from 2000 gives us some insight into the other visual styles considered by Nintendo. The comments below come from Ryota Kawade, Chief Director (Intelligent Systems) and Hiroyasu Sasano, Technical Support (Nintendo).
Sasano: One thing we decided early on was to make Paper Mario less of a sequel to Super Mario RPG, and more of its own thing – a brand new RPG featuring Mario. To that end, we consciously distanced ourselves from the styling of Super Mario RPG.
We spent about a year and a half trying out different characters. We also tried using pre-renders like SMRPG, but we thought it would be more enjoyable for us to try something completely different this time around, and that paper-y Mario was the result.
Kawade: Yes, we tried polygons, but there was too much overlap with the N64 Zelda games, I think it was rejected. (laughs) We used Silicon Graphics as a software tool, but eventually got rid of those old Super Famicom tools and dusted them off to create the Paper Mario graphics. (laughs)
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