Hmm, an OT for a game's second virtual console re-release? Ok.
Anyway, one of my, if not my favorite video game of all time. The number of times I've replayed this, both with and without friend/family watching, is utterly insane. So much so that I finally burned out on it a couple years back. I have been playing it again lately though for professional reasons.
Needless to say, there are some things gameplay-wise that its sequel does better, but there's just something magical about this one that, to me, I can't say one is better than the other. PM64 and TTYD are both such lovely games. While I'm one of the few people who don't think the other two games are bad, they were definitely disappointments after such an epic duology. Well, mostly anyway, since Super Paper Mario has the best story in the sub-series... possibly even the entire Mario series.
Pretty hilarious choosing Jr. Troopa to be the OT subtitle, too. He's probaly my favorite Mario RPG rival other than Shadow Thief Popple, see?
TTYD is probably the better game between the two Paper Marios. Hell, I'd say TTYD's biggest flaw is that some of its chapters are too much like chapters from Paper Mario 64. I think Paper Mario 64 actually has better "standard" town->dungeon->boss chapters with better environmental puzzles (Flower Fields, Crystal Palace), whereas TTYD was at its best when it was doing interesting things with its structure, like Glitzville and the train mystery. If you ask me, TTYD's standard chapters didn't get all that creative with actual environmental puzzling because it fell back on the paper transformations as a crutch.
Consider too that TTYD was guilty of forced backtracking within the chapter. This happens in both Chapter 4 (To great degree) as well as briefly during the start of Chapter 5. Chapter 3 was arguably one of the best Chapters in the two games, but it definitely overstayed its welcome a bit... despite the entire chapter taking place in one area, it's somehow one of the longer chapters in the series. By comparison, Paper Mario 64 didn't have as much forced backtracking(Most of it was in Flower Fields). You could argue that it had some mild backtracking here and there, such as the Tubba Blubba boss battle in its entirety, but it's just not as pronounced as it is in TTYD.