Luigi’s Mansion is Nintendo’s most underrated series and a Halloween classic

The original and scariest installment in Nintendo’s hilarious horror series is now available on Switch, just in time for Halloween.

If you were to travel back to 2002 when the GameCube launched in Europe, the phrase Luigi’s Mansion might just elicit a disappointing shrug. Surprisingly, this sinister adventure led by Mario’s ever-nervous brother was the most prominent first-party launch title for the system, along with Wave Race: Blue Storm, Super Monkey Ball, and Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader.

When you come away from the revolutionary Super Mario 64, at the launch of the Nintendo 64, a horror game helmed by its lesser-known sibling was always going to be considered an inferior offering – and it was, even with Luigi’s bumbling charm and his wizardry with a vacuum cleaner.

However, two decades later, Luigi’s Mansion has become the premiere franchise for Nintendo. The most recent entry, 2019’s Luigi’s Mansion 3, sold more than 14 million copies. While not quite on the same level as Mario or Zelda, it’s superior to Splatoon 3 and Pikmin 4 – but those games are often forgotten, when Nintendo’s most popular titles are played.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is the pinnacle of the series so far, and one of the best games on the Switch, while the newly remastered Luigi’s Mansion 2 is also good and generally considered a step above the original. But the first game was better than you might remember.

Original (latest remastered on 3DS) was released on Nintendo Switch Online this week, and if you want to watch a family comedy horror film for Halloween for one night, this is definitely the best choice.

That’s because it’s the shortest, about six hours, and, in my opinion, the scariest. As a franchise, Luigi’s Mansion takes a kid-friendly approach to horror, with slapstick animation and Luigi’s ghosts pulled straight from Casper, but the original game is more like a parody of Resident Evil – with some of the more spiky and sinister charm not seen in the two sequels.

Along with Resident Evil style animations when opening new doors, the main appeal of the original is its more open maze design. Both sequels (especially Luigi’s Mansion 2) were largely simplified to linear levels, but the first sequel had a stronger emphasis on backtracking and finding keys to unlock doors in connected mansions.

Later entries were more mechanically diverse with their bosses, but in terms of set pieces, some of the most memorable moments were in the first game. The opening fight with a ghostly baby inside his crib is still one of the best, but the encounter with the clockwork soldier, along with a bodybuilder named Biff Atlas, still shines with an unusually unique personality.

The success of Luigi’s Mansion 3 made another sequel inevitable, and it’s exciting to think how impressive a new entry on the Switch 2 would be.

Developer Next Level Games – who made two sequels but not the original – have earned a reputation for their stunning animation work (see the goal celebrations in Mario Strikers: Battle League Football) and, assuming they make their next entry, it’s likely that Luigi’s Mansion 4 will be the first true test of the Switch 2’s graphical capabilities, if it launches before a new Mario or Zelda 3D.

Although the original Luigi’s Mansion had a more mixed reputation, the fourth game could benefit from a return to a less linear structure. The second game was designed for a short burst on the handheld 3DS, but with the Switch 2, the expansive interconnected map will help bring it closer to the original design and make it truly a top-tier Nintendo blockbuster.

Luigi’s Mansion may have started in Mario’s shadow, but it’s one of Nintendo’s most interesting, and underappreciated, left turns in the modern era.

Nintendo’s family-friendly reputation may have some inherent limitations, but much like Splatoon’s spin on competitive shooters, it shows what wonders the company can fear when it slowly turns the doorknob into new territory.

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