Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door ESRB Rating Hints At Early 2024 Release

29.12.2023 - 16:15 / thegamer.com / Eiji Aonuma / Paper Mario

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door just got an ESRB age rating, suggesting that we could get a release date soon. Right now, we only know that the remaster is set to be with us at some point in 2024, but if it's already been slapped with an age rating, then it could come even sooner than expected.

To little surprise, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is rated E (Everyone), with mentions of mild fantasy violence and mild "suggestive themes". This isn't the first age rating that the remaster has received, but it's a huge milestone, as it approves the game for sale in one of its largest markets, perhaps suggesting that it will be with us in the first half of 2024.

We can expect to see more Nintendo Switch rereleases like this, as Nintendo found success with Super Mario RPG this year. It launched in November 2023 and was met with positive reviews.

This development was spotted by ResetEra user Angie, and reassures fans that some of the more adult-orientated jokes have been left intact. The ESRB states that a "handful" of characters have "brief flirtatious dialogue" with the player, one of their examples being, "Perhaps if I…grabbed you and gave you a little sugar". Naughty.

But even more exciting than a bunch of characters hitting on Mario, the rating means the game can't be too far from release, not if the ESRB has had time to assess the game's contents. So, while nothing is confirmed just yet, you might want to prepare yourself for something in Spring 2024, or perhaps even earlier if we're being that optimistic.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door first launched in 2004 for the GameCube. If Nintendo wants to drop it on the exact 20th anniversary of the game's existence, then it would come later in the year, since it was released in Japan on July 22, then in October in other regions. This would also give the game more breathing room since we only just got Super Mario RPG on Switch. But in any case, it looks like the game is in a good state.

Of course, just because a game is playable, it doesn't mean Nintendo is ready to drop it. Famously, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was hit with a year-long delay just for polishing. Before that, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said that the game was already "pretty much complete". That said, this is a significantly smaller project than Tears of the Kingdom, so even if the game isn't release-ready just yet, we can still expect it to stick to the 2024 window. We'll have to wait and see when this is exactly.