Next year, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD will release on Nintendo Switch, bringing the 3DS game to a new audience. When the game was first released back in 2013, it arrived more than a decade after the GameCube original. In a new video from Did You Know Gaming, it was revealed that developer Next Level Games initially struggled to figure out a concept for the sequel. After watching episodes of Mr. Bean, Next Level Games decided to build the game’s humor in a similar fashion. In an interview with Wired at the time, director Bryce Holliday stated that Luigi has a “Mr. Bean-esque kind of hapless reluctant hero side to him.” It might seem like a strange approach, but it clearly worked as the resulting game was a critical and commercial success!ย
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Proving Themselves to Nintendo
While Next Level Games settled on a comedic take on the property, there were other ideas shared in the game’s planning sessions. Initially, there were ideas for a detective take, as well as a top-down dungeon crawler in a fashion similar to Gauntlet. However, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto wanted the team to make something closer to the first game. That approach likely proved to be for the best, as the GameCube launch title has become something of a favorite over the years.ย
Following their success on Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, Next Level Games developed a closer relationship with Nintendo. The team had clearly proven themselves, and went on to make a third game in the series, which released on Nintendo Switch in 2019. In 2021, Nintendo purchased Next Level Games. The studio’s current project is the Switch remake of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, which will arrive in summer 2024.ย
2024 Nintendo Switch Games
A new year is just around the corner, and Nintendo already has several first-party games set to release on Switch. In addition to Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, the company will release Another Code: Recollection on January 19th, Mario vs. Donkey Kong on February 16th, and Princess Peach: Showtime! on March 22nd. A remaster of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is also coming in 2024, but no release date has been announced just yet.ย
We should have a better idea what to expect from Nintendo by sometime in February. Historically, the company tends to have a Nintendo Direct presentation that month. There have been a lot of rumors that a new Nintendo console will be released in 2024, but the company has yet to make it official. March will mark the seventh anniversary of the Nintendo Switch, which is a pretty long lifespan for a video game system. If a new console really is coming from the company in 2024, we’ll likely learn about it early in the year, to give people time to save up for the new system, and for retailers to start taking pre-orders.ย
Are you surprised Mr. Bean was the inspiration for Luigi’s Mansion 2? Do you think the two characters have a lot in common? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter atย @Marcdachampย or on Instagram atย @Dachampgaming!
[H/T: Nintendo Life]
