Paper Mario (series)

The Paper Mario series is an RPG action-adventure series of the Mario franchise developed by Intelligent Systems. Four games have been released - three for home consoles, one for the Nintendo 3DS - and a fifth, for Wii U, is due to be released in late 2016. The series has gone through three iterations so far: Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door are RPGs, Super Paper Mario is a RPG-platformer hybrid, and Paper Mario: Sticker Star and Paper Mario: Color Splash are action-adventure games.

Similarities between the games

 * In all the games, Mario has to fight one or more 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, in Super Paper Mario he fights Bowser and Mr. L (Luigi) twice each, and in Paper Mario: Sticker Star, each Wiggler Segment is fought.
 * In all the console games, Mario is able to temporarily transform into an 8-bit version of himself.
 * Each console game has someone 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.
 * All four games involve 1 or more giant Bloopers as a boss.
 * All four games involve a grassland setting followed by a fortress of some sorts during the first chapter or area in the game.
 * All four games involve an exotic world in the fifth chapter.
 * Additionally, Super Paper Mario is the only game where the fifth chapter does not feature a tropical island setting.
 * All four games has at least one game show event. In Paper Mario there was the 64th Trivia Quiz-Off, in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door there was the two Super Fun Quirk Quizes, in Super Paper Mario there was "That's My Merlee!" Show, and in Paper Mario: Sticker Star, there was Snifit or Whiffit.
 * In all four games, the final boss is a powerful version of a member of the team of Super Paper Mario: in the first game is an invincible and giant Bowser, in the second one is Princess Peach possessed by the Shadow Queen, in the third one is a mixture of Dimentio, the Chaos Heart and Mr. L, and in the fourth one another invincible and giant Bowser.
 * All four games had a cover version of the Super Star theme play somewhere. In Paper Mario, when Mario runs around a certain Candy Cane, the theme will start playing. In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, when playing the Bowser segments, if the player collects enough Meat in a level, Bowser grows huge and the theme plays. In Super Paper Mario, when the player obtains a Mega Star, the theme plays, and in Paper Mario: Sticker Star, the theme plays when the player grabs a Star.

Trivia

 * The Paper Mario title itself is mentioned in several games. In the party at the end of Paper Mario, a Bumpty mentions that Herringway is writing a novel called "Paper Mario". The same occurs in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door with the blue Toad living in a house in the Rogueport west side, who also writes a Paper Mario novel based off Mario's adventures, which gets adapted into a play.
 * The novel written by Herringway is titled "Mario Story" in Japanese. In Luigi's Mansion, Neville can be seen reading a book with the same title.