Amidst all the bright lights and brand new hardware demos at this year's E3, the GameCube appeared to be all but dead. Actually, yeah, it did appear to be dead, as there was no hoopla surrounding Super Paper Mario, an upcoming 2D adventure that mixes typical jump-action with Paper Mario 2 's role-playing attributes.
How, exactly, this blend will be brought about isn't clear. Right now, all that exists are a few screens and a slick little movie. From those, we can tell you that there's some kind of weird vector butterfly following Mario around that lets you change characters at any point. Bowser and Peach are playable, so that rules out another Bowser-kidnaps-Peach storyline. They both, in grand tradition, have abilities to differentiate them from Mario.
The side-scrolling looks to switch between two separate planes, with all kinds of surreal imagery floating in the background. As far as power-ups go, it looks like some form of mega mushroom from DS' New Super Mario Bros. is in effect - though in this case it transforms you into a towering, pixilated mess. Ah, nostalgia.
Super Paper Mario is being developed by Intelligent Systems (Advance Wars, Super Metroid), so we expect great things when it hits the GameCube this winter.
