Paper Mario (series)

The Paper Mario series is one of the many sub-series of the Mario series. Three games have been released in this series: Paper Mario, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and Super Paper Mario, with an upcoming fourth game. Most of the games in the series are RPGs, though Super Paper Mario is a platfomer. The three games have been released on separate consoles, the Nintendo 64, the Nintendo GameCube, and the Wii, with the fourth game to be released on the Nintendo 3DS.

Trivia

 * Paper Mario is directly referenced by name in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga; one of the four blocks in the examination rooms of Woohoo Hooniversity is that of Paper Mario, and is identified as such when struck.
 * All three games have the final boss being invincible at first and the stars (or hearts) Mario has collected making them vulnerable.
 * In all three games, Mario has to fight one of his allies at least once. In Paper Mario he fights Lakilester, in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door he fights Vivian along with her sisters and the tricked Goombella, Koops, Flurrie and Yoshi with Doopliss, and in Super Paper Mario he fights Bowser and Mr. L twice.
 * In all three installments, Mario is able to temporarily transform into an 8-bit version of himself, where the sprites are almost identical to the ones in Super Mario Bros..
 * All three games each have a person telling a long story with Mario falling asleep. When he wakes up, the storyteller asks if he's been listening, followed by Mario lying by nodding. In Paper Mario, Madam Merlar tells the story. In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Luigi and the shopkeeper in Twilight Town tell the stories. In Super Paper Mario, Merlumina tells the story.
 * Also, in Paper Mario and Super Paper Mario, the storyteller claims she's telling the "short version" of the story after Mario wakes up.