Paper Mario: Color Splash

A mystery is afoot on Prism Island - and only Paper Mario can solve it by restoring the island's vanishing colors with his new Paint Hammer and the powerful Battle Cards up his sleeve. These fresh layers of…

75 6 October 2016

Adventure Role-playing (RPG) Action

Paper Mario: Color Splash is an adventure developed by Intelligent Systems, released 6 October 2016 on Wii U. The main story takes about 39 hrs to finish.

Verified 18 Oct 2026 Sources: IGDB , Wikipedia

What Paper Mario: Color Splash is

Paper Mario: Color Splash is an adventure game developed by Intelligent Systems and released in 2016. It was published by Nintendo. It is available on Wii U only.

The premise, in the publisher's words

Paper Mario: Color Splash is a 2016 role-playing video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Wii U console. It is the fifth installment in the Paper Mario series, within the larger Mario franchise. The story follows Mario and his new ally, Huey, on a quest to save Prism Island and rescue Princess Peach from Bowser.

Description from Wikipedia · source

How it plays

It is played from a side view perspective. Its themes are action. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component.

Where it sits in the Mario series

Paper Mario: Color Splash is the 554th of 668 entries we hold in the Mario series. The next entry was Mario Party: Star Rush in 2016. Its critic score of 75 is almost exactly the series average of 77. The highest-rated entry is Super Mario World at 100.

See all 668 Mario games in release order →

How it was received

Paper Mario: Color Splash holds a critic score of 75 out of 100. That places it above 49% of the 7,530 rated adventure games in our database, which average 72. Games released in 2016 averaged 68, so it scored 7 points above the year average.

How long it takes, and what that costs

The main story runs about 39 hrs.

What it launched against

Paper Mario: Color Splash launched on 6 October 2016, within three weeks of Persona 5, Battlefield 1, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. It reviewed better than 1 of the 4.

Released around the same time: Persona 5, Battlefield 1, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition, Sid Meier’s Civilization VI.

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for Paper Mario: Color Splash yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

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