After the sad closure of long-time Mario & Luigi developer AlphaDream, many fans had given up hope that a new entry in the franchise would see the light of day.
Now, according to a new ‘Ask the Developer’ feature, it seems even Nintendo was close to throwing in the towel before approaching Acquire to commence co-development on Mario & Luigi: Brothership.
We needed to aim for something new that would keep up with hardware advancements while maintaining the appeal of the classic Mario & Luigi games.
Still, we’ll treat this as a nice little success story for now, and we’re thrilled to see Mario & Luigi return on the Switch.
What do you make of Nintendo’s journey in producing a new Mario & Luigi game?
Following the depressing closure of AlphaDream, a longtime developer of Mario and Luigi, many fans had lost hope that a new game would be released.
It appears that Nintendo was on the verge of abandoning the project before contacting Acquire to start co-developing Mario & Luigi: Brotherhood, according to a new feature called “Ask the Developer.”. In the interview, director Haruyuki Ohashi, designer Hitomi Furuta from Acquire, and Akira Otani and Tomoki Fukushima from Nintendo EPD discuss the game’s conception and development prior to its release earlier this year.
The following is what Otani said when asked about the reaction of fans following such a long lag between new releases.
Naturally, after Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, we had been internally debating a new version of the series for a while. Our goal was to create something fresh that would remain appealing to fans of the original Mario & Luigi games while keeping up with hardware improvements. At one point, we thought that there might not be any more games in the series, so we thought about giving up, but it wasn’t easy to accomplish both at the same time.
After much debate, we ultimately made the decision to get in touch with Acquire. We decided to begin collaborative development after several conversations with Ohashi-san, and I thought Acquire might be able to fulfill our goal of creating Mario & Luigi in 3D.
Naturally, maintaining that “Mario & Luigi-like” vibe was also crucial, so we brought on board a few former AlphaDream (4) employees who worked on the creation of earlier games in the series. “..”.
Well, that’s good to hear! Of course, it’s currently unclear if Acquire will work with Nintendo once more after rumors surfaced that Sony planned to buy Acquire’s parent company, Kadokawa Corporation. Even so, we’ll consider this a minor triumph for the time being, and we’re excited to see Mario & Luigi back on the Switch.
If you can, it’s worthwhile to watch the entire interview. During early development, the team decided on an “edgier, more rugged” look for Mario, but Nintendo suggested changing it to make the visuals more recognizable to series fans, according to designer Furuta.
That’s all right, everything works out. Please share your thoughts in the comments section below regarding Nintendo’s process of creating a new Mario & Luigi game.
