Nowadays, Nintendo technically has two Super Mario RPG franchises. There’s the quirky Mario & Luigi series on its portable platforms, and there’s the Paper Mario games which are mostly for home consoles. Of course, Paper Mario has seemingly been shifting away from its RPG roots with its more recent entries, going for a weird, puzzle-focused RPG-ish experience, but it still counts, kind of. At any rate, it was all started back on the Super Nintendo with Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

Many fans will no doubt be pleased to hear, then, that Super Mario RPG will be arriving on the North American Wii U eShop this week. After arriving on the European eShop about six months ago, we deduced that it’s still just as good today as it was back in the 90’s. The interactive battle system and witty writing haven’t aged a day, and it can be yours for about eight bucks (or cheaper, if you already had it on Wii VC).

What do you think? How does this game compare to its spiritual successors? Will you be picking this up? Drop us a comment in the section below.