Square Enix and Nintendo's 1996 rollout of Super Mario RPG may have
seemed odd at the time, but it gave wind to a long line of
unforgettable RPGs.

Nintendo had some of their largest sucesses throughout the 80s and
90s, but one genre that they just couldn't seem to break into was the
RPG. At the time, RPGs were crushing it in Japan, but in the states,
we were a bit behind in the scene.

Nintendo tried getting players in the US to jump on board the RPG
hype, but after the lackluster debut of Dragon Warrior, things went
quiet on the North American Nintendo RPG front. As time went on, RPGs
like EarthBound, Final Fantasy, Illusion of Gaia, and a number of
others began to popup. Some RPG titles garned okay sales numbers, but
they just didn't seem to live up to Nintendo's hopeful sales numbers.
So, in a last ditch attempt before Pokemon was later birthed, Nintendo
decided to go with more well known characters for a newer RPG game
with a developer that had a solid track record in the space.

Nintendo and Square partnered up on Super Mario RPG which would in
turn end up being Square's last SNES game released in America. Square
and Nintendo actually weren't on the best terms at the time. While
it's hard to put together the exact events that led up to this bad
blood, many point to the brash outburts from Nintendo's former
president Hiroshi Yamauchi and him going so far as saying RPG fans are
"depressed gamers who like to sit alone in their dark rooms", but this
questionable statement actually didn't come out until years after the
release of Super Mario RPG. What really caused this rift between
Nintendo and Square was Square's involvement in convincing other
publishers to bail from Nintendo while bad mouthing them to the press.

Nintendo had their hands full at the time working on the N64 along with Super Mario 64. This meant that they had to be a bit more hands off with the development of Super Mario RPG and Square had more creative control over the title. This might explain why the game diverges so much from what you'd expect a mario RPG at that time to be. The game blazes its own path and introduces many characters entirely unique to it.

The game starts off presenting Bowser as the villain like we had seen
many times before, but quickly he is overshadowed by the game's true
villain, leading Bowser to actually join your squad. Princess Peach
sees a shift from the damsel in distress to become a highly valuable
party member. Her healing is an absolute necessity.

The game's battle system was quite unique for its time. Because RPGs
had a history of underperforming in American markets, Square decided
to give the player more control while battling. Timed attacks were
revolutionary - players had to carefully time button presses to deal
additional damage, which in turn felt less like watching an auto
battle take place and incentivized players to remain engaged with what
was happening on screen. This mechanic would later go on to debut in
many different RPGs, becoming somewhat of a mainstay throughout the
Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi series.

Mario RPG debuted at a difficult time when Sony's Playstation was
pushing 3D heavily. Because the N64 wasn't yet ready for release, the
game did what it could with what was available to it at the time. It
featured an isometric style viewpoint along with a graphical style
similar to the massively successful Donkey Kong Country. The top down
view and graphical style gave Super Mario RPG a 3D sort of feel. This
isometric view makes some gameplay elements a bit difficult to master.

Super Mario RPG would later go on and give birth to the Paper Mario
and Mario and Luigi series, which eventually even had Geno make a
guest appearance. To this day, Super Mario RPG still has a solid cult
following and for good reason. The spin offs that evolved led to many
great games. Whether Nintendo has any plans to port Super Mario RPG to
the Switch remains yet to be seen, but for now, you can still fire up
your old SNES and relive this classic that spawned many great games.
Happy playing!

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