[noirscape]

Not even considered, in Japan, Paper Mario is iirc called Mario Story and we have early development screenshots calling it Super Mario RPG2, denoting it as a successor to the SNES game.

It's very explicitly the successor of this game (also seen in how it kinda mimics some of the basic plot beats), it just got renamed during development.

[yamazakiwi]

SMRPG also marks the initiation of the comedic writing style that would later become characteristic of games like Paper Mario and later Mario RPG titles.