Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 179: Luigi's Mansion

Episode Date: November 2, 2018

Hey, this game really SUCKS! But only because it's supposed to. This week on Retronauts, we jump back to the ancient year of 2001 to dig deep into Luigi's Mansion: the GameCube launch title that underwhelmed at the time, but really holds up today. And, thanks to a new 3DS port, it's more playable than ever before! On this episode, join Bob Mackey and Henry Gilbert as they shine their flashlights all over Luigi's first adventures in the paranormal.

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Join the Ultimate DC Membership at DCUniverse.com and check out Titans. This week on Retronauts, Suku Yabo Yabo Yabo. Hey, everybody, it's Bob Mackey, your host for this episode of Retronauts. Today's topic is Luigi's Mansion before I begin. Who else is here with me? I'm shaking every lamp in this room, but I can't find the diamonds. It's Henry Gilbert. You don't keep all of your money in your lamps like a normal person?

Yes, we're here in the Retronauts. Berkeley studio, high above the war-torn streets of Berkeley, where there's constant gang violence and anti-Fa versus Fah. It's always happening here in Berkeley. So dangerous. Yeah, watch the news people. It's all real. But we're here to talk about Luigi's Mansion because there is a new 3DS version of it that is basically, it's hard to call it this without it sounding insulting, but it's just the port. But it's a way to play Luigi's Mansion again. It's really, I I honestly expected a little bit more from it than what is in this package. It's not a bad package and looks good.

But boy, when I was playing, I was like, this really is just the first game I played back in 0-1. I mean, you're forgetting Guigi. Oh, that's true. Never speak his name of Kennedy's cursed. Yes, so there is a new 3DS version of Luigi's Mansion. I played it. It's a great port.

But again, it is just that first game. So that's what you're getting. But I want to talk about the first game because it is very good. good, and I feel like only in recent years has it been redeemed in the eyes of gamers all around the world. Yeah, not unlike its other GameCube brethren like Wind Waker and Mario Sunshine, except that Mario Sunshine is bad. Yes, we've proven that, like, through science that it's a bad game. But those had bad reputations. And I think I have some theories as to why, too, that I might get to a little later on this podcast. But I think, I'm hoping that this and the previous Luigi's Mansion game that came out maybe showed Nintendo that there are fans for it.

And there's a, there's reason to enjoy this game. Yeah, they've really embraced it. So this game came out in 2001. So it's now 17 years old. It'll be 17 very, very soon as of this recording. So it is half a lifetime ago for me, more than half, not actually less than half. I'm very old people, is what I'm saying. It came out in 2001.

It was a GameCube launch game for both the Japanese GameCube and the American GameCube. And since then, it took 12 years, but there was eventually a sequel for the 3DS. There is an arcade game version, which I've never played, but I really want to. And the 3DS port of the original just came out. And now in 2019, there will be a Switch game. All we've seen is a logo. Who knows if it will even be showing up in 2019. But, hey, it's going to be, it's something that they have kind of, quote, unquote, promised us.

Feels more like an early 2020 type game. Luigi, Luigi is. not your anchor for a fall release. That's right. Certainly not your anchor for a system launch. And if Luigi's Mansion 3, I doubt will be the final title. So it was coming out in the next

six months and they'd have a final title for it. So my bet is first quarter 2020. That's a safe bet. And I think it's just like that new Metroid game where all we have is a logo, but still more than a year later, there's no... You had a little bit more than a logo. You had

Luigi opening a door. Okay. And And so there, that is more than you got from Prime 4. That counts as a game. But before we get started into, you know, who made the game, what it's like, what we think about it. Henry, what is your experience with this game released in 2001? Longtime listeners might know that I was, that my, I'm a huge Nintendo fanboy, the height of my Nintendo fandom, and also, like, toxic phantom, was being a defensive GameCube owner. And I was that even before the GameCube came out, I was not. 64 player. It was my primary home console. Plus, I was playing the Game Boy games a ton. And so the GameCube is coming out. I was like, well, this is going to be the greatest thing ever. I don't need a PS2, even though I can't buy it anyway. This Xbox thing sounds stupid. Made by Americans. It can't be good. Made by micro dollar sign off. I think I've made that joke before. But anyway, I've all made it. I was super excited for the GameCute release. It was following every bit of news.

about this game and all the other games and I got my GameCube on launch day and I have to say though the reviews beforehand made me not buy it I my launch day games which I had to buy in a bundle from Sam Goody was uh was the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Rogue Squadron and oh yeah it was Tony Hot Pro Skater 3 and rogue squadron those were the two I had to get and I did though rent Luigi's Mansion for free because Blockbuster that weekend was doing a deal like if you come in with a receipt of purchasing a GameCube, you can rent a GameCube game for free. Oh yeah, they were cozy with Nintendo back then. Yeah. Before they died. And so I rented it for free and beat it in a weekend. And I was like, boy, this is great, but I'm also glad I didn't spend $50 on this.

I did spend $50 on it. And I was working at a game stop. There we go. But it was a software, etc at the time and I did not have the greatest nicest managers in fact they were really anti everything but Xbox it was odd and they were bad managers too so my one manager called the actually I think they both called the PlayStation 2 get this the PSPoo it's going to blow your mind guess what the GameCube was gay cube it was the gay cube okay yeah and uh they figured homophobia they like saying that a lot especially in front of customers I'm sure they offended no gay people that walked in our store because they just simply didn't exist yeah in Ohio. But I bought the GameCube. I had a PS2 already, but I couldn't not buy Nintendo

system. I skipped the N64 and I thought I made the wise decision, but the GameCube looked much better and they seemed to be making up for a lot of the mistakes of the N64. And I couldn't not buy a Mario-style game with a new Nintendo system. I think we were very spoiled at that point in time because every Nintendo system launched with a Mario game, often in the box. The N-64 didn't. That was the first, but there would always be a Mario game with the system at launch. So that was kind of, I think, the problem for, I think that's another reason why I was less ready to buy Luigi's Mansion at launch was because I bought my NES for the Super Mario Brothers, though hardly in launch. Super NES sold me with Super Mario World. And in 64, they

clearly hurt the rest of their lineup by focusing on just Super Mario 64 as their main game. So not getting a real Mario game at launch. wrong to me and I felt I felt screwed over by Nintendo and here they are handing me this Luigi game and it just felt so oh and then here that made the shortness of it actually sting a bit more because I was used to like well my first two weeks with the Nintendo system is doing every single thing I can in a Super Mario game I can't do that this time and it that felt it just felt wrong you know yeah I bought it with my purple GameCube was spice out at the time Could you get a spice thank you?

Not in America It's just purple You get a spice controller But only purple in America I'm sure my boss has made fun of me for that And I bought Luigi's Mansion I was made fun of for that But I brought it home

And I played through it in a weekend And I really enjoyed it But yes, it was very short And this was at a time When games were getting much, much longer And there was an expectation attached to most $50 games And that it would last you a long time

There might be multiple endings But this was kind of absurdly short For a full retail release game In 2001. It is really only four to five hours long. Five, if you get all of the extra stuff, it's a five-hour game. I can see you getting through this game in like three hours. Just like an afternoon, you can kind of cruise through it.

That's not bad, but our expectations were much different, and that is reflected in the reviews of the time. Also, the expectation of this Nintendo System better launch with one of the best games on the platform, like all the other ones did, or else we're going to be upset. Yeah, I guess as an adult now, I definitely have a different way of thinking than when I was 19 and got a GameCube, because then I did think, like, hours spent times quality is how you get a score of a game, you know? It wasn't a 10 is a game that lasted a much longer time. And I think now even I just have the opposite feeling. I will make an exception for, say, a Dragon Quest, but like when I hear that Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which is seemingly, you know, it's a good game.

I enjoyed other Assassin's Creed games. I like it. But when I hear it's like 60, 70 hours long, I'm like, no, no, no, don't want it. Same with Red Dead, too. I'm just like, boy, that's a lot. Too much. Yeah. Too much.

And it sucks for me because all the games I want to play next that I already own, they're all 100-hour games, like Yoxa 6 and Persona 5. I've got a huge stack of 100-hour games waiting for me. But Luge's Mansion is very brief, and I kind of like that now. I was able to finish this game in a few days. I was like, wow, that was just very satisfying. It didn't last too long. But in 2001, the response was, how dare you, sir?

How dare you make a four-hour game for me? Oh, I remember my other packet. The other launch day game I got was Super Monkey Ball. and it made me feel weird that I was playing a Sega game way more on launch day than I was playing a Nintendo game. It was an odd time, and soon Sonic would be on the GameCube, and all the rules would be changed, and it'd be chaos in the streets. Chaos and Sonic, yeah.

Oh, no, I didn't mean that, and I hate myself. So now let's talk about Luigi's Mansion and the origins of this game. So there's lots of great material about this game because a lot of it had been shown off before the official release. So this concept was originally created for the first GameCube trailer for Space World 2000. You might have heard this come up on the Wind Waker episode.

That was the infamous trailer for what people assume would be the next Legend of Zelda game where it was a quote unquote realistic looking link that looks like total ass now. Fighting a Gannon that looks like total ass now.

But it was the most realistic Gannon and Link we'd seen up to that point and we assumed that's what the new Zelda would look like. Nintendo thought it was just a cool thing to show off. They did not understand

that most, at least in Western fan's eyes, that was making a promise to them of the game they were going to get. Yes. And other things that were tech demos from that reel did not make it out. So that is known unofficially as Zelda 128.

And Super Mario 128 would also not make it out. But that would become Pickman. Yes. And there is also Pokemon guitar party where Meowth is playing a guitar, surrounded by a bunch of Pokemon. I think that made it into something like Pokemon Channel or something. Pokemon Channel, but that wasn't even released in America. Right, right.

It's the Pokemon Channel was basically just like a place to dump Pokemon. Pokemon from your GameCube, say, via the good old connectivity. Oh, gosh. But yes, this trailer, I don't know how many times I've seen it. Maybe my mind was just more elastic back then, but I can just see all these images, especially that Meowth music party. I can just imagine it in my head, like it's happening in front of me. I watched it on loop a million times.

Well, also even watching, I feel like an old man saying this, but watching a video clip on my computer in 2000 of an upcoming video game, that alone had some novelty to it still. I was an IGN insider back then mostly for the GameCube stuff and a lot of the videos were just people filming a screen at a convention so you see the reflections, you see people's heads it was a very different time. You didn't get

the HD video sent directly to your outlet that you would just post online. You had to capture it from another TV at a venue. And the Luigi footage in that looks so great. Even he's more expressive than they really, you see how much they kind of toned it down from

that tech demo like Luigi is all over the place and expressions like his head changes shape so many times. He even has this like weird death stare at one point in it. Yeah, I think maybe they tone things down because there had to be more things moving on the screen. Or maybe their tech demo hardware was more advanced than the final product. But you're right, they did tone it down a lot. Let's talk about some behind the scenes things from Luigi's Mansion. So I found a 2001 interview, which means it's poorly translated from this site called I believe Ensider.

I don't know if it's still around, but it was one of the. archive interviews I could find. And it was weird because you didn't see a lot of interviews with Nintendo people back then, especially just, you know, non-Miamoto, non-Iwada Nintendo people. It really didn't happen in a lot. I think, I think that might show you how desperate for coverage they were of Luigi, as everybody else was talking about Grand Theft Auto or Halo in November of 2001. This game, I believe. So there's a lot of speculation about certain things about it that are hinted at in this interview. So we can kind of put the pieces together.

I think it was originally an N64 game idea, but they had to cut their losses and move on to the next platform. So I don't really blame them for not making an N64 game. But this original idea came about with the idea of the game would involve exploring a house or an apartment complex, just like exploring an indoor space. And Mario characters weren't always involved in this game concept. But I guess they eventually thought, you know, we could sell this idea with Mario characters and this universe is fun to play around in.

I think inceptually in Nintendo when you're pitching something, at some point they must say like, all right, could, if this wasn't a Mario game, you're pitching it already, could this be a Mario game? Let's figure this out. What if Luigi was there? So, yes, they were leaning more towards a ninja mansion or a Japanese-style house originally, but then they decided to go with a more European-style mansion than that is what is in the final game.

And the designers always had the idea for a three-story house in mind with a basement, but the original idea also included an underground cave to explore. So the original design was a little more ambitious, obviously, that and some other things were scaled back to get it out in time for a release on the console. In the second Luigi's Mansion, they'd finally get that cave. They would do a cave stage in that game. I'm excited. I just started that game, and I'm having a lot of fun with that.

I bought it a few years ago. Now, oh, it's so good. So another scrapped idea is that the stages would change after certain actions. And I think this was tied into a quote-unquote real-time clock, not a real-time clock, but a clock that would advance, sort of like Majora's Mask or any game you play with a clock in it outside of Animal Crossing. Yeah, you can see the clock on the Game Boy horror in some of the early footage of the game. So I could see, though, it always has to be night at Luigi's Mansion. So you wonder like, well, how much can this clock change storytelling one? They could alter the reality where it's like, well, if the booze can make a mansion, they can also create.

like a time bubble where time can pass, but it's always night, or the sun doesn't come up or something like that. That's true. Not a hard plot thing to get around. Luigi's Mansion isn't really known for its dense, hyper-realistic plot. Well, there are major contradictions in the story, and I hope to cover them in this episode, because they

really confuse me. But yes, so the director originally wanted this to be a game you could play repeatedly, and I think that had something to do with the clock that they eventually took out of the game, and that you had to do certain things in certain times, or you had to return to certain places at certain times, sort of like the Majores mask idea where there's always something happening

even if you're not there. That's so cool and I hope they do that with the third game maybe, but that's something they took out of the game. And if you look at old video of the game and old magazine articles for the game, you can see the Game Boy Color. The Game Boy Horror had other uses too. And in some early Nintendo Power

pictures, the Game Boy horror was also a camera. So there'd be like a little picture and picture in the TV screen. So Luigi's always holding the Game Boy horror upright in front of him. So You would see a picture-in-picture image of what Luigi was seeing in front of him in the game. That's a neat idea, but that's also a lot.

It's even more rendering stuff you're putting on this first-generation GameCube game. I mean, it's pointless. It's just sort of showing off. I mean, there's a lot of pointless showing off in this game for the hardware's sake. That's why I love about it. That's my favorite stuff in the game is how much it is showing off what your new machine can do. Look at all these brand-new tricks. And I recommend you guys go out, and I'll link to it in the blog post for this episode.

Find the Beta 64 video for Luigi's Mansion. Beta 64 looks at the older unreleased versions of games to see how they differ from the final version. And there are some major changes in the early version. I think it was going to be even more horror-focused, where Luigi would not always have his lights. Luigi could get scared into submission and have to, like, sort of scoot away on his butt until he regains his composure. Ghosts that are invisible and kind of pop out and scare you and can put Luigi in that state. I think there was a lot more of the literal horror stuff, things that could actually scare you conceivably, even though this game can be pretty intense for kids.

Like, I was playing this again, and I could see how a kid, this could be too scary for a kid to play through. Yeah, and that backwards butt scoot is such a cool animation, but I also think, like, they definitely didn't want to get too intense for the intended audience of children for this, yeah. And same with the, the ghost give you a little bit of time to go like, oh, now I'm scared and still like ah like these these are not the force you to look at something and then scream in your face of uh of VR scares these days it's a much lesser degree of jump scare than the ones we're used to today I think I don't know modern kids are so desensitized to five nights of freddies this could just be nothing to them this is nothing like how bart's talked about you know the original Friday 13th is kind of nothing to kids now that's true that's how they that's

how these kids are today for us so what am I saying kids can handle this game today I look at GameSpot in IGN, and they still have articles up for this LA event in May of 2001, where it's pretty cool, Miyamoto was there, Iwada was there. Of course, the pictures are very tiny because of, you know, they're from 2001, but you can see them showing it off. Miyamoto being very playful. And there's some stuff in this version of Luj's Mansion that is not in the final version that some of the writers pointed out. Of course, they didn't know it wouldn't be in the final version. One of the quote-unquote features is that if you use the vacuum too much at once, it will overheat and Luigi's butt will catch on fire. You'll have to scoot around

to put out the fire, which I'm glad they didn't put that in the final game. It seems like an unnecessary restriction on vacuuming. Yeah, I can see the gameplay bonus they had to that. It's just like, this makes it more challenging. You have to be careful not to overdo it. You can't just be sucking all the time. But, but oppositely, I could also see that perhaps they saw balance-wise. It just makes this less fun for no real reward.

Yeah, the fun of the game is sucking. To put it lightly. As somebody who wrote previews for the second Luigi's Mansion game. This game's gonna suck. And reviews for it. It was so hard to not just I was like, how else do I say suck or sucking or

blowing? There are no good adjectives for, sorry, synonyms for those. I was kind of embarrassed putting them in my notes. When Luigi sucks this, uh-oh, what am I even saying here? So this game, and I think the GameCube in general is designed for stereoscopic 3D, and Nintendo

rightly assume that most consumers could not afford compatible displays that would display stereoscopic 3D images. I'm not sure if they had a proprietary monitor in mind to sell or if things are just more advanced in Japan and I can't do the right research on them. But from my research, 3D compatible displays were not put into mass consumer hands until 2010. So maybe they were seeing into the future that didn't exist. Like, oh, of course, by 2002, maybe there'll be 3D TVs and people would play this on it. Who knows? You know, maybe in 99, 2000, their partners at Panasonic were overstating to them. Like, no, no, 3D TVs, they're the future and they're coming real soon.

Maybe that's it. Or they thought they could sell a thing. But either way, I mean, Nintendo, every console, they're like, we could also sell a piece of plastic to go with this console. And it never sells that much. And they barely, like, it's so weird to see Nintendo make the same mistake every five years with physical apps. And of course 3D TVs would take over. We all have one and they're just commonplace. No, I'm lying. I forgot that they were even real. They were a brief fad from like 2010 to 2012. Yeah. I guess you could still buy one now. I look, they're still on sale, but I think nothing, they don't really make 3D programming anymore. Oh, okay. I mean, 3D movies really only exist so you can charge four more dollars for a movie ticket. They don't do much. I'm so mad at 3D movies still. I never buy the 3D ticket. It feels wrong every time.

The only times I've done it is when I simply must see the new Marvel movie, Bob, and all the 2D showings are sold out. Then I must settle for 3D, but pretty rarely. It never works right. It never works right. So let's talk about a few of the people behind this game, and the director is Hedecki Kono. If you don't know who he is, I will tell you a little bit about him. But go back to our Mario Kart episode because we talk a lot about who he is and what he did,

because he is sort of the Mario Kart guy. So he started at Nintendo. He was assistant director of Dokey Dokey Panic, of course, which is Super Mario Brothers 2, USA. Yes, I gave you that trivia. You need to hear it. And he worked on every core 2D Mario game after that. So he worked on the big boys.

He was one of the directors of Yoshi's Island as well. So an esteemed Nintendo guy, for sure. Now, the core dudes on Yoshi's Island are, there's a reason it's one of the best games ever made. And it's the, like, the core team of the best Nintendo guys headed by Takeshi, Tizuka, but also Hideki Kana and Eguchi as well of Animal Crossing. Yeah. They're all there working real hard on it. It's whoever wasn't killing themselves on Mario 64.

Yes. They were working on, they were killing themselves on Yoshi's Island. So working to death was involved in some way. Yes, it had to be. So he didn't direct Mario Kart double dash because he was working on this game. But after that, he was basically just on Mario Kart constantly. That must be why Double Dash is so different from the rest, I think, then. Maybe his Conno's lesser involvement in it.

I know you either love Double Dash or you hate Double Dash if you're a Mario Kart fan. I used to love it until Mario Kart 8. Now, it's my favorite. Mario Kart 8's the perfect one. It really doesn't, I deal with the technical drive of the swapping between partners and just that kind of depth to it. And the grinding for sparks and everything. Oh, yeah.

So the general soundscape and music is by a very notable Nintendo guy, Kazami Totaka. And you might know him as KK. Slider in Animal Crossing. He is the bassist for KK. Slider. His eyebrows look normal to me, but maybe he trimmed them over time. Who knows? He seems like a real fun kind of weirdo guy who just makes odd sound design and some music for Nintendo. He's not, I mean, Koji Kondo is the famous guy. and I'd say below him is hip Tanaka

But Totaka is moving on up in the world Mostly thanks to the trivia involving him And KK Slider That's right So if I name some of the games he's worked on You will get a sense for what his music is like Especially if you've just played Luigi's Mansion like me Mario Paint

Yoshi's Story and Animal Crossing are They all sound I mean Yoshi's story is an alright game But it has a very weird weird music really sounds a lot of like a lot of rap influence

Luigi's Mention has a lot of rap influence a lot of jazz influence things like that and this this soundtrack is so good and we'll get into

how the music is integrated into the game but I love his music and I love that he gets a chance to make weird music like this in these games like non-traditional video game music

and other things he's worked on I really love his Super Mario Land 2 OST and it is just a traditional Mario soundtrack but it's very very catchy with just a little extra weirdness to it

I would say That's true, like a little touch of his weirdness. I think he couldn't get away with as much with the Game Boy. Yeah. And that sound on the Game Boy. I mean, I love Land 2 because it is R&D 1 pretending to do an EAD game. And they kind of, I think are having a little fun playing around in Miyamoto's sandbox, I think. It's a world where Mario sucks and he builds a statue tribute to himself.

And Mario is the true champion of the people, which is why he started in those games after that. So, of course, if you're a Nintendo fan, you know, Totaka's song, it's a 19-note song that shows up in almost all the games he's worked on except for maybe, God, I want to say maybe X the Game Boy game, but I'm not completely sure about that. But it does show up in Luigi's Mansion. And actually, I accessed it on accident. I was leaving my Game Boy on. I still call my 3DS the Game Boy, so sue me. I was leaving my Game Boy on while I was typing on the internet, and it was the training mode, the preface to the training mode where it shows you the controls. And I was just typing away. And the music gets all weird

and interrupted. I'm like, oh, this is where the Totaka song starts. And yes, it's in the re-release, too. Yes, they kept it in the re-release. Thank God. And I will play a little bit of it here. And yes, it shows up in all the games he's worked on. I think the easiest one to find it in is in Mario Paint. It's when you click on one of the letters in Mario Paint on the title screen.

It will just play the song. So there you have it. But usually you can hear it. Taka song if you wait long enough in certain games. That's usually how you quote unquote unlock it, but it is just a goofy little 19 note ditty that is his signature song that he puts in all of his games. D.C. Fans, you're going to want to check out the latest live-action series, Titans, available now on D.C. Universe.

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and you're one with the earth and stars. Ah. Or like dollar drinks at McDonald's. Keep those awe moments going with $1 any seismic cafe brewed coffee and $1 any size soft drinks on the $1,2,3 menu. Price and participation may vary cannot be combined with combo meal. and November 18th, 2001, in the U.S.

And these are both GameCube launch days in their respective territories. So, big launch game. Happier time to talk about the November release date. Yeah, no. Was the release date going to be 9-11 in Japan? No, it was always the 14th. It just, they had said 14th as the date. I remember in the weird days of State, September 11th and September 12th afterwards.

I was like, I need to go on IGN and see any information that is, not this and that's when the launch happened and I think Nintendo gave some statement of like well we wish America well and hopefully this they it was some sort of nicety about it it was I was too busy playing the September 10th released advance wars which I bought on September 11th boy you know 911 comes up on every GameCube podcast but it's so attached to all of these console releases it's unfortunate yes but I mean it is etched in our brains as people who live through it but moving on from terrorist attacks. So without a doubt this game is a tech showcase for the GameCube

and it shows up tons of innovations that all feed into the gameplay and these all may sound innocent and things you would expect in a game system in game hardware but in 2001 they were a big deal for Nintendo and they wanted to build a game around showing all these things off so let's go through them one by one. Number one

dual stick controls of first for Nintendo's system so and 64 did not have another stick and I think Miyamoto regretted that ultimately. Yeah it you know, they're almost always in the console space, Nintendo is almost always at the cutting edge of

controls. They are leading the way and that they got scooped by the dual shock with twin stick controllers. I think that kind of messed with them. And that's also though why they went with the C stick to be like, well, this is our thing and it's stupider

with an octagon. It's smaller and worse. But yes, Nintendo had to assume you're in our garden, our walled garden. You've never used two sticks before. Here is a game designed around using two sticks at once, because we have to train you now to use two sticks. These are what all the games are going to use now. So that is the major gameplay of Luigi's Mansion. Second innovation, a lighting engine, actual light.

Luigi always carries a flashlight, which creates real-time shadows. Again, duh, games are going to have shadows if there's light. That did not happen on N-64. Mario had a little black sticker that floated under him. That was a shadow. That was just something they programmed in so you know where he was jumping. It was not a shadow cast in real time. So some games have had very primitive lighting, but nothing on this scale.

And it still looks impressive today. And I have to say, a lot of the 3DS effects are really toned down compared to the GameCube version. The GameCube version is still graphically superior in many ways. Yeah, they turned up a lot of the effects that they kind of think in a different game that wasn't a launch game, they might have had as a little more understated. But like the, especially in the GameCube version, the ghosts are just like neon, just right. They're showing off the, the transport. Appearancy to the ghosts and how luminous they are, too, to go with Luigi's light on everything. And when the lightning strikes outside, it casts a shadow through the windows and, you know, Luigi cast shadow too.

And sometimes you need to use, at least in one set piece, you need to look at the shadows to determine where the ghosts are in the room, invisible ghosts. So in that way, it's not just, you know, window dressing. It's using shadows to, you know, feed into the gameplay. Another thing, which is just, you know, this is just window dressing particle effects, which is also really toned down in. 3DS version. Everything. There's dust everywhere. Everything's kicking up dust in this mansion. Yeah, I was agog at the dust. And you know what? I was like, I can't see this kind of dust on nothing. The games have changed. Finally, filth. And I think we've achieved the dustiest worlds on the PS4 that's just crap floating through the air everywhere. Bring a mask. But yes, again,

you can't do this on an N64. There's no dust. You can't make dust on an N64. A big deal in 2001. The games are naturally fuzzy. but that's not really dust particles. Yes, swipe off your TV, but it won't help. Another thing, which all game hardware designers were obsessed with in the turn of the century, and I'm glad we moved on, analog buttons. So the 3DS version says, who cares about that? It doesn't even matter.

And it never did. But the further you push in the R trigger, the harder Luigi will suck. Just with his vacuum. And if you have an elemental power, if you click it in all the way, he'll shoot a projectile. The idea of the analog buttons on the triggers are cool. And I get it, too, because I think one of the favorite things Nintendo love showing off with the N64 analog stick was just showing, like, the precision of, say, they were like, here's Mario walking slowly and crawling, and now he's walking and now he's running. So wouldn't the next innovation to that be having that extend to other buttons and not just the control stick? So I understand the appeal of that.

And with his sucking machine, when you have the vacuum cleaner in there, the level of intensity to it, that's a good first use for the levels. I mean, this, first you have the sucking of this and then a year later, you have the blowing of the water can in a flood. Luigi sprayed water first in his game. That's true, yeah. Made by the same person, Professor E. Gad. I think the GameCube had one step above what the PS2 Dual Shock had in that it was, very easy to tell how far you were pulling in those triggers. And then when you pulling it all the way, you would have a click. And the PS2 Dual Shock did not have that.

And the games that asked you to use button sensitivity, it was just like, it was so hard to figure out. Like, am I, is this in all the way now? But not very many games did that. I think Metal Gear was really the ones that were bothered me the most in that series. Yeah, that's satisfying click to the shoulder button always fuck good. So music and the sound effect system are a big deal, but we'll talk about that in its own section later because it's a huge thing in this game. Another thing that's a tech showcase, lots of crap on screen just like money a crazy crap on the walls lots of crazy crap on the walls uh money flies everywhere dollar bills for the first time in a mario game i'm sure yes no never never before we're

not counting off never will i mention mario is missing any other time in this but all those real world money things that were in bad mario games that were not made by actual nintendo team people maybe there was cash in those that's not canon yeah i refuse to accept that but yes things are flying everywhere there's so many things on the screen and it still performs very well yeah it's just showing off all the shit it can do at once like it's it's really when you compare that to even a late n64 game that had the ram expansion on it like conquer conquer couldn't do this shit no way yeah and it still looked kind of bad even i love major's mass but it still is an ugly game yes so graphics in general it's kind of a cheap but i think this game still looks really good today because they were

smart enough to focus on small environments and making them very detailed. And also in those environments, you had just a few very expressive characters. So a lot of games of this time were too ambitious. So you had especially things like even Grand Theft Auto 3, you were in a city, but it was all very flat and ugly. I will go as far to say few 3D games looked as good as this game did in 2001. The ones I can think of maybe that would topple we just mentioned at this time or Metal Gear Solid 2. And that's probably about it. Maybe Final Fantasy 10. But then they use pre-rendered stuff a lot of the time. Well, that's the coward's way out.

It really does. No, I mean, Kojima, Kajima had more time to work on his console of choice with Metal Gear 2, and it was meant to be the most expensive thing ever and look gorgeous. And it also had a much bigger scope. That's something that was really clever by Nintendo with the concept of Luigi's Mansion, which is it's,

thinking, why aren't I in a big world? When you're playing it, you're not thinking, why aren't I in this big world? Why aren't I seeing all these things? You're just like, well, I'm in this mansion. Rooms are this size. I'm not feeling like I'm being denied more stuff. Oh, and also on the graphic, on the super detailed environments, one really show-offy thing that struck me was the mirrors. Like, they're like, look at these mirrors. Can't do that. This is a reflective surface showing what's at this angle. I, uh, replaying the 3DS one was when it, the, my memory really came back of being impressed by mirrors when it's like, well, where's the, how do I get out of this place? Where's that? And then I noticed, oh, there's a mirror right there reflecting a button that's on the invisible wall towards the camera that, that I remember when I saw that on a game game. I was like, whoa, that's pretty cool. I've never seen that before. And you could take a picture of any mirror to transport yourself back to the lobby. Oh, it's an easy warp. Yeah. Wow. I completely. I completely.

I totally forgot that. I found out an accident when I didn't want to do that. Yeah, so there's a new level of fidelity with this hardware. So now you can make complex rooms filled with small objects that Luigi can shake for money and things like that. So we didn't have this level of fidelity on a Nintendo system at the time. So they really took advantage of it by making these small environments that are just full of like tiny things and like little details. And playing this game too, transporting me back to 01 and it reminded me of a feeling I really haven't had with a Nintendo game since, which is. is the launch of a Nintendo

system having cutting edge graphics. This is not to say, I love some launch games on the Wii. I love one launch game on the Wii, you. And the Switch, Breath of the Wild, what gets better than that? However,

I have never been like, wow, this is the best graphics I've ever seen and I'm seeing it in a Nintendo game. This was the last time I felt this on a launch Day for a Nintendo system. No, you're totally right about that. And if you look at the other launch games for the other systems, nothing really looked this good at the time. I think at the time,

like, Halo, I played way more Halo Combat Evolved than I did Luigi's Mansion, but it didn't look better than this. Like, some Skyboxes look good, but that's just a fucking JPEG. It was a big clunky world. And I mean, it was impressive in terms of scope at the time, but it has not aged very well, you know? Yeah. It's still a really good game. Don't get me wrong. Halo is really good, but I think in terms of, why do you hate Halo? Oh, I dislike that Master Chef guy. He never cooks me anything anymore. But yeah, I mean, in terms of scope, it was a much bigger game, but I feel like it didn't age as well because it was more ambitious than Luigi's Mansion. It was like, let's make a whole world. Yeah. I wonder, too, if this is the lackluster reaction to this game in particular, Luigi's Mansion. I wonder if that was one of the first things that turned Nintendo off to like, why are we being cutting edge? Why? Why should we do that? What advantage did we have by being cutting edge graphically with Luigi's

Mansion? People didn't like it. Yeah, their tiny box didn't convince gamers in that era, you know, that, ooh, it's the wave of the future instead of, you know, the sexy PS2 or the gigantic Xbox. Let's talk about some of the inspiration that Luigi's Mansion draws from. So, obviously, it is a takeoff on Ghostbusters. And way back in the day, almost a decade ago, for Christ's sake, I did a one-up Retronauts blog series about Ghostbusters games. And this was the final entry because this is the best Ghostbusters game. Still is. There was an 09 Ghostbusters game that tried. This game is better than that. Oh, I think that's why I wrote that series because of that new game. Yeah, yeah, that game is, it's like a C plus and the voices are there.

And it's fun to play through once, but this is the best Ghostbusters game because it's made by Nintendo. Thankfully, nobody sued. Harold Ramis's Ghostbusters weren't the first Ghostbusters either. And now he's a ghost that can be busted. So they don't want to. you anybody. So yes, obviously, Ghostbusters with the proton pack and everything. You can see the connection there. And one of the ghosts is very slimer-like. It's a green ghost that eats bananas and drops the peel. So they knew what they were doing. And the ghost containment unit just is the one show for the animated series and the movie. It's true. It's true. One very obvious thing that I just picked up on now is like, yeah, this is the Disney's haunted mansion

ride. I've been on it three times. And I had been on it before I played this game. But only now when I was capturing the dancing couple, I was like, oh, of course, of course, all the paintings and this. And I'm going to go back to Disney soon. I want to see how many other things they stole because Haunted Mansion exists in Tokyo Disneyland. I looked it up. There is a version of Haunted Mansion. I'm sure it's the same as the one they built in the 60s or whatever at Disneyland. Yeah, you know, well, I correct me if I'm wrong, people who've been to Tokyo Disney. But I've only been to Disney C, not Tokyo Disney. But part of that is because they just have so many copied rides. there that I'm like, well, I can go to these at Disneyland. I want to see. I only have one day here. I'm going to go to the new stuff that's at Disney C. So, yeah, I would think Disney in general and Disneyana

that kind of family friendly but scary vibe they're going for. That in general is what Nintendo kind of strives for. They like going for that stuff. So this Haunted Mansion tonally really fits what they're going for. And then on top of that

Haunted Mansion really is a series of boxes that they're showing off like, well, this is this spooky room. What's the trick to it? That's true. That's presentationally very similar to Luigi's Mansion. I can't wait to go back and check it out. But it's of that very old-timey style of haunted house where all the ghosts are from the 19th century. There's no new ghosts. They're all ghosts who died before electricity. I just so charming. And obviously it's because they all died of color. They all died of like just drinking the water basically. But yeah, I love that charming, I don't know, post-war idea of the haunted house where it's like, oh yeah, these are all Victorian ghosts or whatever.

But that's all happening in Luigi's Mansion. And there's a very bizarre story that I'm glad has just glossed over in this game. It's like, it's held up by a very flimsy story in which I guess Mario and Luigi think they win a mansion and Mario goes first to check it out. And it's discovered that that's a mansion that just appeared just a few weeks ago. And Mario goes missing and Luigi has to find him. But then you realize, okay, so booze, the booze are the booze are the ghosts in this world. They created the mansion, but they also created different ghosts that are not booze that aren't booze, but they're also not people who died and became ghosts. But you're not catching a dead baby. No, you're not catching a dead baby. I think they did that to take the morbidity

out of the idea. It's like, these are all dead people. What happened to them in this house? But if you look at the lore behind the characters in their bios, the character ghosts that you catch, it implies with some of them they were alive at some point. And also, one of the character ghosts you catch in the game creates the ghosts in the mansion, the minor ghosts in the mansion. So booze are creating ghosts that then create ghosts

and the ghosts that create ghosts could have been alive at some point. I really need answers. But they also made the mansion too. Like the mansion didn't even exist. They built it on top of EGAD's lab. Yes. And it's King Boo's behind it all,

which I think this is the first game with King Boo in it. I believe so. Yeah, there was never a king of the booze until now. That was another thing. This is spoiler guy. but it's a game that ends with Bowser and then they're like, nah, it's not really Bowser.

You didn't get Bowser in this game. Mario's not in this game and Bowser's not even in this game. We fucked you. It was to get you excited for Mario Sunshine and that bad final boss fight with Bowser that I don't like very much. But yeah, the story makes no sense. And I love just how goofy and silly it is. And I think I just started playing Dark Moon the sequel. And the story makes a lot more sense where it's like, yeah, the moon exploded, find the moon pieces.

Yeah. Well, because I do think next level, the, Canadian developer of it, maybe came with a little more story focus of like, well, can we, let's integrate the story just a little bit better at this time, the story. Story is pointless. You just, in this, it's just

you gotta get Luigi in a scary mansion. That's the beat all end all. Yeah, and eventually you have like 10 seconds of Mario at the end as your reward. It's like, wow, see, technically it is a Mario game. All my friends are wrong. So we might take this for granted, but it is also a Resident Evil parody developed at the tail end

of Resident Evil's first rise. And before the pre-R-E-4 slump. So put into development probably like 99-ish, I'm guessing, maybe early 2000, when, you know, that was the wake of RE2 and RE3 before Code Veronica sort of made things slump a little more. And they were really taking advantage of that sort of phenomenon, I think. And it's weird to see Nintendo make not only a horror game,

but a parody of a game as well. Yeah, in all ages, Resident Evil game. I wonder what, if anything, this had to do with, Nintendo not too long after this release making the deal for Resident Evil games on the GameCube but the yeah it only hit me I knew it then but I kind of forgotten and then it hit me when I was replaying it's like oh this foyer is really the start to Resident Evil and then

the first time I put they did a door opening load screen I was like yeah that's right yeah right down right down to the door opening animations you get Resident Evil it's so cool and I think it's something that we sort of take for granted and don't really talk about, but yes, it is a Resident Evil parody. And I think further games, like the sequel doesn't lean into that as much because they're different. It's like a series of mansions, right? Yeah. Well, so that's the, that is the big difference between these two games, is that Luigi's Mansion originally, they're like, this is the mansion. We call Luigi's Mansion. And that means you don't get a lot of variety, but you do get

a giant mansion experience. But in Dark in the Moon, I think partially to extend. it you get to definitely make it a longer game like dark of the moon lasts closer to like 10 hours but that's because you go to more than one mansion like at least five yeah and so because of that you get a lot more variety but they're also not as big so how the game plays it's basically sort of like a zeldad dungeon just a pro long Zelda dungeon it's a really good way to put it it's the most it's the most Zelda like Mario game in existence and most of the game involves going into rooms clearing them of ghosts to light them up and then once you do that you get keys that will unlock other rooms often there will be quote unquote character ghosts in the rooms that will require you to do something in order to reveal their weak point and if you go into first person mode using your game boy horror you can scan their hearts and get a hint as to what you need to do usually it's pretty obvious it's like i need to spray this ghost with water i need to pull the curtain back on the showering ghosts things like that it's all about playing with the environment to reveal the ghost weak point yeah i like that i like that silliness to it and the if you want to scan it with the game boy horror then they're just like you

couldn't look at me when I'm reading this book. Oh, I'm sleepy. And the Game Boy Horror is cool, too, because you can look at, there's not enough flavor text in the game, and they reuse a lot of it, but I like getting Luigi's inner life expressed through these thoughts about things in the room. It's like, you call that art? Stuff like that. And talking about, you look at a birdhouse, he's like, oh, I could raise carrier pages

in this. That'd be fun. Just like little cute things about Luigi you don't get in other games. Yeah, another one of my phases, and he's like, well, I guess the booze could even build all this old furniture in here, not just the outside. And when you take a picture of the toilet, they're like, wow, this is a very realistic mansion. So Luigi has a lot of commentary about this mansion. And the character goes actually remind me a lot of the Wind Waker in that there is a large cast of very distinct characters, each with their own personalities.

And you're also like sort of in a living cartoon as well. So I was really getting Winwakery vibes from this upon replaying it again. Yeah. You know, when we were talking influences, there was one I meant to mention. Ardman and Wallace and Grommet, like, I don't, there's no source for this. But if you just look at especially that first tech demo, Luigi's acting his movements and especially his mouth looks so much like an Ardman Wallace and Grummet style claymation figure.

Yeah, Luigi is a little bit, quote, unquote, off model in this game compared to his normal Mario appearances. If you look at the size of his hands, his hands are like the size of his torso. He is very much an Ardman character in this game. Oh, man, those fingers, they're showing off. They really are. You can see every finger. Mario just had boxes for hands

in every previous game. But I don't know if you mentioned it in your artman talk, but he even like kind of shuffles around like Wallace does in the game. Yeah, it's I think they, he is a cousin of Wallace in this, I think. Sometimes his mouth gets even kind of oblong in that way.

And I would definitely think that Miyamoto and the rest of crew Nintendo were aware of Wallace and Gromit and could take inspiration from that. That's also kid friendly scares is something Wallace and Grumman offers up. So the game is basically broken, even though it's one contiguous mansion, it's broken into four stages, and after you explore a certain amount of the mansion, you will fight a

boss character. The bosses are not in this game. They're not very good. I don't like the bosses that much. No, no. Well, one thing that kind of hurts the pacing of this, I think, is they have, the bosses are just such a simple little trick to them. And then once you get past that trick, then it's you're catching them basically the same way you capture all of them, which is just a fishing mini game, which I actually, I mean, we've got to do, I, I'm, we've done Spider-Man now, so my next pitch is fishing video games. Oh, that'd be great. I love fishing in games. I love fishing in games and I have loved some specifically fishing games like Sega bass fishing and Sega deep sea fishing on the Dreamcast. But anywho, this is also a fishing game. Like, yeah, it is a a fishing minigame once you catch them and just the... Japan loves fishing games. The sound, the sound of the real

like, do-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-h. As you take down their HP, yeah, yeah, we should point that out to the controls, they feel really good, too. I have to say, they feel better on the game-key, but I think I gave myself some sort of injury when I was fighting Bowser in the 3DS version. Yeah. Because, man, the 3DS is not ergonic at all.

Also, no rumble. Yeah, no rumble either. And now, let's talk about the music and the sound effects. They're so good. and won a BAFTA. I played through this entire game with giant, like, noise-canceling headphones on through my 3D.S. It made me remember how good the music in this game is and how few games pay this close attention to sound. Number one, because most people aren't going to notice. The game Monkey Island 2 uses this very advanced sound system that, you know, organically transitions between songs on the fly, can add instruments on the fly, things like that.

It was very advanced for 1991. And none of the other games sounded like that. And I asked the creator Ron Gilbert, why? Why did you not do that in other game? and he was like, people didn't notice. So I think that's what's happening here. I don't really recall Nintendo being this clever or advanced with a soundscape since this game at all. Maybe they felt like if not enough people notice, why do we bother with this? Yeah, and I think when I was reading reviews of this game for research,

and most of the reviews are like, one song in this game, it's so repetitive. You weren't even paying attention. So there is one very simple, very catchy song in this game, and it's in my head forever. It's even deeper in my head after replaying it. Oh yeah. But it's constant throughout everything you're doing in the game, but who or what is performing it will change based on the situation you're in. So when Luigi is whistling the theme, that means you're in a clear area with no ghosts, and then you're fine, nothing to worry about. When the ghosts are making the theme with their chattering, it's very atonal, it's very dissonant. That means there are ghosts in the room you have not found them yet. When Luigi is nervously humming, that means you're in an area that is not completely safe. And when there's traditional instruments playing, that means you're exploring a hall. way or a connecting area between rooms that presumably cannot be cleared of ghosts. So all of these instrumentations, all these performances have a meaning in the game that you sort of internalize. But the game will switch between them on the fly. It's very organic. There's no break. There's no abrupt

stop to one version of the song when another one starts. And what's great about this is that when you're catching the ghost and rolling them in, the music is super chaotic. It's, it sounds like a tape being re-round and fast forwarded. And that really clashes with the consistent sound you hear throughout the game, the consistent tune. I really like how you hear this consistent song throughout the game. And then when you catch the ghost, it's just pure chaos. And I have to assume the sound that you hear when you catch the ghost, the quote-unquote music you hear is that theme being sped up and fast-forwarded and just being played with a lot. I think so. Yeah. And it makes the catching of the ghost feel even more intense than just the visual of it. Just hearing like

da-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-h. Yeah. It really punctuates the action. It really punctuates the experience. That kind of music then on top of it has the little clinkety sounds of moving down the health levels on the ghost. They work in tandem to really make it exciting. And on top of that, the tempo of the music will change and the way Luigi performs the music will change based on his health. It's a very easy game, so you have to kind of hurt yourself on purpose to hear the different versions of the song. But it is cool. And again, so much attention to detail. And here's the thing.

I think Nintendo misread the room as to what gamers want. wanted in a way that it makes this game great because we can appreciate it more now because we had different expectations and games were moving in a different way back then. But what they gave us with this game is an interactive cartoon. And they were always sort of edging towards that with the way sound and action work together in past games. But with this game, it's just like everything is tied to Luigi's motion. Everything is tied to what's happening on the screen. There's not just like, okay, play stage one on MP3 and have fun in this level. It's just, it's all like all the sound is tied to movement in a very specific way that would not be the future of games, even

for Nintendo, which I find very, very interesting. Yeah, yeah. It was something, you know, made, like you said, they've been edging to it before. Yoshi's Island definitely wanted to feel like a living cartoon even more so than Super Mario World did. And 64 wanted to just expand that into a third dimension, but kind of gave up a bit of the personality that you have artistically. Now they could finally get back that personality in a third dimension kind of way through just the fidelity of the art that they're allowed

to have. Yeah, and I think Nintendo would have moved more in this direction if this game had been more of a critical success. I mean, it is a very good selling game. It is the fourth best selling game on the GameCube. Oh. Mainly because it was a launch game, but people did not have a good impression of this game after a few

weeks. So, yeah. But I feel like they would have worked more in this direction. They would have moved more in this direction. But now, when you play Mario Odyssey, it's very much like, okay, play winter stage on MP3 and run around in this level. Well, there's more care to it than that. There's more thought beyond than that, but it's not this

level of like, let's have this different soundscape depending on what's happening at all times. Totally, totally. No, and the living cartoon kind of thing, too, went to its peak in Wind Waker. Oh, yeah. And Nintendo definitely, I think, felt they were punished for that by fans.

We don't want this. I want Lord of the Rings. In Winwaker, especially in the battles, the music was sort of like procedurally generated based on your actions and the movements of Link and the movements of the enemies. It felt awesome. It did feel good, but it's sort of like an evolutionary dead end that I really wish they would pursue again. But again, people aren't noticing these things. People weren't walking away from Winmaker going, well, the music in this game is very innovative in this way. Again, you walk away from Looge's Mansion, you see these reviews, and the review is like, only one song?

What the hell is this crap? So yes, they didn't care enough. That's why they're kids, because they're stupid. I also loved hearing the moments of Luigi singing along to his own song when he's scared like I mean it's kind of reassuring I assume for younger players too because they're like see Luigi is scared too Luigi's on your side well you want to talk about Charles Martin A's performance in this yes is really good because one thing we didn't hit upon is this game forever characterized Luigi within the games he would have different characterizations in the

animated shows, but this sort of defined Luigi in his personality from this point forward. For sure. This is what made Luigi to Luigi, we know if I could give like a, as far as Nintendo is concerned, the internal biography of Luigi. He just was another guy with Mario. But only the American version of Super Mario 2 even made him look different, which they didn't canonize until Super Mario Kart. But even that, he was just, he's just a guy that sounds a little different for Mario. And he will play table. He'd play

doubles tennis with Daisy. But that was kind of it. Like he was just the other Mario. But this is when they finally like, no, he's more scared than Mario. That's his thing. And they really, when this got shown off in 2000, that's when it was already getting

popular. And so they were starting to integrate it in stuff. There's actually in early 2001, Paper Mario comes out on the N64, the last Mario game on the system. No, I'm pretty sure it was, unless there was some bullshit Mario party, but who there probably was?

But in that game, there's a great moment where you can go back home and Luigi's just hanging out in the brother's home. Yeah, that's right. I don't want to go on adventures, no. And you can find his diary, and he comes off as a real scaredy cat in that diary, even saying a line of,

It's like, man, I heard Mario met a bunch of ghosts somewhere. That'd be too scary for me. I wouldn't want that. So maybe internally they were deciding around this time, like, this is who Luigi should be. Mario has to be the every man, the blank slate you project yourself upon. But Luigi can be the Shaggy in the Scooby-Doo universe, the one character with the personality. And I love that. Freddie is not as interesting as Shaggy.

Like, you want to hang out with Shaggy, not Freddy. And Mario is Freddy in that equation. It really is. And Daphne, okay, wait, so Daphne would be Princess Peach. Dalma Daisy's Velma Okay And Scooby II is Yoshi

Yeah We did it We did it Right yes But yeah This game For anything Even if you don't like it

This game Cemented Luigi As the fun coward That he would eventually go on To you know Live as

For the rest of time And that Let's him be Much more interesting And Charles Martin A plays that Very well And just like

The many different ways He says Mario Mario There's one So yeah There is a button You can hit

There's one time he goes, Mario, like really loud. And I'm sorry for doing that. I hate doing Mario and Luigi impressions. And just all his screaming. Just like, wah! It's actually in Dark of the Moon, the last scene with Mario and Luigi in it,

where he frees Mario. And Mario thanks him, they barely speak. But when Mario thanks him for saving him, Luigi is like, I-D-D-D? he feels he's like I saved the day that's heartwarming at the end of Luigi's Mansion 1 he just laughs at Mario for getting shot out of the ghost machine and looking stupid I give it to the next level they found more like they found an emotional cord to the story of Luigi being scared but I'm being over his fear as I said before this is a very short game if you take your time if you if you shake every object if you find all the 50 hidden booze in the mansion you will clock in it under five hours yeah you You know, that's something that really hit me again in playing this.

I was like, they kind of, I don't want to say it's too far, but they padded. They used a lot of padding in this that's a lot more obvious to me now. Just like, how many times he got says, ooh, you know what? Stop what you're doing. Come back to the, come back to the lab. Well, why? So I have to go back to the start of the world and then walk all the way back here just to pad up more time. Every time you catch a boo, he's got to tell you something new.

and save your game and everything. There's a lot of that stuff in it. And by hour three, you feel them getting all sweaty, like, oh, boy, we got to get something else going on in this game. Hey, oh, the power went out, got down to the basement, and now five ghosts will attack you in every room. It's the worst part of this game. And I wish it's like, boy, this game could be a better game if it was two hours,

even or three hours. But you can't, I mean, it was, they knew you can't sell a disc game at $50 then. That's two hours long. Like, that's just, it would be seen as wrong. And this is a really good port. I'll have to say that. It was really fun to replay. My main issue with it is it's $40.

And this is not a $40 experience. And I realize porting a game is a lot of work, often more work than making a new game. And it's not just dragging the EXE to a new folder. How hard could it be? At 1999, perfect. It'd be a perfect experience. 40 bucks. I don't think so.

And they don't add a lot of new content. And the new content that they add is sort of pointless. So we mentioned the vile criminal GUI. at the beginning of this podcast there is a multiplayer feature but there's no new content you can just have a friend dip in with it up

gooing it up with a green gooigi and it's just like it's not I mean I guess it could be fun but it's also a very easy game to begin with and having a second player in there would just be too much well and the rooms the rooms aren't bigger so like having a goo partner

walking around with you it only takes up more space in what are meant to be be claustrophobic rooms where you just want to, you want to touch everything. And I'd also wouldn't want my goo brother hanging around touching the stuff. And I'm like, no, I wanted to shake that lamp and see if something fell out of it. Check out our What a Cartoon about G.I. Joe for more about goo people and goo wives. But yeah, so when you beat the game, you unlock Luigi's Hidden Mansion.

And what that is is the same mansion, but things are harder. Game plus, I guess. Not even that. In the loosest sense, the game is harder. You also can earn more money in the game, but you don't get anything with the money. You can earn a higher rank at the end with the money. What does that rank at you? Nothing.

Yeah. Like, I got a rank of B and I found all the treasures. Like, well, do you want A? It's like, well, do you want A? It's like, well, does A get me? Nothing. It's cool to see, it was cool to see real world money kind of put into the game and like how good the gold bars look per se. But at the end of the day, it's just a points on your screen. And like, it's like a, in Donkey Kong, like, here's your point total, but post-arcade point totals in games that don't arrive at anything or unlock anything.

It's just, it doesn't, it doesn't, I feel nothing for those. I think in the plan for this game, they wanted to have like an upgrade system for the Poulter Gust 3,000, which is the vacuum cleaner and Luigi uses, but there just wasn't time. And also, there was not that expectation of games at this time for there to be like a skill tree or upgrades or things like that. I mean, you could have a character be the same from start to finish in a game and it would be fine. And that's what this game is. But yeah, the point system is kind of pointless. It is fun to pick up big diamonds and gold bars and the suck up money. But ultimately it's for nothing and all you do is earn like a letter at the end that doesn't mean anything at all to anybody. But yeah, if you've got 40 bucks and you want to replay the game, there's really no other way to do it unless you've got the GameCube disc and a Wii or GameCube. And those aren't hard to find. I assume you might be able to get both for less than $40 at this point. Maybe. Maybe. You never know. And a swap meet, perhaps. I mean, like you said, it was a fourth-high selling one when it was in players' choice, it was a good player's choice game. Like, you're 20 bucks.

Yeah, yeah, it was definitely worth 20. But so I just started Luigi Dark Moon. We just mentioned Dark Moon. And it seems really cool. I'm excited to play through more of it, especially I'm going to Portland soon. It's going to be a fun travel game for me in the spooky season. And I already noticed, like, super great things of the upgrade of, like, Luigi can run now. Yeah.

Things are just a little bit faster. When I couldn't run in this game, I was like, wait, was that always how it was? This sucks. You can walk slower. You can walk or walk slower. Well, again, if you could run, the game's over even faster. That's true. They've got to contain that stuff.

What if Luigi had a limp? But you played it, Henry. Oh, my God. So you played this game, Henry. I'm excited about playing it. It's from 2013. It's not retro enough to really talk about, but who cares? We're talking about Luigi's Mansion.

what are your thoughts on dark moon before we go because i'm i'm super excited to play through it after playing through the first game again i reviewed dark moon when it was when it was new in the year of our luigi it was the year of luigi it was the year of luigi oh my god that's why you'll find funny videos of uh from the year of luigi of miamoto and iwada sucking up stuff in nintendo duress like uh that was also the worst year for nintendo financially 2013 oh boy it was a very dark time for that. And also a lot of got sick. It was a bad year, 2013 was, but at least we got this game. But so it was announced as Luigi's Mansion 2. For some reason, Nintendo of America hates having numbers on sequels. So it's Luigi's Mansion 2 everywhere but here. It's the Darkly Moon here,

which is also why when the Luigi's Mansion 3 got revealed on the Nintendo of America trailer, it's got the old Nintendo of America asterix title not final. And I have a very good feeling it will not be called Luigi's Mansion 3 in America since it wasn't two here. Yeah, they're not going to go from subtitle to 3. But Luigi Dark Moon, I really liked quite a lot. It finally felt like

Luigi's Mansion made sense. I had enjoyed the first Luigi's Mansion, but it also felt like something Nintendo was ashamed of. So when they made a new one, I was like, whoa, this is great. And I believe it came about because next level games who they are so

much better than you might think they are if you looked at their list of tie-in movie license trash they do. I can't believe they went from that to we punch out the Dark Moon. What else have they made? Well, they actually did the best Marvel games that Sega put out of the Marvel films. They did the best Thor game. They did the best Captain American game. On terrible budgets and low expectations from Sega, they did that.

But their best work was with Nintendo and on Dark Moon. I believe it came about because they made a tech demo of one of the first areas of Luigi's Mansion just to show Nintendo what they could do. And it sounds like one of those classic Miyamoto stories of just like, hey, just do that. If you could do that, do it. And so they, but what they did was they found a longer story to tell, more places to go and expanded it all out in a good way that. also put a lot more heart into it and turned it into what could be a franchise. Luigi's Manchin the first one. Once you're done with it, you're like, I don't particularly feel like playing another

one of these again too soon. But Dark in the Moon shows you what a bigger, ghostier world that Luigi could involve himself in. And it even gives him a cute pet who... That's right. A dead dog. Who will be, he's featured in the trailer for a Luigi Manchin 3. And yeah, it's got more fun acting in a cool, cool bosses, better bosses than you get

it feels like it's more of a puzzle game trying to figure out how to do things in the rooms yeah they found way more cool puzzles to do and just showing off things and some neat each one is like kind of a uh diorama each one is kind of a diorama i love it that you get to play around it i i really enjoyed it i felt like not enough people gave it a chance when it first came out maybe the re-release of this will get the re-release of the first one we'll get people to play dark moon again and especially with the i I'm curiously how much excitement there will be for the Switch third one, but I think there should be, and I'm glad they're doing it. To my research, I could not tell if Next Level is making it. They are. I just looked it up. They are making it, yes. According to Wikipedia, that could be wrong. Because the only thing I had to go on was the trailer for three.

And, you know, usually if they're working with a second party, they'll be in the copyright at the bottom, but it's only Nintendo's copyright at the bottom. but hey why am I to disagree Wikipedia someone could have gotten out there jump to conclusions Matt for this one but yes

one thing I noticed about the sequel is that there is no Game Boy horror that's the one downgrade for me what I liked about this game

we didn't really mention it is that you can go it was another thing that was a big deal at this time like going into first person to look around at stuff

and the big surprise is the wall you don't see that the camera is looking through it's there when you go into first person it's there

there's stuff there you can look at there's sometimes secrets and things like that that's another cool thing about this game but yes next level should be making this game uh unfortunately the last game they made and

this is not their fault is Metroid Prime Federation Force I assume it's a very good game they make very good games but people did not want a co-op 3DS shooter in 2016 they did the best they could with it but they were fucked from the moment one when you called it when there had been no Metroid games of any kind and you call this a Metroid game people will only feel insulted it's the same way of just like when you put out a Castlevania game that just it is this executive thinking of like well we have this license or

this we have this franchise we haven't used in a while let's just put the title on it and it'll sell it. It's at least with gamers who have a very specific needs. You can't do a side game without doing a regular game more recently.

It's true but I think Metroid is going to be okay after Samus returns which is all right. that was definitely all right and it helps I need to finish though you know I'm curious I'm really curious to see what Prime 4 is the rumors going around

the Namco's making it and it's like Namco Shanghai which well so their problem this is such a side thing it's fine their problem with Prime 4 is that even if they gave it to Retro Studios the people who made Prime left Retro Studios a while ago so it's not

it wouldn't even be the Prime people making it. They made that game no cares about. Yeah, yeah. Oh, recor. Recore. Yep. Is it Recore? I thought that was the Inafune game. Well, it was both those things. Okay. It could be two things. Armature is the developer, yes. And Armature is the developer of Recore.

Concept and Armature. They did. Oh, okay. So, yes, it was Inafune's concept and armature, which is the people who left Retrio. Boy, I'm still waiting for that red dash, red legend, whatever, Mega Man Legends thing. That's going to be so good. And the anime. When's that one's that show, up in a Funei. But yeah. Yeah. So we just mentioned three is coming out in 2019, presumably, but I think you're right. Henry, it's going to be like spring 2020. That's my bad. What do you want from it? Frankly, like, just make the prettiest version of this experience. It doesn't need to be multiplayer. It doesn't need to be like a new, innovative thing.

Just the biggest, best, prettiest version of this single player experience. And I'd be happy with it. Yeah. I guess what I want from it is definitely, you know, be a graphical showcase, at least like, you know, the limited room and the, The boxed in nature of it allows for you being able to put all your stuff under the spotlight. When you have to build an entire huge game world like Mario Odyssey, you know, that kind of spreads out resources, even though I think Mario Odyssey looks really good. That's gorgeous, yeah. But if you put it all, what if you put all of those graphics into one box and then how good could that look? And I hope, too, that they keep the spirit of humor, like in that kind of Wallace and Grubbitt contraptions. The spirit of contraptions and silliness and goofery and comedy.

They really need to keep the spirit of comedy to that. And I hope they do. It's easier said than done. Comedy in games is one of the hardest things to pull off because you don't even have control over the timing like you would in anything else. It's the player who does. I think it really works here. And they're allowed to have more fun in this than they are in Mario, core Mario games. Yes, yeah, which as we talk about in the Mario games too, it's just like Mario, you just can't have fun.

Now you're finally free. I was thinking about Louisiana Mansion playing the Rabbids game, the Mario Rabbit's game, which is really good. It shouldn't be. It should be very bad, but it's very good. And in that, Mario doesn't get to act. He's just like, he's either surprised or resolute. Mario will not speak in this game. But when Luigi shows up, he starts getting to do silly stuff with the rabbits in the background.

They're having fun with him. And the Luigi Rabbit is much goofier and sillier. in the Mario one, too. So, yes, that's also a fun game. Like Luigi's Mansion is Resident Evil for kids, that is X-Com for kids. Yeah, but it's also extremely hard. Murder and death for kids in the Mario Pack.

That's all I want from a game. But yes, thanks for listening, folks. This has been Retronauts, and we appreciate you listening to this show. And if you want to support the show, please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts, and join us and be a member

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where can we find you and what do you work on? And I'm part of all of this. This is a co-plug here. I know. I'm letting you do it. Well, yeah, hey, everybody. If you like hearing me and Bob Gasson about things we remember from our childhood in high detail, then you should be listening to our two podcasts. We also

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It'll be dropping after Halloween for non-patrons. But if you want to check out our past Halloween episode, I believe last year we did something about Monster Party. I remember that. And in 2013, I did a Jaws Friday the 13th episode. So I've done, I love doing holiday episodes. So check out the archives at retronauts.com or look in your MP3 device for past Halloween episodes. As for me, you can find me on Twitter as Bob Serval. I'm Bob Mackey, by the way. And yes, we will see you later on another brand new episode of Retronauts. Goodbye. I'm going to be able to be. Life is full of those Ah, moments. Like right after the first stretch and y'all in the morning. Or like standing in the forest alone amid the stillness,

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Price and participation may vary cannot be combined with combo meal. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution

disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build. the border wall becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officer started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Edonohue.