Games of the Abstract: Luigi's Mansion Arcade (2015)

 

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

One to Two Players

Arcade

 

This is where I admit a complete lack of interest in Mario himself as a video game character. I like that the mascot for Nintendo, the Disney of video games, is a full figured Italian plumber living in a kingdom full of sentient fungus, which does not suggest a corporate mascot and cannot be undercut as anything below surreal in a good way. He is however doomed as with so many protagonists that he has to be a cipher, where the video game franchise for me is far more interesting for the side characters, allowed their quirks, not just the fan speculated ones, but the canonical ones too. It says a lot that you can have a Bowsette, a non-canonical creation, managing to become a huge meme when she came to be in 2018^1ab, but even the existing characters that are part of the franchise gained a lot, all from not being the centre of a company, through fans of Nintendo licenses and the games themselves. They even get their own videogames too - Toad, a sentient fungus gets to be an explorer, whilst Princess Peach got a 2005 Nintendo DS game where she did not have to be the damsel in distress but the playable lead rescuing Mario. Whilst Mario gets voiced by Chris Pine², his brother Luigi, originally in the position as the second player in Mario Bros. (the 1983 Game & Watch handheld and the 1983 arcade game), gets to be a ghostbuster.  That he was portrayed as the brother in the shadow in Mario, the butt of jokes of being lame, has made him a sympathetic figure, and that idea of him taking on the supernatural despite being scared of them managed to lead to a franchise, this subject for today's review an arcade tie-in.

Luigi’s Mansion started as a 2001 launch game for the Nintendo Gamecube, a spooky haunted house game where, with the help of a figure named Professor Elvin Gadd, an eccentric inventor, Luigi has to face ghosts with something more practical and less dangerous than an "unlicensed nuclear accelerator" (a proton pack), a vacuum cleaner redesigned literally to hover up the dead. The morbidness to this premise, ghosts (or “Boos”) found throughout Mario, is to be found here, despite Luigi’s Mansion Arcade being a cutesy if frantic on-rails “hover-em-up”, taking the character and stage designs from the 2013 Nintendo 3DS game Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, and changing them into a first person arcade game from a third person one. It was found, when Castlevania characters were included as downloadable characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)³, how the teaser had Luigi’s soul being briefly reaped by the Grim Reaper, Luigi with the advantage Mario cannot as a mascot in having some grim humour and macabre content the red 'tache brother would not be allowed to have.

“Green ‘tasch” (as the final boss here calls him) is able to get away with a game where, whilst scared throughout in the cut scenes, he is going through three spooky locations still sucking up the phantasmagoric into a hover bag which, seeing the ghosts enter it, seems to be a green swirling vortex of infinite size and doom. Despite being a game openly recycling bosses and levels from a handheld game, this arcade game is a Capcom production, which is also a distinction of great note. Even as a spin-off, this is of note knowing Capcom once skated on thin ice with Nintendo. A third party developer who worked on the NES and SNES greatly, the Nintendo 64, despite one they released for, led to Capcom being drawn to the the Sony Playstation, and even when they returned together for the Gamecube, it led to the infamous “Capcom Five”. Meant to be five exclusive killer apps for the console, one was never to be released, the one true killer app in Resident Evil 4 (2005) was released on other consoles, and the only exclusive P.N. 03 (2003) is tragically maligned as a flawed but underrated arcade throwback. It is nice they kissed and made up, titles like this gaining a lot from Capcom’s extensive legacy in arcade games, a first persona on-rails game which is child friendly for Nintendo but has a unique gimmick as a result of this factor.

This is a short game, a real throwback to arcade games of the past, yet a modern equivalent released in the 2010s, consisting of three stages only with three bosses - a big brained bookworm, three vindictive sisters, and an angry King Bo who causes one to question is Luigi is the good guy in this. The first in your standard haunted house (Gloomy Manor) is the only one with multiple routes, two sections where you can take different paths, which is never continued, but does mean the beginning level where you are getting used to the style has a personality. The second level, Old Clockworks, is an old clock factory for medium difficulty, whilst the final level is the ultimate gothic castle “Treacherous Mansion“. Throughout you are on a fixed trajectory, but rather than ammo, you have your trusted vacuum cleaner, aka. the "Poltergust 3000" to use the official name. There are two different settings – normal mode, where you need to use the Strobulbfirst , aka. the flash light attachment, before you can use the vacuum function, whilst the Simple mode means you just can fire the normal trigger. Honestly however, the flashlight feels practical to use as, as you go on, the function stuns ghosts, important as there becomes more and more of them part place onscreen. Unlike a regular first person on-rail shooter too, where one shot takes a goon out, even goons here have numerical life bars, requiring it being drained to zero before they get sucked into the Poltergust, usually involving indications to pull the cabinet’s plastic gun left and right like a fishing rod. Eventually you have to stop mid-suck to stop other ghosts attacking you, breaking up and weakening them all until all go in the dust bag, as it is possible to have more than one in the pull of the cleaner fated to be sucked in.  There are also the flash grenades which, with only two available per life and with none you can collect, stun enemies on mass but have this restriction in their number to mind. Their limit is a huge factor, as is the fact that, in the wild as a sit-in arcade cabinet with a plastic bench for two players, the button may be further front on the machine than wished, which means you could find yourself reaching for the big button (or using a foot inappropriately) to save your skin in tense situations.

Despite their blobby appearances and bright jelly baby colours, to avoid contemplating the afterlife in the world of Mario, these ghosts as more types appear became a challenge when they start ganging up on Luigi or his colour swapped second player duplicate. The standard green grunts even start using shields or wearing buckets on their heads, effective against your cleaner, giving way for blue poltergeists, cowards who hide behind things throwing projectiles at you, to red bruisers who punch hard, to giant rotund yellow ones. Spiders, rats and other critters have to be dealt with too. The consultation is that, unless you play with the flashlight needing to be used first, the Poltergust 3000 has no overheating function or limited ammo, able to be aimed at anything, even at stray scenery and props acquiring gold coins which count up as points and possible extra lives after finishing levels.

It was a game clearly designed for two players as by the Treacherous Mansion level, you are swarmed by enemies, but the gameplay is fun. This entire gameplay mechanic also had the potential to be expanded upon in sequels or other licenses, as by forcing the light gun to become a form of delayed tractor beam, you are forced to play the game with the quick instincts of a light gun game but with a lot of strategy. Once I got into the groove, it became a game of juggling between ghosts you are trying to hover up, stunning incoming ones on their attack animations in-between eventually consuming them all. Even in this short format, where a lot of the challenge (for an arcade machine you still find at British sea sides) can be arguably based on a machine designed to have many coins put into it to progress, it has a lot of creativity to it from this. The aesthetic undeniably, even though my Disney comment is with some sarcasm, shows Nintendo became as widely known as they are for a great creativity in the look and tone of their games, rigidly kept to here by a third party. Whilst ironically they are a company, despite some arcade background, more known for their consoles and console software, their premise here through Capcom shines through, and between three levels, this is a fun experience that I would gladly have more of the ilk of in arcades.

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1) Links:

A: The original "Bowsette" twitter comic, by haniwa (@ayyk92), posted September 19th 2018.

B: Why is ‘Bowsette’ so popular? She offers something for everyone, written by Ana Valens for Daily Dot, published on September 29th 2018.

2) It’s-a me, Chris Pratt: Super Mario Bros cast announcement sparks ridicule, written by Michael Sun for The Guardian and published September 24th 2021.

3) Castlevania’s Simon Belmont and Richter Belmont join Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, written by Allegra Frank for Polygon, published on August 8th 2018.