Nintendo is at it again, as the company took down a Paper Mario mod that makes this game even sillier than usual. While this isn’t exactly surprising for Nintendo, it does show a new level of pettiness from them since this mod is far from harmful to the Mario license.
Twitter user Dr. 18 has revealed that the Thousand-Year Door mod that lets Paper Mario do “The Griddy” has been taken down by Nintendo. As Dr. 18 puts it, this is the funniest DMCA takedown we’ve seen from the company, since it’s not particularly damaging to the character.
As fans can see, this mod would have replaced Mario’s standard walking animation with doing “The Griddy,” which is genuinely hilarious. It’s really a shame to see the company go after a mod like this, but the company has taken down Nintendo-related fan projects for much less.
Mods like this can’t be done to legally purchased copies of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, so Nintendo probably took this down for general piracy. We doubt that the company is going to add any fun dancing animations for Mario in the future, so this takedown is very disappointing.
In the grand scheme of things, this is actually one of the company’s least-offensive takedowns. Nintendo has sent DMCA takedowns to rom sites that help preserve video games, which usually include copies of the company’s older titles. Vimm’s Lair was almost affected, but it seems that wasn’t a serious takedown or the website was able to find a defense for it.
Unfortunately, Nintendo has done much more horrible acts to people who were trying to preserve older games. The company has taken down emulators for Switch and 3DS games, removing access to some titles fans can never buy legally. Granted, the Switch is still around, but a successor is coming and it would have been nice to preserve some of these titles.
Despite the lack of anything Griddy, we do think fans should pick up Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Nintendo Switch. It was a great RPG on the Gamecube and is even better on the handheld/console hybrid.