Luigi’s Mansion and Negative Nostalgia

When you’re a video game liking kid, the possibility of new games to play isn’t always confined to the glass box game prison of Walmart. There exists imagined versions of games you’ve already experienced in your video game liking childhood.

One such imagined game for myself was finding Luigi hiding somewhere in Mario 64 and uses his higher jumps and slippery controls to pull off crazy feats of cartoon parkour. Luigi isn’t in Super Mario Sunshine either, where it would have been interesting to see how his unique handling would’ve paired with the added element of FLUDD. Luigi is the B in SMB, yet he was side lined when Mario went 3D, or so I thought as a Mario Sunshine loving six year old with no internet access.

It seems that Nintendo had released this “imagined” game. This became indisputable fact when I caught a glimpse of Luigi’s giant face from behind a sheet of Walmart insured glass.

It was real, I knew it!

Luigi was getting his own Mario 64, but he was exploring a haunted house instead of Peach’s Castle. Well, not exactly. Unbeknownst to six year old me, Luigi’s Mansion predated my beloved Mario Sunshine, and in fact was a launch title for the GameCube. But that didn’t matter once I turned the game on. The atmosphere was abrasive, dangerous even. The sky was dark and green with swollen storm clouds, wind and rain and distant voices of unknown creatures echo through the speakers. How themed could these platforming sandbox levels possibly be? So themed that there weren’t even any levels to speak of.

When I first controlled Luigi in this game, my gamer fight to flight kicked in and I fled. Why? Because I pressed the A button and my character didn’t JUMP. The sirens wailed throughout my brain, every gamer instinct collected in my limited existence was repulsed by this exclusion. What else can one even do in a video game besides jump? Jumping is the Bread of video games, at least it was to children like myself who primarily played 3D platformers. Shooting is probably the real bread of the video game world. Luigi’s mansion seems to exist somewhere in between the two breads. The world design of a jumper with the maneuverability (Or lack thereof) of a shooter. What that equation gave us was decidedly not Mario 64. My kid brain had no reference for what I was playing, and that made me impatient with the game my first go at it.

You don’t have a gun in Luigi’s Mansion. You don’t have a water jet pack either. You have a vacuum that sucks ghosts. This system employs many shooter mechanics like strafing and general aiming. Luigi also moves slowly and with the turning of a tank. Reflexes aren’t tested so much in terms of movement anymore, but in exposing the environment of absolutely all of it’s secrets, mostly through sucking and shaking money out of the dank and dusty Mansion walls.

Sucking and shaking isn’t jumping, however it is a means of frequently engaging with what was then and continues now to be a beautifully rendered world. These prestige critic-bait graphics were the sheep’s clothing the wolf of limited game potential walked in. Being slow, exacting, and reliant on varying gadgets (like 2, but still) that use every button on GameCube controller is the name of the game here.

Luigi’s Mansion is most similar to Mario 64 in their shared status as launch titles. Luigi’s Mansion shows the player everything the GameCube controller is capable of. It is built, like it’s predecessor, to showcase every facet of this next generation of console gaming. The reality of this particular “next generation” was not as dramatic as it was in 1996 when the power of technology allowed developers excess to a whole new axis of movement. The GameCube didn’t exactly have more axes to add, so the wow factor is predominantly dependent on added detail in the rendering of it’s world. Another feather in the game’s hat initially was how it showcased lighting techniques not possible on the previous generation of hardware.

So detailed environments and advanced lighting are nice, but my kid brain was interested more in what I was doing in a given game rather than what I was seeing. The aesthetics of this game are it’s most enduring features in retrospect. The mansion’s many hallways, dining rooms, bedrooms, and more all have a distinct visual character that read like Mario themed Halloween dioramas. Many elements not a part of my gaming DNA are held paramount in Luigi’s mansion. It’s a focused and consistent experience with one setting that is allowed to evolve and reveal itself as something more than a dark and rainy Peach’s castle.

The expectation of a traditional Mario action game actually helps Luigi’s Mansion in retrospect, as it subverts the form of Mario spin off and instead becomes a game of it’s own. A Luigi game. The New Super Mario Bros. Series may be more up my alley in terms of moment to moment gameplay, but they all take the dullest possible approach to the Mario world. Luigi’s Mansion is specific to it’s character in a way that enhances the way you engage with the tried and true world of Super Mario.

Revisiting Luigi’s Mansion in a world where I have completed several games with no jump buttons, it’s unique set up proves a little more appealing. The experience is like a family friendly Resident Evil game with more collectibles and easier puzzles. The family friendly spooky vibe strikes a great balance in the same way that Disney’s haunted mansion was able to make the undead super cute.

The gameplay however still leaves me a bit cold. Older age and a good bit of cynicism cue me into the more launch title characteristics of it’s design. Namely the environments and your interactions with them too low a ceiling. The gameplay structure is relatively open, but progression is often reliant on slowly combing through every aspect of the same few environments before finally finding the thing you need to open that door and suck up that ghost. The world is all connected, but you can only really solve any given situation in the limited ways that the vacuum can move.

Using the vacuum also makes the pace a bit unappealing as you’re constantly waiting for ghosts to appear or reappear. This is fine in the beginning when ghosts have low health, but the stronger ghosts toward the end quickly become tedious to fight because of their constant escaping. The combat is also confined to a low ceiling. Additional items are introduced for the vacuum, but they don’t evolve the combat beyond the wait and strike mechanics we’ve already seen.

So is Luigi’s Mansion a good game sans the expectations it’s father series has placed on it? Of course. It’s just not a game I enjoy very much, mostly by virtue of the slow and tedious adventure game approach it takes to progression. Getting stuck and searching for various “special” objects like keys and Boos drains on me after a while and I find myself struggling to commit to completion, even though the game is only about five hours in total length.

I have a negative nostalgia for Luigi’s Mansion. It was the first piece of media that I was genuinely disappointed by. Playing Luigi’s mansion made me understand that video games were all different, and that quality was not something that could be reliably found in a piece of art merely by virtue of it existing. Luigi’s mansion wasn’t to my taste then, and today it still leaves me wanting to play a more traditional Mario experience. But is that because of the game, or is having a slight disdain for it my happy place? Is my disappointment with this game so deeply tied to my understanding of the medium of video games that I’m now incapable of even enjoying it as an isolated experience? It would certainly seem so.

Luigi’s Mansion is not a game I enjoy on a basic entertainment level, but I’m glad it exists. Action games starring the extended Mario cast like Warriors Land and Yoshi’s Island have a solid entry in this game, if only by virtue of being unique and different. Luigi’s Mansion is a slower, more atmosphere based experience for Nintendo fans looking to take a break from jumping. Sometimes, you just gotta take a stroll through a garden and vacuum up the roses, ya know?