Now That Super Mario RPG And Paper Mario Are Back, Why Not Mario & Luigi?

Nintendo has been on a fantastic run with their revivals of classic Mario RPGs. Between the remakes of Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, we’ve been seeing a satisfying revitalization of Mario’s older role-playing adventures. Without question, this is great news for a fanbase that was soured by not only the lack of new titles but the removal of RPG elements in the latter entries of the Paper Mario franchise.

There is one Mario-based RPG franchise that still lays dormant, however, and that’s the Mario & Luigi franchise. Tied entirely to Nintendo’s handheld hardware, Mario & Luigi was a massively popular series for Nintendo’s portable devices in the 2000s before going the way of the dinosaur in the mid-to-late-2010s. However, now that these two RPG-based Mario franchises have gotten a chance to return, Nintendo should take their chance to bring the Mario & Luigi franchise back.

What Happened to Mario & Luigi?

Mario & Luigi began its journey in 2003 with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. This was one of the early titles by then-newly-formed developer AlphaDream, a Japanese team formed by former members of Square. Not only was Square the team that originally developed Super Mario RPG, but one of AlphaDream’s most notable founders was that game’s original director, Chihiro Fujioka. Fujioka and his team, when creating Mario & Luigi, took a lot of inspiration from Mario RPG and looked to build on its turn-based combat with a touch more action.

The result was a title that would become one of the Game Boy Advance’s most acclaimed games and would sell over a million copies in the United States alone. Furthermore, it established the Mario & Luigi subseries, which would receive its first few new entries on the Nintendo DS in the 2000s. This is where the franchise really started to hit its peak, as 2009’s Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story notably sold over four million copies worldwide and became the highest-selling game across all of Nintendo’s Mario-based RPG franchises.

From there, Mario & Luigi continued its success into the next generation, receiving two new entries on the Nintendo 3DS in the 2010s. While 2016’s Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam – a crossover with the Paper Mario series – was the final original entry in the series, there were two remakes released on the Nintendo 3DS in the late 2010s. This, however, is where the series started to take a downturn, as neither remake was particularly successful in terms of sales. It helps that both came after Nintendo had released the Nintendo Switch, which largely usurped attention and led to a natural decline in interest in the 3DS.

Most notably, 2019’s remake of Bowser’s Inside Story was one of the worst-selling Mario games in general – RPG or otherwise – breaking franchise-low numbers that Mario hadn’t seen since the Virtual Boy. These failures, combined with increasing debts and high development costs, led to the unfortunate closure of AlphaDream, and the series has been dormant since. Still, Nintendo has renewed the trademark in the time since, and a recent Mario RPG-based survey went out recently and made mention of the Mario & Luigi series, indicating that the franchise is still at the back of Nintendo’s mind.

Related

Why Smash Fans Are Hyped About The Super Mario RPG Remake

With the announcement of Super Mario RPG being remade for the Switch, there’s more hope than ever for a fan-favorite to make their way into Smash.

Let’s Give It Another Chance

Even though Mario & Luigi has been gone for a while now, that’s not to say that it doesn’t deserve a second chance. After all, the franchise’s death seems to come from the fact that its final title was largely set up to fail. Being released in 2019 on the Nintendo 3DS – at a time when 3DS interest was at a massive low because of the rousing success of the Nintendo Switch – the likeliness of the Bowser’s Inside Story remake selling remarkably were slim to none. Furthermore, this game was a remake of a Nintendo DS game for a system that was already backward compatible with Nintendo DS games, making it feel largely unnecessary.

The Switch, on the other hand, does not have this same issue. With the exception of Superstar Saga being available in the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pass, none of the Mario & Luigi titles are currently playable on the platform. This means there’s a clear gap that can be filled with the release of a new title, one that could absolutely drive new interest in the franchise. After all, the Switch has a massive install base, and we’ve seen many cases of franchises considered “niche” or “dormant” seeing a massive boost thanks to a Switch release. Bringing back the franchise in earnest with a brand-new title on the Switch feels like it would revitalize the hype for the Mario subseries.

It should also be said that, with its hybrid gaming concept, the Nintendo Switch has shown itself to be a successful place for Nintendo to take its smaller titles and handheld-dominant IPs. Franchises like Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, and Pokémon, all of which saw some of their greatest successes on handheld (and the latter of which seemed to only have mainline games on handhelds), saw even greater jumps in sales and popularity upon releasing on the Switch. Nintendo has shown a willingness to adapt handheld games to the platform, as seen through their re-releases and remakes of titles like The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp, and Mario vs. Donkey Kong, alongside the upcoming Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. A new Mario & Luigi title could slide in just as easily alongside those games.

Furthermore, Nintendo’s aforementioned remakes of Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door – and their respective commercial successes – have shown that there is still interest in Mario-related RPGs. Mario & Luigi has more than enough uniqueness from these other titles to stand out, and it manages to bring its own charm and bouncy aesthetics to carve its own path away from the other RPG titles. It might take finding a new developer to do it, but Mario & Luigi making a comeback would be a fantastic addition to Nintendo’s recent lineup of Mario goodness.

Next

Nintendo Needs To Make Another Mainline Mario Game As Weird As Yoshi’s Island

What other Mario game had you eating psychedelic fuzzies while trying to take care of a shrieking child?