Luigi's Mansion
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| Luigi's Mansion | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Nintendo EAD |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo GameCube |
| Release |  September 14, 2001 November 18, 2001 May 3, 2002 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Luigi's Mansion (ルイージマンション, Ruīji Manshon) is an adventure video game developed by Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube in 2001. It was a launch title for the GameCube, the first major Nintendo console to not have a launch title with Mario as the main star.
Luigi's Mansion is one of the few Nintendo games featuring Mario in which his brother, Luigi, is the main character (the first was Mario is Missing!), as opposed to most earlier Mario titles. The game features a unique set of goals and ways to attain those goals, involving stunning ghosts with a flashlight and promptly sucking them into a vacuum cleaner, which is aptly named by Professor E. Gadd as the Poltergust 3000.
Plot
One day, Luigi received an unexpected message: "You've won a huge mansion!" Naturally, he got very excited and called his brother, Mario to meet him at the mansion.
In his excitement, however, Luigi does not realize that he never actually entered a contest with a mansion as the prize.
Luigi tried to follow the map to his new mansion, but the night was dark, and he became hopelessly lost in an eerie forest along the way. Finally, he came upon a gloomy mansion on the edge of the woods. According to the map, this mansion seemed to be the one Luigi was looking for. As soon as Luigi set foot in the mansion, he started to feel nervous. Mario, who should have arrived first, was nowhere to be seen.
As a ghost lunged at Luigi, an old man, Professor E. Gadd with a vacuum cleaner on his back managed to rescue Luigi from the ghosts, then the two of them escaped.
Professor Elvin Gadd, who lived near the mansion, was researching his favorite subject, ghosts. Luigi told the professor that his brother, Mario, was missing, so he decided to give Luigi two inventions that would help him search for his brother and fight off the ghosts: The Vacuum Cleaner and a Game Boy Horror. While in the mansion, Luigi finds many Mario objects, like his gloves, star, shoe, etc, wich are used by one the ghosts, a fortune-teller, in the house to tell Luigi his fortune. Before he finds King Boo, he has to fight a pianter ghost, who paints a chest with the key to King Boo's room. When he enters there, he sees Mario trapped inside a frame. Then, Luigi talks to King Boo and the frame becomes a Bowser painting, wich sucks Luigi and take him to the mansion's roof. When facing Bowser, he realises that he's not a real monster but a robot controlled by King Boo. After he sucks King Boo, he returns with the painting of Mario to the Professor E. Gadd's laboratory and reverts the ghost-to-painting process, making a painting-to-"ghost" process, so that Mario would be transformed into his real form.
Gameplay
To combat the ghosts, Professor E. Gadd arms Luigi with two of his inventions: a Poltergust 3000 and a Game Boy Horror (a spoof of Nintendo's Game Boy Color handheld).
The Poltergust 3000 is a high-powered vacuum cleaner designed for capturing ghosts and ghouls. When ghosts approach Luigi, he first must shine his flashlight on them, which is seemingly built into the Poltergust. This stuns them, causing them to show their heart in fright. Luigi then has a chance to capture the ghosts by pointing his vacuum at the ghosts and sucking at them until their health reaches 0. However, the ghosts will put up a good fight to not be sucked up. They try to flee from the vacuum's vortex, dragging Luigi around. But if the player tilts the control stick away from the ghosts, Luigi will stand his ground and pull the ghost closer to the vortex, thereby making their health decrease faster. The ghosts are held inside the vacuum until Luigi returns to Professor E. Gadd's hut where the ghosts are then turned into and stored as paintings. When these paintings are made, they are stored on the wall in the gallery.
Later in the game, Luigi locates three mystical medallions which allows him to expel fire, water, or ice from the Poltergust 3000 after first capturing an Elemental Ghost, which are only found near their elements. The Game Boy Horror is a portable device that allows Luigi to search items in the mansion to find out what they are or to find out if a Boo or Portrait Ghost is nearby and if so how to defeat it. It also contains a map of the mansion and lets Luigi contact Professor E. Gadd.
The Mansion
The mansion consists of five floors including the basement and the roof; on these five floors are rooms. When Luigi clears a room of all ghosts, the lights come on and a chest appears. In these chests there are keys, money, or element medals. When Luigi finds a key, his Game Boy Horror automatically tells him which room it will unlock (rather than forcing the player to search for the room the key matches). All rooms with mirrors, except for the Mirror Room, give the opportunity to be transported back to the Foyer in the first floor. By using the Game Boy Horror's focus/check feature on a mirror, Luigi will be transported back to the Foyer.
When Luigi enters a room for the first time, it will usually be dark; within it will be one or more ghosts. Luigi must work out how to defeat them. Some ghosts are not stunned by Luigi’s flashlight, so to combat them, he may have to expel fire, water, or ice from the Poltergust 3000 to stun them. This reveals their heart, allowing Luigi to vacuum them. Once King Boo is defeated, the player is rated on the amount of treasure he or she has found, and a second version of the mansion becomes playable. Depending on the version, the position of everything in the house may be reversed (including portrait ghosts), Luigi may take double damage, and the Poltergust 3000 may be more powerful. Depending on the amount of money you finish the game with, a different mansion is built. The more money you finish with, the better the mansion. A picture of the mansion can be seen in the Gallery.
Reception
| Publication | Score | |
|---|---|---|
| Compilations of multiple reviews | ||
The game was the most successful GameCube launch title, being the third best-selling game of November 2001.[8] The game was one of the first Player's Choice of the console (along with Super Smash Bros. Melee and Pikmin[9]), and went on to sell over 2 million copies in the United States[10]
Reviews were positive, but with criticism upon the game length and repetitive gameplay. Many are hoping that a sequel of some sort is created to give Luigi the credit he deserves.
Development
A game featuring Luigi as the main star has been planned for several years. The original plan involved a game where the levels revolved around a large mansion or complex. Tests were later done with Mario characters in dollhouses and such. Once it was put as a Gamecube project, Luigi was selected to keep the game original and new.[11] The other gameplay ideas, such as ghosts and the ghost-sucking vacuum cleaner, were added later.
While the game was developed, there originally was an underground cave to expand the geographical design and environment. There was also an RPG system that involved updating the stages after performing certain actions, which was later replaced with the idea of focus on the Poltergust 3000 and Game Boy Horror.
The game was first revealed at Spaceworld 2000 as a technial demo designed to show off the graphical capabilities of the GameCube. The FMV footage had several scenes seen in later trailers and commnercials for the game, but never used. This includes Luigi running from an unknown ghost in the foyer, ghosts playing cards in the parlor, and ghosts circling around Luigi, all never to appear in the final release. Soon after its creation, Nintendo decided to make it into a full game.[12]
PAL version
The PAL version of Luigi's Mansion has bonus extras in the Hidden Mansion part of the game. These features were added because people complained about a lack of extras in the NTSC version of The Hidden Mansion. In the PAL version, the Poltergust 3000 is much stronger (approximately 5x), and depletes ghosts' much quicker (excluding the Boos, which are unaffected by the stronger vacuum). The boss fights are also harder, as is the game in general (there are a lot more ghosts per room than in The Mansion).
The requirements for an A rank at the end of the game have been raised as well; the PAL version requires 150,000,000G compared with the NTSC version's 100,000,000G, making it impossible to obtain an A rank in The Mansion. To compensate for this change, in The Hidden Mansion, every hidden Golden Mouse and Money Ghost now gives up a silver diamond when captured. This adds up to make the maximum possible treasure in the PAL version around 187,000,000G.
Beta version differences
In its E3 '01 version, Luigi's Mansion featured different ghosts than the final version. The 3 main ghosts (Orange, Pink, and Blue) were very different looking than their present day forms. The Orange ghost used to be a pink colored ghost featuring smaller eyes and mouth. The tall and thin pink ghost was once an orange lanky ghost with a huge nose. The blue ghost was originally a purplish colored ghost with smaller eyes and mouth. Another ghost which was excluded from the final version was colored dark purple, had a similar look to the pink beta ghost, and was only found in the hallways of the Mansion. The ghost would pop up behind Luigi and scream, causing Luigi to yell in fear and fall to the ground. This would cause 50 HP to be drained from Luigi's health and temporarily shrink his total HP to 50 as well. This behavior is very similar to that of a ReDead.[citation needed]
In very early screenshots (all being the E3 version), there were shots of a timer in the Game Boy Horror, possibly hinting that the game was either going to have a challenge mode or a time limit, but was scrapped in the final version. In other builds, the Game Boy Horror also feature a Game Boy Camera-like effect, so it showed everything it could "see". It is suspected that the Game Boy Horror had at first the time keeping function, and then the Game Boy Camera-like mode, and the onto a different version of the final's GBH. The near final build had more of a cartoony icon set, while the final build has the more realistic icon set.
In the early versions Luigi could interact with more of the mansion's objects, thus having more freedom. One example is that Luigi could be seen sliding down stair railings.
The Poltergust 3000 once featured a "heat meter", showing of how hot it would get from sucking objects and ghosts up. Its gauge went from a level of 1 to 10. Once it got to 10, the Poltergust 3000 would burst into flames, and cause Luigi to collapse onto the floor, also having Luigi lose some of his HP. On the side note, the Poltergust 3000 was more squarish compared to the final's version. Other differences include slight changes in room designs, a beta coin meter, and many other objects.
Recently discovered in the game disc itself was unused graphics possibly from the beta version. They were unused images of Luigi that were supposedly used for the ending of the game. Two of them involved Luigi giving his usual "peace" symbol with his fingers, while the other showed a depressed Luigi holding a flower.
References
- ^ "edge.co.uk/". Retrieved 2007-06-29.
- ^ "IGN review". Retrieved 2007-06-29.
- ^ "GameInformer review". Retrieved 2007-06-29.
- ^ "GameSpy review". Retrieved 2007-06-29.
- ^ "GameSpot review". Retrieved 2007-06-29.
- ^ "Luigi's Mansion Reviews". gamerankings.com. Retrieved 2006-01-20.
- ^ "Luigi's Mansion Reviews". metacritic.com. Retrieved 2006-01-20.
- ^ November software sales charts, GameSpot
- ^ Nintendo Expands Player's Choice Line-up, IGN
- ^ "US Platinum Videogame Chart". Retrieved 2007-06-29.
- ^ "N-Sider: The Making of the Game". Retrieved 2007-08-04.
- ^ "Luigi's Bigger Mansion". Retrieved 2007-06-29.
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