Releases

Title screen

The Japanese title Paper Mario RPG expanded to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for the North American release.

Power Rush badge

In the Japanese game, the Power Rush badge has a "P" on it. For some reason, it was changed to a "D" for the English game. The English ROM also contains the original P version, as well as K, A, and C versions, presumably for other languages (for example, the English ROM also contains Japanese, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German versions of the "Good" message that appears when you successfully execute a timed attack in battle).

Wrestling Mag

The Wrestling Mag sprite was changed, probably because of the Japanese writing on the cover. The Japanese sprite says Puroresu ("ProWres"), short for pro wrestling.

The Letter "p"

In the Japanese game, Doopliss is known as "Ranperu", and Mario must find the "n" character. Like most of the Japanese enemy names, "Ranperu" and his "n" are in the katakana alphabet.

"Shine get!"

The parrot underneath Creepy Steeple has a couple of different phrases in the English version. The localization team apparently had some fun here, changing one of the parrot's lines to "Shine get! Shine get!", which refers to the semi-famous "Shine get!" phrase in the Japanese Super Mario Sunshine.

Japanese text:
 - Ohayoo ohayoo ("Good morning, good morning")
 - Konnichiwa konnichiwa ("Good day, good day")
 - Atchiike atchiike ("Go over there")

English text:
 - Good morning! Good morning!
 - Pretty bird! Pretty bird!
 - Shine get! Shine get!

Data Disk

The "Data Disk" item found in Grodus' room looks exactly like a Famicom Disk System game disk. Also, after Peach inserts the disk into the computer, the FDS startup animation (with sound) displays on the monitor.

Vivian

Vivian was a boy in the Japanese game!

Party member description:

Japanese text:
カゲ三人組の一人だった　オンナのコのようで　ホントは　オトコのコ
(Rough translation: "One of the shadow group, Vivian appears to be a girl but is really a boy.")

English text:
One of the Shadow Sirens, Vivian suffers from a bit of an inferiority complex.

Excerpt from Goombella's tattle:

Japanese text:
『ビビアン』よ　カゲ三人組の一人で　いちばん下の妹　・・・じゃなくて　弟ね
(Rough translation: "That's Vivian. Of the shadow group, she's the youngest sister... er, brother.")

English text:
That's Vivian. She's the youngest of the three Shadow Sirens.

This is not the first time a Mario character has changed genders. Birdo, as introduced in the Super Mario Bros. 2 manual, "thinks he is a girl and he spits eggs from his mouth. He'd rather be called 'birdetta.'" However, recent games like Super Smash Bros. Melee now refer to Birdo as a female.

Areas

Notes

• hana (Hanahana Village) means flower
• odoro (Odoron Temple) comes from odorokasu, meaning "to surprise/frighten"

Characters

Notes

• Damasu (Charlieton) means "to trick/cheat/deceive"
• Rotten is a direct romanization of Arfur's Japanese name, pronounced like "wrote-ten"
• Bareru (Bobbery) translates to "barrel"

Enemies

Notes

• Borodō, Bandit's name, is a play on the word dorobō, which means "thief"

Enemy stats

Every enemy's stats stayed the same except for:

• Rawk Hawk had one point subtracted from his Attack power, but one point added to his Defense power.
• Red Spike Top had his Defense power raised by one point.

Items

Notes

• kame means "turtle", but most items with "kame" changed to "Koopa"

Item stats

A few changes here.

• Icicle Pop and Zess Frappe recover FP in the Japanese version and HP in the English version.
• Koopa Bun's FP recovery was decreased by 5.

Special attacks