This Thursday, May 23, a legend of the GameCube era is making its return to Nintendo Switch. The excellent Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is finally getting an updated version, enhancing the already near-perfect experience of the time. Isn't there anything better than a great classic to complete the Mario universe on this generation of consoles? The Kyoto firm has just started the official teaser of its future machine – probably planned for next year – This remake will surely turn out to be the last game in the franchise on Switch. But while players dream of learning more about the next Mario Kart or new 3D adventures of the mustachioed plumber, Paper Mario already seems to reveal the future of Nintendo.
Officially available to the public for a few hours, a few lucky people managed to get their hands on the title before its release. One Internet user took advantage of this head start to analyze the game's source code and made a rather surprising discovery. Some lines of code indicate that the remake of The Thousand-Year Door is capable of supporting 4K resolution. However, current Switch models are incapable of displaying such image quality. Is this a preventive upscaling measure in the run-up to a much more powerful next console?
Boosted backwards compatibility
In the absence of official information regarding the technical characteristics of Nintendo's future machine, rumors have been flying for several years now. The question of performance and backwards compatibility has been raised repeatedly, without ever being supported by tangible evidence. The last major speculations date back to the supposed presentation held behind closed doors at Gamescom 2023. Industry insiders then reported a super-powerful console, approaching the PS5 and Xbox Series X thanks to a mastered use of DLSS technology. The Kyoto firm would have used: the Matrix Awakens tech demo and a 4K, 60 FPS version of Breath of the Wild to prove the beast's strength.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is an end-of-life title for the current Switch, it's not impossible that this is the first game to quietly integrate boosted backwards compatibility features into its source code. While older exclusives may receive updates, Nintendo has every interest in preparing the ground with its current productions. Although the Switch's Nvidia hardware – similar to that of the Nvidia Shield – is technically capable of displaying 4K natively, the manufacturer has never made this functionality accessible and has never slipped it into the code of its games until now.
Now, only time will tell us if this clue is truly revealing of a feature to coming to the famous Switch 2. After all, it is not impossible that this resolution was used during development, and that it is simply an oversight among the many lines of code, as explained by an X user:
“You can see in the breakdown shown that when 4K is enabled in this code, it ignores the operating mode (docked/undocked). This makes me think that this is a feature debugging (since Switch games can be compiled for Windows) rather than something for a new platform.”
It's just a matter of time: hope springs eternal! Which Switch game would you like to experience in a new light, with improved frame rates and graphics?
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