With Mario & Luigi: Brothership about to come out, Nintendo is giving a second chance to a series that has seen both high and low points and just about everything in between. Needless to say, the larger Super Mario franchise was in no danger following the bankruptcy and closure of AlphaDream, but I would argue that there was a real chance this RPG series would fall to the wayside. Nintendo isn’t afraid to move on from games that don’t see enough success, and the later releases on the 3DS had some rough spots for sure. In the last year, we have gotten big surprise remasters in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Super Mario RPG, but the addition of a new Mario & Luigi RPG might be the biggest surprise.
What made the ship start sinking
If you have paid attention to the timeline for the Mario & Luigi series, you probably know all too well about where things went wrong for AlphaDream. Things started strong with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga on Game Boy Advance, which received a pretty successful remaster on 3DS. While that re-release came after the Switch had launched and was off to a strong start with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, I can understand why they decided to put that game on the 3DS. With that release, every game in the series was playable on that console, and Nintendo was still pretending that the 3DS would be able to continue to live its own life in spite of the Switch being a home console you could play on the go.
“Captain! Iceberg ahead!”
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions was a great way to close out the 3DS despite its poor sales. Sure, Dream Team had its downfalls in over-tutorializing the player, and Paper Jam was just kind of there, but bringing that original game back could have been the way for AlphaDream to get back into its groove. The biggest mistake that would lead to the company’s closure would come a year later with a remaster of Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. Even though the Switch was well into showing it was a successful console, and you could play the original DS version of the game on your 3DS hardware, AlphaDream decided to double down on remaking their classic entries.
The Bowser’s Inside Story re-release led to one of the most well-received games in the entire Mario series getting a remaster that is currently the second worst-selling Mario game of all time behind Mario’s Tennis for the Virtual Boy. That’s how disastrous of a decision doing that remaster was and, unsurprisingly, led to the studio’s closure. That is why Brothership coming out a “short” six years later is one of the bigger surprises to me lately.
Rescued from the depths
AlphaDream may be no more, but Nintendo’s willingness to bring back Mario & Luigi on the Switch shows just how much they believe in this RPG series. Just look at the other recent Mario releases. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is right there with Bowser’s Inside Story as some of the best received Mario RPG games. However, because the original GameCube game took a dip in sales, that series transitioned away from being an RPG for 20 years.
We have seen Nintendo abandon a series if they feel the sales, quality, or ideas are falling off. Chibi-Robo, Starfox, F-Zero, and Metroid 2D games for a long time are just some examples of the company being fine with leaving failing ideas in the past. In many other timelines, I am sure there are plenty of instances where Nintendo would look at the failures of 3DS games and shoot down a new Mario & Luigi game and rather focus on other areas. Think what you will about its review scores, change in art style, and other critiques, but we might be lucky to have Brothership.
