Today we’re going to be talking about everyone’s favorite JRPG. The one that was surprisingly dark and had an eco-friendly message that was way ahead of its time. That’s right! It’s Final Fantasy 7 Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door on the Gamecube! 

The year was 2004, and Nintendo had briefly lost their minds. How else to explain why they published a game starring Mario that features a noose in the opening hub area.

This is in Rogueport, the seedy underbelly of the Mushroom Kingdom, and the opening of one of the funniest games ever made. One level has you solving an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery on a train, after someone assumes Mario is a detective because they mistake him for Luigi (who also isn’t a detective?). Even that’s not as delightfully strange as the level where Mario becomes a pro-wrestler, or becomes a pirate, or visits the moon, or when you play as Bowser, desperately trying to find a way to be relevant to the main plot:

At one point Mario learns to fly by folding himself into a paper plane, an idea so silly-yet-brilliant that it should be ripped off in every game ever. It’s a wonderful anything-goes adventure with a cast of characters so winning that I don’t think it’s unreasonable to demand that they suddenly exist in real life and all hang out with me. Please. I am very cool.

But what’s this got to do with Climate Replay or sustainability? Who cares, go play it! Oh, wait a second. We care. And delightfully, so does the game…

On your adventure, Mario takes a trip to Twilight Town. Now I know that name sounds a little sinister, but this is still a family-friendly Mario adventure so I’m sure it’s not that bad and that everything has a smiley face drawn on it. Let’s take a look!

Okaaaaaaaaaaaay, so Twilight Town does look like the kind of place a resident of Silent Hill would think twice about visiting. But I’m sure it’s not that bad once you get used to it. It’s not like there’s a terrible curse upon the town wherein whenever a bell tolls, one of its residents gets turned into a pig…

Everyone calm down. This is still a Mario game and we all know how this works. Obviously he tracks down the villain, hops on his head a few times, saves the day, the end. It’s not like the villain actually possesses Mario, steals his identity, and traps him as a shadow doomed to wander the Earth, friendless and alone for the rest of his da… you can see where I’m going with this can’t you?

To defeat this monster and get his body back, Mario needs to learn the villain’s true name, Rumplestiltskin-style. Er, obviously. To do this, you have to take advantage of your new shadowy existence to spy on the local villagers. Actually, that would almost make sense, which is not this game’s style. So you have to spy on the local crows. Whatever you say, game!

This is where the sustainability stuff comes in. All the crow conversations are hilarious, but one of them also reveals what crows are really worried about (it’s at 0:34 in the video below),  the depletion of fossil fuels:

The first crow mentions it’s making them depressed, and their crow companions agree. But then they immediately start talking solutions! Hydroelectric and solar energy both get shout outs. In a Nintendo game. In 2004.

It’s a funny moment in a game overstuffed with them, but also one that feels weirdly radical today. In a time where Ubisoft endlessly claims all their games are ‘non-political’ (including The Division 2, a game where your main base of operations is the white house), it’s pretty incredible to see fossil fuels categorically shouted out as a problem. The context might be ridiculous but the seriousness of why renewable energy is vital isn’t the punchline. More games should be doing this! 

It’s not a perfect moment, mind. The problems we face today aren’t so much caused by the depletion of fossil fuels, but the fact we need to stop using the ones we have because of their devastating effects on the planet. Perhaps Mario Odyssey 2 could make up for this by having you butt-stomp all the world’s oil back into the ground? Perhaps it’s ideas like that which explain why Nintendo never called me about a job interview? I guess we’ll just never know.

Here at Climate Replay, this game got us stroking our chins and wondering what other games talk about climate change? It could be a large part of the game, or even a bizarre, throwaway moment like this one. Do you know any? Then tell us! We’re working on an upcoming post about the history of climate change in video games and would love you to get involved. You can share climate change moments you’ve spotted in in games on our Discord server or drop us an email at [email protected] with the subject line #hangmario. I mean CLIMATE GAME.

Shall we end on a screenshot of the Twilight Town’s mayor’s incredible oinking after he was turned into a pig? I think we all know the answer to that:

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to let us know what climate change stuff you’ve spotted in your games!