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This year marks the 20th anniversary of Luigi’s Mansion, Nintendo’s launch title for the GameCube. Here’s the haunted house game’s enduring legacy.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Nintendo GameCube, and, by extension, the console’s biggest launch title, Luigi’s Mansion. Putting the under-appreciated Mario brother center stage as Luigi faced off against an entire haunted mansion full of ghosts, Luigi’s Mansion became a defining adventure for the green-clad plumber. While a modest success at the time, it has gone on to forge a legacy of its own, spawning two sequels and an enhanced remake to keep Luigi fans busting ghosts with the Poltergust 3000 as the reluctant hero overcomes his fears and moves to save his more famous brother. Here’s a look back at the creation of the original Luigi’s Mansion and the legacy it would go on to forge.
Not counting the 1993 third-party educational game Mario Is Missing! for the NES and SNES, Luigi’s Mansion marked the first Nintendo-published game that featured Luigi as the main protagonist instead of Mario. Originally unveiled to the public at the Nintendo Space World exposition in 2000 to showcase the technical capabilities possible with the GameCube’s hardware, the developers decided to expand the concept into a full-blown video game for the GameCube.
Designer Katsuhiko Kanno revealed there were early ideas for the game to take place in a ninja clan headquarters or Japanese-style house before the plans shifted to use an American-style haunted house. Alternate environments, including a desert setting, were eliminated when the developers decided to focus entirely on the house as the game’s setting. Other planned elements, including a cave below the mansion, were scrapped to tighten the focus on the mansion and new gameplay ideas that surfaced during development.
To take full advantage of the GameCube hardware, the developers paid special attention to the visuals and effects seen throughout the game. Luigi was given a wider range of emotion and larger amount of points of articulation to make his movements appear more fluid and natural than character had been on the Nintendo 64. When entering areas of the mansion that still contained ghosts, Luigi’s breath becomes visible, and the plumber reacts as if navigating colder areas, shivering in response. As for the ghosts themselves, the development team was able to work with a larger color palette and improved lighting effects than were available on the N64 to provide a more technically impressive presentation.
Upon its release, Luigi’s Mansion received a largely positive critical response, with reviewers praising the significant technical improvements from the N64 era and gameplay innovations rather than copying the expected 3D Mario mechanics. However, critics were less impressed by the game’s relatively short length and repetitive gameplay as Luigi explored different parts of the mansion and captured ghosts with his trusty Poltergust. The game did not quite connect with the Japanese market the way Nintendo hoped, but it had a strong launch in North America as the bestselling GameCube launch title Luigi’s Mansion would ultimately sell over two million copies in its lifetime, becoming the fifth bestselling GameCube game in North America.
Prior to Luigi’s Mansion, Luigi was something of a slightly taller, green-clad variation on Mario, with little differentiating personality. Following Luigi’s GameCube debut, the character became something of a pronounced scaredy-cat, a depiction which would persist into the character’s appearances in games like Super Smash Bros.
Luigi’s Mansion received a handheld sequel in 2013 on the Nintendo 3DS with Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, while the original Luigi’s Mansion received an enhanced remake on the 3DS in 2018. 2019 saw the release of Luigi’s Mansion 3 on the Nintendo Switch, which received rave reviews and has sold over nine millions copies worldwide, proving that not only does Luigi deserve the spotlight, but there are plenty of scares left to be had in the unlikely series that began 20 years ago.
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