The ‘Mario and Luigi’ series was almost cancelled by Nintendo.
The Mario and Luigi series was almost cancelled by Nintendo
The RPG sub-franchise - which began with 2003’s ‘Superstar Saga’ - was first helmed by developer AlphaDream until the studio was closed in 2019, and Nintendo producer Akira Otani has now revealed the series could have faced cancellation had Acquire not got involved in the most-recent ‘Brothership’.
In Nintendo’s ‘Ask the Developer Vol. 15, ‘Mario and Luigi: Brothership’ – Chapter 1’, Otani explained: “Of course, for a long time, we'd been having a number of internal discussions about a new instalment in the series following ‘Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam’ (2015).
“We needed to aim for something new that would keep up with hardware advancements while maintaining the appeal of the classic ‘Mario and Luigi’ games.
“It wasn't easy to achieve both at the same time … We kept trying various things, but there was a time when we thought it might not be possible to make any more games in the series and considered giving up. There were a lot of discussions, and eventually we decided to reach out to Acquire.”
Otani added Nintendo still felt it was “important” to retain the “feeling” ‘Mario and Luigi’ had become known for, and so kept on four former AlphaDream developers for ‘Brothership’.
He explained: “Of course, it was also important to keep that ‘Mario Luigi’-like feeling’, so we also had some former AlphaDream staff members who were involved in the development of previous titles in the series join the project.”