Goombella countering aSpania with the Superguard inRogueport Underground

“See? You turned the foe's attack back on him! I mean,her! That's a Superguard!”

—Professor Frankly,Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

TheSuperguard is an alternate version ofguarding used inPaper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door andits Nintendo Switch remake. If done correctly, Mario or his partner will spin around and words will pop out next to them saying "GREAT" in orange ("SUPERGUARD" in purple in the remake); whereas normal guarding will haveMario or his partner just retain a ducked position, and the words say "NICE" in blue ("GUARD" in green in the remake). Executing a superguard will also nullify all damage and negative status that would have otherwise been inflicted by the attack. Furthermore it will deal one point of damage to physical attackers (except for those with unpiercable defense such asIron Clefts), and cancel out multi-hit physical attacks. However superguarding will prevent dealingElectrified orPayback damage to the attacking enemy.Superguarding will also reflect segments thrown byPokeys andPoison Pokeys, in which case these segments will deal back damage to the Pokey equal to their attack power. However, no other projectiles work this way.

Timing[edit]

A Superguard is capable of defeating an attacking enemy.

Although superguards are more effective than guards, they are significantly harder to execute, having to input 3 frames (3/60th of a second) before contact, rather than a guard's 8 frames (8/60th of a second)^[1] The input window will also decrease by 1 frame for everyUnsimplifier equipped, but it takes twoSimplifiers to increase the superguard's guard window to 4 frames. Equiping a single simplifier will have no effect on superguard timing.

Unsuperguardable attacks[edit]

Some attacks in the game are also impossible to superguard. The following attacks are impossible to guard or superguard in the North American and European GameCube releases.

• All items used by enemies
• Hooktail,Gloomtail, andBonetail’s Bite attacks
• Vivian's Fiery Jinx
• Marilyn's Thunder (in both encounters)
• Bulky Bob-omb &Bob-ulk's Explosions
• The Shadow Queen's Shade Hands attack (the player can guard however, making it the only attack that can be guarded but not Superguarded)

In addition to the attacks listed above, the Japanese GameCube release also makes these moves unsuperguardable:

• Blooper's Ink Attack
• All of Hooktail, Gloomtail and Bonetail’s attacks
• AllPuff variants' charge attacks
• All ofBeldam's attacks except for her basic punch (in both encounters)
• Magnus von Grapple's Earthquake
• Iron Cleft's attacks
• Bowser's Fire Breath (in both encounters)
• Rawk Hawk's Prop Drop
• Crazee Dayzee andAmazy Dayzee's Lullabies
• All ofAtomic Boo's attacks except for the physical Body Slam
• Putrid Piranha's Breath
• Flower Fuzzy's magic attack
• Ember's multitarget breath
• Cortez's phase 1 attacks, and the charged bone flurry from phase 2
• Crump'sX-Naut platoon attacks
• All ofSmorg's attacks
• X-Naut PhD's Shrink Potion
• Wizzerd clones' laser attack
• All ofMagnus von Grapple 2.0's attacks, except theX-Punches
• All of Shadow Queen's attacks

In the Nintendo Switch remake, if the player successfully performs the superguard on these attacks, the "SUPERGUARD" text will still appear, after which the text will fly away spinning, signaling that the attack is unsuperguardable. The superguard sound effect will also still play, sounding more distorted than with a normal superguard.^[2]

Gallery[edit]

• 

  Mario performing a Superguard against Marilyn in the Nintendo Switch remake

Names in other languages[edit]

See also[edit]

• Counterattack

Notes[edit]

• ThePixlBarry's ability inSuper Paper Mario is very similar to the Superguard; their animations are very similar (spinning in place), and both require good timing (though Barry's does not requires as much precision) in order to deal damage to the opponent and protect the player from damage.

References[edit]

• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door moves

• Articles with unsourced foreign names