Over the weekend, fans of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the second installment in the Paper Mario series, launched a campaign on Twitter and Change.org advocating for Nintendo to remaster the game. Originally released on the GameCube in 2004, The Thousand-Year Door is an RPG developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo, in which players explore a two-dimensional paper-like world as Mario.
This online movement started on July 27 when a YouTuber named Arlo uploaded a video regarding the matter. Titled “Let’s Get Thousand Year Door [sic] REMASTERED!”, Arlo critiques the more recent Paper Mario games, such as Sticker Star, and insists The Thousand-Year Door is the better title and deserves a remaster.
He encourages those who feel the same to spread the hashtag “#RemasterThousandYearDoor” across social media sites, especially Twitter. Taking it a step further, Arlo also posted a petition on Change.org for fans to sign. As of July 29, it has over 15,700 signatures.
Arlo explains the purpose of the petition and the hashtag campaign is “to communicate to Nintendo that a great number of its customers would be thrilled to buy an HD version of the game,” as he argues that The Thousand-Year Door is one of few first party Nintendo games to have not been remade or re-released in some way since its initial release. He believes a modern remaster would be a “wise business decision” for Nintendo.
Arlo’s efforts don’t come completely from left field, as former assistant producer Risa Tabata from Nintendo told GameXplain in a 2016 interview that if fans are vocal enough about wanting a remaster of The Thousand-Year Door, Nintendo could consider it in the future.
The hashtag took off on Twitter over the weekend, as it eventually became the top-trending tag on Twitter in the U.S. and top ninth worldwide. Nintendo has yet to acknowledge or comment on the campaign, but seeing how far the hashtag went, they most likely have become aware of the campaign.