Video Game / Paper Mario: Dark Star Edition

Spoilers for the original Paper Mario are unmarked.

Paper Mario: Dark Star Edition is a mod of Paper Mario 64 by ShadeBlade. As a "Hard Mode" hack, its main purpose is to rebalance the game and add new challenges, so it mostly tells the same story from the vanilla game with the addition that Bowser has stolen the Dark Star in addition to the Star Rod. There is a side-story about a mysterious cave found deep below Toad Town that contains a figuratively and literally dark secret.

In terms of gameplay, the mod is both an expansion and an overhaul of the original. Enough badges were added to fill every badge slot in the coding, and every chapter has at least one new enemy. Most noteably, luck is almost completely removed from the equation. Every enemy and boss has a set attack pattern, badges that used to activate on chance have their abilities either reworked or completely changed, and status ailments are either guaranteed or impossible to inflict on a given enemy.

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This mod has examples of the following tropes:

• Adaptation Expansion: While the story is the same overall as that in Paper Mario, it adds a handful of transition areas, enemies, and some lore involving the Dark Star and fallen Buzzy Beetle empire.
• Author Avatar: The final boss of the Temple Of Darkness is a mysterious dark sword. A ShadeBlade, even. It has the power to disable your ability to press the B button, or to use items.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Mega Bounce. With Power Bounce being nerfed into the ground, this badge was meant to be a version that's much stronger, allowing as many bounces as the player could make successful inputs. The catch though is that the moves starts as normal, but very quickly speeds up
• Balance Buff: Some party members that don't see much use are given slight buffs to make them and/or their moves be more viable.
  • Goombario's Tattle no longer takes away the partner's turn after using it, so the player can Tattle all of the enemies to help build a strategy.
  • Kooper's Shell Toss lowers the defense of an enemy by 1 for 1 round.
  • Parakarry's Sky Dive deals damage, as well as restoring 1 FP.
• The Berserker:
  • Although present in the original game, it is not possible to obtain. Here, the badge can either be obtained with a code, or buying it with 3 star pieces. With either the badge equipped or it being enabled through a code, Mario's attack goes up by 2, but cannot be controlled. Additionally, he is also immune to all negative status effects and always perfectly guards attacks.
• Bleak Level: The Temple of Darkness is, as the name would suggest, dark and gloomy visually. It's buried deep underground and almost everything is black or gray. The Star Spirits are also unusable due to the dark magic around the Temple.
• Boss Bonanza: The Crystal Hall is a six-part rush of unique endgame-tier enemies. The first four rooms are Bosses in Mook Clothing, with the fifth being a fight against Light versions of all eight vanilla partners at once, and the sixth being a showdown with the Queen of Light.
• Boss Rush: A temple in Shooting Star Summit houses a refight against every major chapter boss, including the final Bowser fight. This also gives players the option to fight against the bosses of the Temple of Darkness, or the superboss versions of the chapter fights.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The Temple of Darkness's boss is capable of removing the player's ability to use the "B" button. Beating it gives the Knowledge Stone, which tells the source code.
• Brutal Bonus Level:
  • The Pit of 100 Trials is backported from Thousand Year Door to here. Unlike the Pits from the main series, all of the enemies appear somewhere in the main game, most of them being from vanilla chapters, with the last twenty floors having enemies from the caves and the Temple of Darkness.
  • The Temple of Darkness is the largest of them, boasting the second most powerful enemies in the game right behind the Crystal Hall's light enemies, a series of complex puzzles, and a septet of minibosses that have their own gimmicks. A superboss awaits at the end.
• Canon Welding: Anti Guys in this mod's story are five inhabitants of the Temple of Darkness, and the only ones that leave the Temple at will. They are not so much a subspecies of Shy Guy as they are five specific individuals tied to the Temple.
• Challenge Run:
  • The Curses are badges that increase the health and attack of enemies, along with the rewards. The mod was not balanced around them, especially not the "Mega Curse," but especially persistent players can equip them and attempt to take on the game if they really know what they're doing.
  • Two Stones can be obtained in Peach's Castle at the very beginning. The Greed Stone has Mario's coin count constantly maxed out, at the cost that he cannot raise his HP above five. The Badge Stone makes it so that Mario can equip up to sixteen badges at once, but is forced to stay at Level 1. These can only be obtained at the beginning of the game and their effects are permanent, so the choice must be made then and cannot be reverted or done later. The player can choose to equip both, giving them the restrictions of both stones, but raising the BP to 20.
• Dark Is Evil:
  • Bowser is now using the power of the Dark Star to boost himself in his takeover of the Mushroom Kingdom.
  • The caverns below Toad Town house the Temple of Darkness and, per the mod's story, holds powerful and villainous monsters.
• Difficulty Levels: With the ability to enter codes on the file select screen, the player can select which difficulty they play with, as well as certain other effects
  • Easier Than Easy: Codes like Anarchy and EasyMode make the game much easier by respectively allowing the player to equip badges (even if they cost too much BP) and starting with all badges and stones. The player may use the code Easier which combines the previously mentioned codes.
  • Harder Than Hard: The code NewGame⭐ starts the player with all badges, but all enemies are twice as strong (effectively permanently equipping the Ultra Curse badge). GetGood does the same, except giving all 5 stones as well and setting all encounters to be 3x harder (effectively permanently equipping the Mega Curse badge)
  • Nintendo Hard: CantWin. The developer self describes this code as "Almost certainly impossible". The player starts at level 27 with maxed out stats (50 HP/FP and 30 BP) with all badges and stones, but all fights are 4.5x harder (equipping both Super Curse and Mega Curse).
• Luck-Based Mission: Inverted
  • Shade has taken plenty of steps to remove all factors of RNG in battle. For example, evasion badges like Close Call now have different effects. Close Call is now Danger Saver, which lowers the cost of FP moves by 1 if Mario is in Danger.
  • The same applies to items as well that have random effects, like the Strange Cake or Kooky Cookie. In the original game, they restore some of Mario's stats, as well as giving a random status between invisibility, sleep, and being electrified. Here, Strange Cake now swaps HP and FP, similar to a point swap.
  • Enemies also have set patterns as well. This way, people cannot have a strategy that only works some of the time by hoping enemies only use certain attacks.
  • If an enemy can drop an item, it ALWAYS will do so 100% of the time. This is especially useful for creating recipes with more rare items.
  • The chance of inflicting status on enemies is no longer random. Either the status will always work (mashing moves are easily charged), or it will fail.
• My Name Is ???: The bosses of the Pit of 100 Trials and the Temple of Darkness are both only referred to with question marks.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: With the Jr. Troopa battle in Bowser's Castle, he uses a hustle drink and states that he can use as many moves as he wants and there's nothing you can do about it.
• Nerf: Lots of these are present.
  • Life Shrooms are present, but they are available later on in the game. They cannot be bought until Chapter 5, where the original game allowed buying them as early as Chapter 3. Additionally, when the player dies, all of them get used at once. For example, if Mario has 3 Life Shrooms and dies, he will lose all of them, but gain 30 health.
  • Enemies can typically only be affected by a status once per battle. Even if they were very weak to the status, if you try it again, chances are that they will be immune.
    • Also most statuses themselves were nerfed. For instance, sleep now makes the target of the move regenerate health while they sleep, but they will also wake up if attacked. Paralyzing an enemy will give it another defense point that cannot be pierced.
  • Abilities that remove enemies from the battle like Spook or Hurricane have either been changed or reworked. Spook was changed to Curse, which lowers enemy defense by 2 for 3 turns. Hurricane deals water piercing damage to all enemies. Parakarry's Air Lift is still present, but it's much harder to use the more HP the enemy has left. Also it can only be used once per battle.
  • Common partner moves that are generally considered overpowered have likely been addressed in some way, while other party members that don't see much use get some kind of buff. Bow's Outta Sight move is still present and can be used, however, the cost of it goes up by 2 FP for each use (resetting after battle), so 3 FP becomes 5 FP, then 7 and so on. Goombario's multi bonk gets changed to Mega Bonk, which emulates Mario's Mega Jump badge. Also his charge move only allows the player to reach +6 attack to prevent players from charging to extremely high amounts.
  • Power Bounce was also hit very hard. Rather than taking 1 damage off every successive bounce, it instead lowers the damage by 3/4 rounded down. So for example, instead of 10 9 8.., it would instead do 10 7 5... Additionally, it is capped to only do 3 hits on most bosses.
• New Game Plus: At the file select screen, players can enter file names to unlock certain effects for the save file. The player does not have to have beaten the game previously, the only requirement is to give the file a specific name.
  • Especially literally if the player enters the code NewGame⭐, starting them with all badges.
• One-Hit Kill: The Master's fourth and final form has attacks that will deal 99 damage. The upside is that guarding them nullifies all damage instead of only reducing it, as they would with his other attacks.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The five Anti Guys are recurring threats that show up starting on the fourth chapter, each of them with a different theme.
• Palette Swap:
  • Using the power of the Dark Star gives Bowser a blue and black color scheme. He has this look for the entire hack.
  • A majority of the new enemies are color-swaps of enemies from other chapters, refitted to match the theme of the new setting they are in.
• Purposefully Overpowered:
  • The Rainbow Stone. As a reward for beating the final boss in the Temple of Light, you get this item. Holding the L button allows the player to use certain types of cheats. For instance, if the player holds L while using an attack, it will make said attack do 99 damage. If the player holds L while about to take damage, they player will instead take 0 damage.
• Reality Warper: The Blade of Darkness, the boss at the end of the Dark Temple, has the power to make reality "tear." After a few turns, it prevents usage of the "B" button and prevents using items.
• Recurring Boss: After a regular fight with Phalanx Guy in the Jade Jungle, he ambushes Mario when he gets the Ultra Boots. He is fought again as part of the Anti Guy group just before entering the Temple of Darkness.
• Superboss: A large number of optional, difficult bosses can be found in various spots in the game.
  • Upgraded versions of the chapter bosses can be fought in the Shooting Star Summit temple, which are the only bosses that the game outright calls superbosses. They have significantly higher stats, new palettes, and are generally meant to be taken on in the endgame, even the Koopa Bros.
  • The Unstable Star is a side boss in the cave below Toad Town that deals damage in real time.
  • Dark Bowser is at the end of the Boss Rush. A resprite of the final Bowser battle with higher stats and themed around the finale of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. This is distinct from the battle with Bowser as powered up by the Dark Star, as the two forms have different appearances.
  • At the end of the Temple of Darkness is a shadow copy of Exor, only referred to as "??????????," who can disable actions taken by the player.
  • The Master's fourth battle at Shooting Star Summit. He bears 250 HP and alternates between attacks that deal high amounts of damage even when guarded and attacks that will oneshot if not guarded.
  • The intended "final challenge" of the mod is the Queen of Light, the sixth and final battle in the Crystal Hall. She is a white Peach lookalike that deals heavy damage. She is also at the end of a long gauntlet of battles, and needs anywhere from two to four of the "Stone challenges" depending on whether the player picked the Greed/Badge Stone or not.
  • Whacka gets stronger each time he is hit and fought. By the eighth hit, he has 500 HP, a fiery aura, and deals damage that would even make other superbosses blush. He is intended to be a "joke boss" unlike the rest, with Goombario questioning if it is even possible to beat him. It is possible, but doing so only rewards with eight Whacka Bumps.
• Underground Monkey: Many of the new enemies are variations of ones from other locations, changed to fit the theme of their new areas. Examples include green Gulpits called Lickits in Chapter 1 and orange Swoopers called Swoopixes in Chapter 5.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Attacking Whacka will have him fight back, getting stronger with each hit. The eighth and final time, he becomes an extremely powerful being surrounded by fire that has more health than anything else in the mod and can deal obscene damage. He is one of the few optional bosses that the player is not intended to kill.

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