A datamine of the new Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door remake contains information that suggests a port for Switch 2 is coming. There’s still no official word about the follow-up to the Nintendo Switch, but this could mean it’s very close.
A screenshot of the datamine was posted to Reddit on May 23. The image shows code that suggests Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door can support 4K resolution. Anyone who owns a Nintendo Switch knows that the console can’t handle anything remotely close to 4K resolution. So what’s the purpose of the support? There are a few theories.
Some fans say the 4K support is merely for promotional screenshots. Devkits could run Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door at a higher resolution, and those gameplay images would look significantly better than screenshots from the Switch.
The more exciting theory is that this 4K support proves Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door is pre-emptively optimized for the Switch 2’s hardware. Some gaming journalists at the Digital Foundry podcast theorize the game was intended to be a Switch 2 launch title before the console’s apparent delay. So Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door was meant for the next generation but fell victim to Nintendo’s messy 2024 release schedule.
It’s hard to say the real reason for this 4K support. Nintendo continues its painful silence about the follow-up to the Switch that, at this point, we all know is coming. The absolute silence makes any speculation feel far-fetched, but logically, Nintendo would want to optimize its first-party releases for the next generation if it’s just around the corner.
