What would a 1001 list be without 101 Mario titles on it? Well, it'd be much like the 1001 list I'm following, for starters, because there aren't that many entries fronted by the plumber. It does feel like it at times, though...
Another sequel. Or another prequel. Or both, actually, this time around, in the form of Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, an RPG for the Nintendo DS in the same vein as Superstar Saga from the Game Boy Advance, the 'stick Mario on one button and Luigi on the other' game.
Ok, yeah, that wasn't a terrible time at all. How is it spruced up on the DS?
Fun Times
If the title didn't give it away, 'Mushroom Kingdom (Past)' must do: We're going to be jumping through the fourth dimension in this title, probably one after the other in a rhythmic 'A-B A-B A-B' button combo.
Baby Mario and Baby Luigi are here to play with the Princess, but wait! What could this incredibly original spin on the kidnap the Princess angle be?
Kidnapping an actual kid Princess with a kid Bowser. Excellent work, Nintendo. Give yourselves a pat on the back.
Once you've button mashed through the 'yeah, I got this' tutorial text, you're left to jump on Baby Bowser's head a few times using the same mechanics from Superstar Saga - select an attack, select a target, and press the right button as the impact lands for bonus damage. When the time comes to defend, press the button to dodge, or time it correctly for a counterattack. It's simple and straightforward.
In the middle of our scuffle, however, alien mushrooms descend from the skies and start to attack. Cut to THE PRESENT, where the castle looks intact, so spoilers, I guess.
Professor E. Gadd has created a time machine, which the Princess promptly jumps into, sending herself back through the fourth dimension in what will, I'm sure, turn out to be the safest journey in history.
See, what are you worried about, old man? Old man? Why have you fainted?
Frustrations
We now get introduced to the map, which will live on the top screen and show us where we are in the world. We need to go and grab a Refreshroom from elsewhere in the castle to revive whatever this guy is called, which will serve as our tutorial for moving around the game. Wonderful.
Just like that, he's back, and we can finally get on with the story. The time machine makes its return, but it isn't looking too healthy and appears to have grown a set of eyes...
Oh no, that's just a monster lurking in the darkness. Time to prove ourselves to be capable butt-stompers once more, where, bizarrely, there is a damn near identical fight tutorial. The only difference is that we're pressing the A-button instead of X, yet mushroom folk continually interrupt the fight to ask if we need anything explained to us. Let me play the damn game.
Levelling up works identically to Superstar Saga too, with the option for a bonus stat to nudge whatever attribute you want up a little. I don't ever get the impression you can go wrong in assigning points to stats in a Mario RPG, so I quickly move on, back to the plot.
The time machine is busted, the Princess is missing, but luckily, there's probably some big ol' rips in the fabric of spacetime that we can just jump into to whisk ourselves back to the past. Like this one.
So here we are, in the past, with no turning back. The Professor did manage to chuck his latest invention through the time hole before it closed, though.
Your suitcase/assistant/pause menu is a chatty fella, and one of the things he pointed out to me was that it had taken me 17 minutes to get to this point in the game, and I felt I hadn't even started yet. We've been introduced to time travel, we've been asked if we know how to fight not once, but twice. Are we going to be let loose to explore this RPG world?
We are, great.
LOLNO! Jumping tutorial!
It's the same as Superstar Saga. Mario jumps with the A button, Luigi with the B button, and as they run together in single file, this results in you jumping twice to hop over obstacles. You can already imagine the kind of puzzle-platform gameplay you can get out of that mechanic, even if you've not played Superstar Saga.
As we make our way up to some enormous mushrooms, we're given yet another tutorial regarding how we use Luigi in a fight. Look, the idea behind Partners in Time is simple. Every character is mapped to a single button. That button does everything. If you're in a fight, it fights. I don't need to be told how to fight with every single character when they all fight in the exact same manner.
Ugh, and now we need a tutorial on items. 26 minutes into the gameplay. Let me play. Let me explore. Let me find this stuff out for myself.
When we're finally allowed to do something, we find a snowy village covered in the scars of battle. We rescue the lone survivor from his chimney, only to end up putting him right into harm's way again.
The Shroobs don't mess around, calling one of their craft to knock us out from above. Our tale is over before it has begun.
Or is it?!
After more bloody tutorials (guess what: Baby Luigi jumps using the Y button), the Baby Bros. make their way through Bowser's ship. Wait, how did they get here? Whatever, they make their way through the ship because that's all they can do. This isn't an open world. There's no veering off the trail here.
When the Baby Princess cries, she wails, and that sound effect gets old quickly. Agreeing that the only way to shut her up is to help save the villagers, Bowser begrudgingly drops his ship down towards the surface to offer some assistance.
Where, after playing some football with a Green Shell - or trying to, at least - we see that the villagers in need of assistance are none other than our grown-up selves. Don't touch each other! That's bound to result in a catastrophic explosion or something.
FLASHBACK!
What was the point in that...
Nice, Bowser. Your timing was on point there. You're now my favourite, if only because nobody else speaks, or if they do, they're an annoying mushroom.
The ship is shot down, and Mario, Luigi, and the Suitcase have been separated from everyone else. Convenient, for someone, I'm sure. Let's traverse Bowser's castle and look for everyone.
I'm mighty tempted to throw up a 'Further Fun Times' here because when Partners in Time allows you to get on with it, it's certainly not a hideous looking game. Each map is split into rooms, and the puzzle to navigate, if there even is one, seems to be self-contained. Just find the start point and follow it to its conclusion.
If you walk into an enemy you'll start a fight. I tried to avoid them but some are inescapable, especially if you jump over them as Mario but forget to then jump with Luigi. But let's be honest, they don't look bad at all, and can be sort of entertaining as you learn an enemies attack patterns, get the counterattack timing down, and just beat them with every satisfying, bonus damage-dealing butt-stomp.
The problem with Partners in Time is that it doesn't look like I'll ever be left to just get on with it. We're closing in on an hour of playtime now, and Mario and Luigi have found their Baby selves, and are now going through a tutorial or two regarding how to move with four characters.
You can split them into Babies and Adults to go their separate, puzzle-solving ways, or you can merge them, the Brothers giving their Baby selves piggybacks.
In combat, they add extra buttons to the bonus damage side of things, which can result in some confusion when your past self thought it'd be a great idea to map this Xbox controller's X button to Y, Y to X, A to B and B to A, to better mimic the layout of various Nintendo consoles.
Partners in Time is all about getting used to those patterns of inputs. It's like a weird Simon Says game. A X B X A X B X, quicker now, quicker, A X B, that's it... I rarely kicked the Green Shell more than three times in a single use of this double team move.
And then this guy spoke.
I simply couldn't have said it better. We're an hour in, still having tutorials worm their way into the game, still being introduced, slowly, to mechanics one by one. I had to look back at my write up for Superstar Saga to remind myself how bad that game was in this regard, and sure enough, even there I was moaning that there were so many tutorials. Obvious, interjecting tutorials.
Why did they annoy me here? Is it just because I'd seen them before in Superstar Saga? Were they somehow more annoying with fancier graphics, or with a second screen? In Superstar Saga I was interested in seeing more. In Partners in Time, I desperately want to see anything else.
This is where I saved my state and closed the emulation, just over an hour after starting it. I was fed up. I wouldn't say I was drained or sapped of interest. I just wanted the game to get going, and let me play it, but after an hour it was still holding my hand.
Final Word
I understand the need for tutorials, of course I do - heck, I need tutorials for some games that don't care about them. But I also want to play a game. I want to take the reigns for a while. I want to steer the ship. I want to risk a crash and learn from that crash, not from a suitcase telling me that crashes can happen, and here's how to avoid a crash, which you won't have because in this tutorial you can't crash, but in future, you might crash, if and when we ever let you drive the car, which won't be for a while yet, also we don't have a car.
Bad example, perhaps, but the point is that Partners in Time is a lovely game idea, weighed down by the need to cater to those players who have bought a DS as their first gaming console, or, I guess, those that didn't play Superstar Saga, seeing as the mechanics on display here are very much not quite your usual platform mechanics.
Is the idea too complicated, then? Well, no, not really. One button for one character, four buttons, four characters, go wild. Think of the possibilities. We can all design puzzles with that constraint. It might take some getting used to, but it isn't overwhelming. We just need to be allowed to figure things out for ourselves.
What about the setting? Time travel is pretty neat, right? Lots of fun you could have with that. Shame it started with kidnapping the princess. I suppose in the present-day story she disappears on her own accord, but the task remains the same: rescue the Princess. Do I have it in me to push on through yet another rescue mission?
I want to like Partners in Time. Like Superstar Saga, there is something special going on here, it gives players something to do with Mario that isn't 2D platforming or kart racing. It scratches an itch for a certain kind of gamer. But it has so much faff getting in the way of the good stuff.
If you've not played Superstar Saga, perhaps you should start with Partners in Time. Looks better, does the same thing as the first game, but adds two more characters and two more buttons for double the fun. Hell, another screen to look at, too, not that there's much to see on it.
Perhaps you've played Superstar Saga though. Did you like it? Play this. Did you not like it? Probably don't play this. That was easy, wasn't it? Do you want a refresher tutorial on which Mario RPG to play, or shall we get BACK TO ADVENTURE!?
Fun Facts
Like the first game, the final boss is supposed to be really rather difficult, probably because you've got to juggle four characters and their inputs at once. If I ever find myself getting that far, I'll be sure to fill you in.
Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, developed by AlphaDream, first released in 2005.