Luigi's Mansion (2001)

Before writing, just wanted to say that I did not have this game nor a GameCube console growing up. this is my first time playing this game to a 100% playthrough outside of the previous attempts.

This is not a bad game, and I quite enjoyed it a lot. however, playing it right now, I can see why many people were disappointed during its original launch date as compared to Halo CE or GTA 3 during the holiday season of 2001, as it has fallen a bit short of expectations.

The game is also too short of an experience. I literally had 2 sessions with this game and finished the game in about 6 hours. the power-outage bit took me a tad long because it tests your memorization of the rooms, but on a second playthrough, you will literally run-through the entire game in just over ~3 hours and you're done.

I'm a fan of the game for a few reasons of my own. it has a good learning curve for kids, and teaches them solid skills. you get to learn problem solving skills, some critical thinking skills, and tests your memorization skills. the controls are not bad and more than just fun.

What drags the game down, however, are a few small things. The camera, as usual for a lot of early 3d games, will get in the way multiple times. the game is very short, and doesn't offer much content which does harm the replayability and skills of the game as opposed to something like Super Mario 64.

I still recommend it for at least one time playthrough, but going into it, you will understand why people didn't grab the GameCube as much during launch with this game as the console's front-runner, and why SSB Melee took the lead quickly once it dropped.

This was my first game on the Gamecube and I absolutely loved it then and am happy to say it holds up now. This was Nintendo at their best. Both in terms of creativity and charm. It's kind of a shame how rarely Nintendo will give a well established franchise a genre mix up now. They were very experimental leading up to and through the Gamecube generation of games. Giving us Mario with racing, RPGs and various sports games. While Luigi's Mansion is certainly not Nintendo's first foray into horror (Majora's Mask and even parts of Ocarina of Time both did horror effectively well), it still feels like a very cohesive, and more importantly fun, experience.

While this isn't scary at all, it is firmly spooky and fun. While the writing never feels as clever or funny as Super Mario RPG or Paper Mario, it still manages to be charming and enjoyable. Featuring tons of bad puns for bosses' names (which I'll never complain about bad puns). What makes Luigi's Mansion work is the level design. The Mansion is interconnected and tightly designed for you to explore and backtrack as the game progresses. Overall the layout of the Mansion works, though I will admit some of the backtracking did start to get a bit tedious towards the end of the game when you have to go from the top floor to basement and vice versa a few times. What makes this track tedious is the lack of shortcuts between the floors. Why not include a dumbwaiter or something similar to quickly jump between floors? Would have fit in thematically and made these tedious tracks between floors far less tedious. Also what's a huge missed opportunity, which also would have made traversing the Mansion profoundly more enjoyable and less tedious, is the lack of secret passages! Why would you not include secret bookshelves passage ways and hidden trap doors in a haunted mansion! It's almost a sin.

The game has lots of fun details. Such as how Luigi nervously hums the musical theme while walking through dark and spooky corridors and how it shifts to confident whistling once you make an area safe and bright with lights. Luigi is a total coward but it really makes the experience as a whole more fun and charming given how aggressively unscary the game is a whole. It has atmosphere, but that atmosphere is firmly more charming than bleak or oppressive like you have in Majora's Mask or the bottom of the well/Shadow Temple in OoT. This isn't a criticism, this tone makes sense for a Mario game.

The gameplay is quite fun. Luigi is slow and lumbering, unlike Mario in Super Mario 64, but it works for the game. Giving Luigi's Mansion a unique gameplay loop with it's own appeal and reinforcing how scared and anxious Luigi is. The vacuuming of Ghosts is a fun reference to Ghost Busters and the addition of capturing ghosts and turning them into paintings is a fun collectathon mechanic. Elevated by including a gallery for you to look at and reflect on the bosses. Each painting ghost even includes their own fun bio in the pause menu, adding more charm to the game. The combat of the game does have a bit of skill. Where you need to find and expose a ghosts weakness (which functions as a puzzle that is hinted at by using your Gameboy Horror and pointing it at their heart) then a tug of war ensues. Where the ghost tries to flee from you and you need to tap and shift your joystick in the opposite direction to keep pulling them in as their health drains. This never stopped being satisfying even until the end of the game. It's simple yet engaging and fun. There even is decent variety since each painting ghost requires some sort of puzzle before you can catch them. These never were that hard, but nonetheless still fun and engaging to figure out. The mansion doesn't have too many optional secrets. Only two hidden rooms, but I enjoyed discovering them on my own.

The Boo hunt is mostly enjoyable, but a few of the high health boos (200+ HP) were more tedious than enjoyable to catch. Particularly when they would immediately bolt out of the room and weave between hallways and rooms over and over again. Not a big deal, but still a bit annoying. The Boos in the basement in particular have annoying geography in their rooms and traveling to the hallway sucks because one of the rooms contains big piles of dust you need to suck up everytime to move through it... this is only an issue for like 2 Boos so not a big deal or anything.

Overall this is a fun, short and clever shake up to the Mario franchise and kind of a shame Nintendo doesn't experiment as much as they used to. Most of their experiments had great and very positive results. Case in point with this game.

I decided to replay Luigi’s Mansion - my true childhood obsession - to see if it’s still stood the test of time. It was nice to see some elements definitely still hold up.

The music is great. The mansion’s atmosphere is kinda cozy, and just being there is a very enjoyable experience for me. But, the game is 100% designed for kids. It’s disappointingly linear, there’s not much room for free exploration or true challenge.

It’s clearly taken a TON from Resident Evil and practically made a family friendly survival horror games. There’s some uniqueness in the vacuum mechanic and overall personality, but without my rose colored nostalgia glasses I’m not sure how well it would hold up for other adults. It’s still a million times better than 3 and deserves some praise, for sure.

Game #42/200

This was my first time playing Luigi's Mansion, despite it being one of the highest selling GameCube games and me being a child during the prime of that generation. I was initially surprised by the gameplay of Luigi's Mansion. Pretty much everything about it is odd. The controls are what I would call janky, but they do work pretty well in their stiff/unorthodox way and aren't really a hindrance to the game's enjoyment. You move in Luigi's Mansion really unlike any other Mario game. At the very beginning, I wasn't sure if the gameplay was meant to emulate Resident Evil (there are certainly some similarities). But as I played through this short, fat-free title, I began to realize the mechanics and gameplay loop were fairly unique. In the linear mansion of 40 or so rooms, each room contains a mini-puzzle that requires some minimal figuring out. You have a vacuum, a camera, a few elemental powers, and the ability to knock on things. With those powers, each puzzle in the game is meant to be solved. They are almost all easy (but mostly fun), while a few are thinkers, especially in the beginning. I did find a few annoying and overly reliant on trial and error (one involved a fat ghost throwing fireballs, whom you merely had to dodge for an arbitrary amount of time for example). But the gameplay loop itself was quite fun. Solve a room --> get a key whose associated door is clearly marked on the mini map --> move to that room --> solve a puzzle --> beat a boss --> repeat. This game qualifies as a boss gauntlet, with 20 or so bosses who vary very little other than in their preceding puzzle. This is besides the bosses at the end of areas and the final boss (who was a bunch of bullshit, in my opinion). To defeat ghosts, you need to startle them quickly with your flashlight, suck, then pull in the opposite direction of them. I couldn't recall another game/genre that utilized a similar mechanic, and the fact that it is pretty fun and exciting is pretty typical for Nintendo who likes to keep things fresh.

Luigi's Mansion is such an interesting little game for me. It's like Mario Is Missing but actually good and interesting. I know I didn't cover Mario Is Missing in this retrospective but you get my point.

The launch title for the Nintendo GameCube, you follow not Mario... But Luigi who is tricked by winning a fake contest for a free mansion. You follow him through a haunted mansion on a quest to save his older brother from King Boo. This game had me interested from the start because unlike most games in this retrospective, I actually got to play it on a GameCube since I own the system and game.

That aside, I loved it. I love Professor E Gadd, I love the design of the Mansion. I love that it actually feels like a mansion that would exist in the Mario universe. It doesn't feel imposed or anything. I love that the ghosts all feel like dead Mario characters. They look and feel like they belong.

The attention to detail is amazing. I really like the way Luigi moves and how expressive he is. I find it very interesting how the Poltergust 3000 is designed and how it feels to control. I like the little things like how Luigi will hum the main theme and will get more and more erratic the more scared he gets.

My favorite thing about this game is the progression. It is so satisfying to light up rooms and capture boos and Portrait Ghosts while also collecting a shitload of money and also keys. It really feels like piece by piece you are restoring this mansion.

Luigi's Mansion does have some issues with backtracking and a HUGE issue with saves... But it is a very pleasing experience that genuinely spooked me once or twice. It's a great launch title and a great game even 20 years later.

3/5

Would Recommend

I've been charmed by this game. The comic horror, the animations, the atmosphere, the 3D. Coming a close second was the gameplay, which although satisfying, felt lacking in variety and challenge as the game went on. Thankfully the game is short enough for this not to become a major issue. Plus, this has only wetted my appetite for what's in store in the next two instalments.

Then there's Nintendo's autostereoscopic technology, which wasn't particularly popular among the majority of gamers. I, however, have a soft spot for it, and Luigi's Mansion sense of depth is one of the reasons why. Sure, it doesn't add to the gameplay in any way, but it does add to the world's mystic in a big way.

I've arrived late to the Luigi's Mansion series, but I'm glad I got here, because it has the potential to become one of my favourite series in Nintendo's universe. So, as excitement builds for the new Mario movie due out in 2022, I'll be polishing my 3D glasses, saving my hype and crossing my fingers for a Luigi's Mansion movie.

Luigi's Mansion has long been on my "To Play" list. I love creepy and spooky things, so it seemed right up my alley.

When I first started I LOVED the game. Its ambiance was amazing, creepy architecture, nice soundtrack. I love little touches like Luigi shouting "Mario" every time you click the A button.

The initial game play was quite fun, without the puzzles being too confusing. Explore a bit, find a room with a named ghost, solve the puzzle to catch them, get a key and get told where to go next. Rinse and repeat.

However, as the game continued, it required a LOT of backtracking and by the 6th-7th time of going thru the same hallway I was getting annoyed at random unnamed ghost who kept popping up.

The controls themselves are not as polished as other Mario games I have played. And the camera can really make what should be easy fights hard. Think you are right under that ghost, think again. Trying to use your elemental powers with the vacuum and hit that ghost, oh you aren't actually aiming right at them...

The boss fights, of which there are 4, all were compelling and fun, each challenging different parts of Luigi's gear.

Overall, I'm glad I beat Luigi's Mansion, I loved some of my time with it, while other times it felt more of a chore. I think its worth giving a go for all fans of Mario, but feel free to stop after a few hours.

I first played Luigi's Mansion on GameCube almost exactly 17 years ago. I found it a bit frustrating then, but that shouldn't be surprising... I had never really played an "adventure" game before, and I was probably expecting a more traditional Mario title. But I enjoyed Dark Moon when I played it back in 2013, so I was interested in giving its forebear another try.

And I really liked it! The game is as charming and polished as ever. It uses the handheld's 3D effect really well, but even in 2D I think I prefer the look of this version's textures and lighting to the original. Solutions to the game's puzzles and bosses made me smile more than once. Overall, most of what I remember enjoying about Dark Moon is present here in some form.

I still find the controls for this franchise a bit awkward. And this game took me less than half the time of its sequel to complete (50 Boos, Rank B). But it's a worthy introduction to the series and a unique piece of Nintendo history.

Ever said to yourself: "Super Mario games are a bit repetitive, I wish Nintendo would do something a bit more original." Well, guess what? Luigi's mansion is THE MOST UNIQUE Mario game of all time and Mario is not even the main character. Unfortunately, people didn't respond well at the time and it faded into obscurity. Nowadays it is a CULT CLASSIC, fetching $90 and now has a sequel for the 3DS.

The good: The gameplay is incredibly creative and original. Ever watched Ghostbusters? Ever wanted to be a Ghostbuster? NO? Then leave this game ain't for you.

The whole game revolves around capturing ghosts using a super powered vacuum called the Poltergust 2000. You use a flashlight to surprise the ghosts so they show their heart, then you try to suck them into the vacuum by tilting the control stick in different directions to drag the ghost and prevent it from escaping, sucking its soul away until its HP reaches 0.

To beat the game, Luigi must save Mario from King boo and along the way must capture the escaped portrait boss ghosts, the 100 boos, and collect as much money and treasure as he can find.

With secrets and collectibles hidden throughout the mansion, there is never a boring or uninteresting room in the game.

Furthermore, Luigi has elemental upgrades from fire, water, and ice to defeat elemental ghosts and solve puzzles.

The game is also quite challenging for a Mario game, I still have trouble with a few boss fights. The game is also darker than most Mario games, there is no gore or mature themes, but the sound design, environments, and the stories behind the portrait ghost are very creepy, not to mention the FINAL BOSS FIGHT which is twisted for a NINTENDO GAME.

Luigi hangs himself.

Pure Nightmare Fuel.

The story, while simple and straightforward has an emotional ending. The game just has a never ending charm and atmosphere to it.

The only real downsides to this game are since it was a Gamecube launch title, while the art is good the game itself is not graphically phenomenal and is a touch dated.

The game is one of my personal favorites and objectively it is an awesomely fun game. I cannot see someone not enjoying it. I highly recommend playing it- especially on Halloween.