Luigi’s Mansion
The big launch game for the GameCube. Luigi’s Mansion was only Luigi’s second ever starring role and just like in Mario is Missing this game is about Luigi rescuing his older brother.
When Nintendo announced that they were going to launch the system with Luigi and not Mario is raised a few eyebrows and with the GameCube coming in third behind the Xbox and PS2 it can be argued that Luigi didn’t give the GameCube the rocket fuel it needed out of the gate.
This was down to Nintendo having the philosophy that the system would sell initial well regardless and that when Mario did arrive it would give a shot in the arm almost like a second launch. This wasn’t quite the case. Nintendo also publicly let it be known that since research showed that many players wouldn’t get all the way through the likes of Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time, they could just release shorter game experiences and then players would be able to complete them.
Despite it’s shorter length, Luigi’s Mansion is an incredibly fun Nintendo experience. The game looks brilliant and almost Wallace and Gromit like in the character design and models, and it’s filled with that classic Nintendo charm and attention to detail.
The game is also the best Ghostbusters game that has ever been released (fight me on this 😉 as you control Luigi equipped with a vacuum like backpack to suck ghosts up and capture them Ghostbusters style. It’s also nice to see King Boo take the centre stage as a main Mario series villain here, although the game does have a few surprises up it’s sleeve…
