‘Paper’ Paradise

Those who know the gospels of Mario understand he was conceived immaculately and delivered to his parents by stork. A one-time carpenter, he is now, in "Super Paper Mario," a savior who must rescue the universe from apocalypse.

Merely 5-foot-1, Mario seeks to stop a devilish figure of nobility, the blue-faced Count Bleck, who wishes to spin his evil powers and cram all existence into a rip in the fabric of space, and kill us all.

Our savior's journey is demanding. For starters, Mario is only two-dimensional this time, merely an animated piece of paper running left to right, navigating secret tunnels and mazes of 2-D towns and deserts. How can a paper man save the universe?

Standing between Mario and the count are piranha plants and other deceptively dangerous creatures. Mushrooms walk and bear down upon Mario with furrowed brows and sharp fangs. Their mere touch is poison.

A large robot named Chunk pounds big fists at Mario. When Chunk loses, he flies away by passing gas; it propels him upward as a sci-fi rocket would.

Angelic turtles flap wings at Mario from above, concealing behind dark sunglasses their wicked turtle eyes.

This story must sound familiar to those who have followed Mario's adventures. Liberating the world from evil-doers has been Mario's passion ever since he saved his girlfriend, Princess Peach, from a big monkey named "Donkey Kong" 26 years ago.

In humble overalls, he's saved the world so often (and rescued Peach from kidnappers so frequently), he has become a celebrity billionaire, an Italian-Japanese-American with a star on the real-life Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Bob Hoskins played him in the movies.)

But his escapades are also potentially tiresome. Thankfully, "Super Paper Mario" cleverly reinvents the legend by giving him the miraculous ability to change the world from two-dimensional to three-dimensional.

He'll be moving his little feet, looking like an animated slice of paper. Suddenly, you press a button, and the world will become three-dimensional, so he can find hidden treasures and mysterious bridges to flatlands filled with clues as to where he should travel next.

This trick of perspective is enough to re-energize the game series. And "Super Paper Mario" also lets gamers float via parasol as Peach; spit fire as Bowser (less evil than usual); and jump huge heights as Mario's younger brother Luigi (doomed to live in Mario's shadow).

The look of the game is a bizarre and splendid paradise of hippie abstract-minimalism. At times, Mario travels over hill and dale by stepping onto a pen-and-ink square of an elevator system, which moves him across see-through blue blocks of sky.

The adventure becomes annoying only when action-stopping conversations must be read on the screen, rather than heard. One of the count's minions is Nastasia, a blue girl characterized by cat eyeglasses and a purple hair bun. She warns the count about Mario:

"Apparently there's been some unapproved interdimensional activity lately," she says. "Yeah, I'm thinking it's the hero of prophecy. We're gonna need an action plan for this guy."

Enough of that chatter, already. Let's get to the trippy action of our hero, the violent, supernaturally regenerating Christ-like form of a man who wields godlike powers to burn "flesh" off of winged-turtle villains. Yes. And don't fail to kill the gaseous robots. It's important.

("Super Paper Mario" retails for $50 for Wii -- Plays fun, fairly addictive. Looks good. Challenging. Rated "E" for comic mischief, mild cartoon violence. Three and one-half stars out of four.)