‘Paper Mario: The Origami King’ To Be Launched On Nintendo Switch This July

Nintendo dropped a surprise announcement Thursday morning: a new entry in the developer's popular "Paper Mario" series.

"Paper Mario: The Origami King" is the first of several alleged titles coming to the Nintendo Switch in the latter half of 2020. In this colorful new role-playing game, Mario will face off against the terrifying Origami King himself: King Olly.

The tyrant is looking to fold the entire world up into oblivion. To make things even more dire, he's bundled up Princess Peach's majestic castle in colored streamers, having exiled it to a mountain far away from the kingdom. Bowser's minions were even transformed into malevolent Folded Soldiers, all in a bid to try and stop Mario and friends from cutting King Olly's reign short.

The "Paper Mario" series originally debuted on the Nintendo 64, with colorful, cut-out characters that appear as two-dimensional paper craft models. "The Origami King" is a similar riff on the franchise, with the same unique style, two-dimensional artwork, and cheeky writing. As is par for the course, it will be a much more comedic adventure with fewer platforming elements and heavy character development.

The new game will also include a "ring-based battle system" that will require players to examine their decisions in battle while flexing their puzzle-solving skills. Enemies must be lined up in several rings to do maximum damage, which will take a bit of doing.

"Paper Mario: Origami King" marks the first time the series has been on the Nintendo Switch. Following this debut, it's quite possible there could be a flurry of older entries in the game's catalogue coming to the Switch. Previously, several remastered versions of "Mario"-centric titles were rumored to be headed to the system, though Nintendo has not made any official comment on the matter just yet.

The new "Paper Mario" adventure is set to debut this summer July 17. There's no information on whether it will be available with any preorder incentives at this time, but it will include both a physical and digital edition for players who enjoy growing their gaming collections.