- “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
The Superguard is an alternate version of guarding used in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and its 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 have Mario 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 as Iron Clefts), and cancel out multi-hit physical attacks. However superguarding will prevent dealing Electrified or Payback damage to the attacking enemy. Superguarding will also reflect segments thrown by Pokeys and Poison 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
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 every Unsimplifier equipped, but it takes two Simplifiers to increase the superguard's guard window to 4 frames. Equiping a single simplifier will have no effect on superguard timing.
Unsuperguardable attacks
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 and Bonetail’s Bite attacks
- Vivian's Fiery Jinx
- Marilyn's Thunder (in both encounters)
- Bulky Bob-omb's & 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
- All Puff variants' charge attacks
- All of Beldam'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 and Amazy Dayzee's Lullabies
- All of Atomic 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's X-Naut platoon attacks
- All of Smorg's attacks
- X-Naut PhD's Shrink Potion
- Wizzerd clones' laser attack
- All of Magnus von Grapple 2.0's attacks, except the X-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
Mario performing a Superguard against Marilyn in the Nintendo Switch remake
Names in other languages
| Language | Name | Meaning | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japanese | スーパーガード[?] Sūpā Gādo |
Super Guard | |
| Chinese (simplified) | 超级格档[?] Chāojí Gé Dàng |
Super block | |
| Chinese (traditional) | 超級格檔[?] Chāojí Gé Dàng |
Super block | |
| Dutch | Superafweer[?] | Superdefense | |
| French | Contre[?] | Counter | |
| German | Konter[?] | Counter | |
| Italian | Super difesa[?] | Super defense | |
| Korean | 슈퍼가드[?] Syupeo-Gadeu |
Superguard | |
| Spanish | Súper Defense (original)[?] | Super Defense | |
| Superdefensa (remake)[?] | Superdefense |
See also
Trivia
- The Pixl Barry's ability in Super 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.