Among popular games on live-streaming platforms in 2024, there are a few genres that typically stick out. Shooters, MOBAs, and Battle Royales take center stage thanks to their competitive elements. Rarely does a non-open-world RPG ever break out and make an impact. So when the remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Paper Mario: TTYD) was released on Nintendo Switch on the 23rd of May, no one expected it to perform strongly on live streaming.
The original 2004 game is much-loved by Nintendo fans, and considered by many to be the strongest entry in the Paper Mario series. The original title sold 138K copies in its first 3 days, and the Paper Mario: TTYD remake for Switch nearly matched this level of enthusiasm at 116K physical copies sold (per Famitsu, which does not count digital copies). It’s incredible to see a kid-friendly RPG command this much respect even 20 years after release.
In this article, we’re looking at how this passion translated into live-streaming viewership, from the streamers covering the game to the community considerations that make Paper Mario: TTYD fun to revisit decades after its release.
VTubers Rally Behind the Paper Mario: TTYD Remake
Paper Mario: TTYD had an explosive debut on live-streaming platforms after a much-hyped release date. In the first week of its release, Paper Mario: TTYD generated 2.6M hours watched from 7.9K channels. For a game that takes roughly 30 hours to complete, this means viewers were dedicated and tuned in for entire playthroughs rather than a simple surge in viewership for the first couple of hours.
Among the streamers covering the game, the top two were both VTubers: Usada Pekora and Haiku Koyori. Pekora and Koyori brought in 352K and 234K hours watched, respectively, with their viewerships combined accounting for 23% of the game’s total first-week viewership. In contrast, the top English-speaking streamer was BarbarousKing with just under 100K hours watched for Paper Mario: TTYD. Pekora’s influence is notorious, currently being the most popular VTuber on live streaming – it’s no surprise that many Nintendo fans flocked to her YouTube channel to see how the remake changed compared to the original.
Paper Mario: TTYD’s Active and Passionate Modding Community Spreads the Word
Despite this show of local support though, the question remains: Why was Paper Mario: TTYD able to succeed on live streaming where many other classic game remakes fail? Naturally, the Mario IP-backing brought in a slough of support from Japanese streamers such as VTubers. The niche of being a popular Nintendo Switch game no doubt caught the attention of the casual live-streaming audience as well, a trait that previously helped out releases like Pikmin 4 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
A large contributing factor to the game’s success was the active modding community for the original Paper Mario: TTYD (and its prequel Paper Mario). Content creators such as Fatguy 703 and Stryder7x have consistently churned out Paper Mario-related content long after the original game’s release, finding glitches, deep-diving into development lore, and setting themselves highly restrictive challenges based on both the original games and hardcore-difficulty mods made by fans. The remake even honored these fans by releasing a couple of new bosses with gimmicks in line with the modding community’s challenges.
Nintendo tapped into this devoted community, and the strategy paid off. Old fans had their faith in Nintendo restored, while new, younger players got to experience this journey for the first time (perhaps even led into it by their parents who played the original game). This continues Nintendo’s hot streak of innovation and tastefully nostalgic fan service as proven by the success of the most recent Nintendo Direct. Stream Hatchet will keep tracking Nintendo’s ability to capitalize on old IP in the lead-up to the Switch successor’s release in 2025.
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