Audience
The Audience (or Crowd) are minor characters that appear in every battle sequence in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and in Super Paper Mario when the player performs a Stylish Move. A small Audience also appears in Chuck Quizmo's shows in Paper Mario.
In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, every battle is performed on a stage in front of the audience. They can either be allies or enemies during the battles. They appear in the bottom of the screen, giving Mario SP when he attacks enemies, except when the audience is made up of Dry Bones. SP is used to refill Mario's Star Power he needs to use Crystal Star powers.
Audience members are not merely there to watch, however. Some will interact with the combatants or other audience members. For example, a Crazee Dayzee may sing to put all audience members around it to sleep, preventing them from refilling Mario's SP. A Bulky Bob-omb may light its fuse and explode, taking out the audience members around it. Punies will run away from a loud sound, such as a Bob-omb exploding. Bosses such as Hooktail may use the audience as a power source, restoring HP upon eating the audience members. Magnus von Grapple 2.0 will even suck up members of the audience and launch them at Mario and his partner.
The crowd may also throw objects at Mario. It can either be an item that will aid Mario, or hurt him. The items that will aid him can range from one Coin to items such as the Boo's Sheet. Even powerful items such as Jammin' Jellies can be received, albeit rarely. In any case, if an item is thrown onstage and Mario's inventory is full, the item will simply fall on the stage and disappear. The items that will hurt him range from rocks to crushed soda cans, never doing more than a few points of damage. In either case, a warning will flash before an audience member is about to throw something at Mario. The player has a few seconds to press the X button to attack the offending member and have them flee the theater. Alternatively, the player can choose to do nothing if he or she wishes to receive the item. The warning does not differentiate between good and bad items and will appear regardless. It is possible to attack an audience member offering a helpful item.
Luigi, Punis, and Toads often appear in the crowd. They will never do anything to hurt Mario or his partners and will throw helpful items such as coins and Mushrooms, with Luigi often giving extremely helpful items such as Jammin' Jellies. Toads especially are good to have in the audience; they give much more Star Power than other members. X-Nauts refuse to give Mario helpful items, and instead always throw rocks. Shy Guys will sometimes jump on to the stage, go backstage, and drop objects such as stage lights or buckets onto the enemies, Mario and his partners, or even the audience itself during battle; in the latter case, many audience members will flee. Alternatively, they will activate the stage jets if they run back and forth on the stage. Boos can fly up to the stage, making a character or enemy invisible.
The maximum capacity of the crowd depends on Mario's level. The bigger the crowd, the more SP Mario and his party can restore each turn. Mario rises one rank every ten levels, beginning the game with the Rising Star level.
- Rising Star: 50
- B-List Star: 100
- A-List Star: 150
- Superstar: 200
The different ranks also introduce changes to the stage itself with each one. At B-List Star, jets may point at Mario or his enemies, spraying them with ice doing minor damage and possibly freezing them. Fog may also obscure the stage, lowering the accuracy of both Mario and his enemies. At A-List Star, firecrackers are introduced, doing some explosive damage. The chance of any of these things happening in any battle is random. At the Superstar rank, statues and rocks can fall to do damage and cause Confusion or Dizziness, and fire streams spurt out, causing damage and burns..
Getting a Shine Sprite "Bingo!" will cause every seat in the crowd to fill. Any other "Bingo!" with the exception of the Poison Mushroom one will fill half the capacity of the Audience. If three Poison Mushrooms are matched, every Audience member will run away, and Mario and his current partner's HP, FP and SP will be cut in half. No audience means Mario and his partners will not be able to restore their SP, as there is no one to give it to them. However, players can always attract audience members again by doing well in the battle and the next battle will always have a fresh audience.
In Super Paper Mario, an Audience of sorts will appear whenever Mario or another playable character attacks an enemy and does a stylish move, which is done by shaking the Wii Remote when stomping on an enemy. They appear along the edges of the screen as paper cutouts. This approval of the Crowd gives the player a higher score than if they had just jumped on an enemy. The audience in this game only has a handful of species from the previous game, taking out most of the species.
Characters in the Audience
Paper Mario
When Mario does one of Chuck Quizmo's quiz questions, an audience will be watching. This audience includes:
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
In this game, enemies will not appear in the audience until the Chapter they are introduced in. For example, Punies will not appear until Chapter 2, Bulky Bob-ombs will not appear until Chapter 5 (with the exception of the Macho Grubba fight), and so on. The only exception is inside the Pit of 100 Trials, where all possible types of audience members can appear in the lower floors. Upon returning to previous areas, the battles there can still only have the types of audience they originally had - for example, the lone Spiky Goomba in Rogueport Sewers can only ever have Toads, Goombas, Shy Guys and/or Luigi in its battles' audiences. * means they always help the player, ** means they always harm the player. *** means they can do both.
- Boos ***
- Bulky Bob-ombs **
- Crazee Dayzees **
- Dry Bones **
- Goombas **
- Hammer Bros.**
- Koopas ***
- Luigi *
- Piranha Plants (Doesn't throw anything)
- Punies *
- Shy Guys ***
- Toads *
- X-Nauts **
Super Paper Mario
In Other Mario Games
In Super Smash Bros. Melee as well as Super Smash Bros. Brawl, an unseen audience will occasionally cheer for the human player, or in the case of a multi-player battle, the character who is winning the match. This does not affect the match, however. In almost all Mario sports and racing series, the audience is part of the background. Notably, in Mario Strikers Charged Football, the audience will cheer for a player when they get their Super Ability. This can alert the player that he or she has a Super Ability. Also the same applies for Mario Superstar Baseball and Mario Super Sluggers when an character gets a run or a home run. New Super Mario Bros. Wii features an unseen audience that applauds for Mario and his friends if they perform a notable feat (such as a getting an Extra Life after KO-ing enough enemies or collecting all Blue Coins from a P-Switch or getting all Star Coins in a level). Super Mario Galaxy 2 also has an unseen audience and again, it claps for the player if they successfully get all of the coins and earn an extra life, or hitting a target in Bowser Jr.'s Boom Bunker. In Mario Golf, an audience claps for Mario and company if they land the ball on the fairway or green.
