Luigi’s Mansion released in November 2001, when I was the ripe ol’ age of 5. It looked like a suitable game for a young child, some comic ghosts and a scaredy cat plumber, Luigi. Oh boy how wrong I was. It’s a good thing I didn’t play it on release date or I might have never would have recovered from the mental scarring it gave me. I didn’t actually play it until years later, my younger brother had received it as a gift for his birthday probably. I’m not quite sure of the timeline at that point, I could have played it at any point between 2004- 2012 (release date of the Wii U). Suffice to say, I was too young to experience the horrors of the game. But they say talking about trauma makes it easier. So here goes…
On an ordinary day, I probably had nothing I wanted to do so I perused the small collection of games my brothers and I had acquired. As children with no income, it was slim pickings and I eventually settled on Luigi’s Mansion. My younger brother absolutely adored this game and he would talk to me about it and I wouldn’t listen because he was young and therefore annoying. But surely, if he could handle it, so could I. In retrospect, he was probably too young to comprehend the psychological terror that is Luigi’s Mansion, rated E for everyone. I popped the disc in and I would never be the same.
The first thing that happened was the familiar Nintendo logo appeared but this time accompanied by a sinister pronunciation. I assumed it was a glitch and loaded in. I started and Luigi was walking through a forest to go to his mansion he won in a contest. Mario had gone earlier but when he arrives, Mario is nowhere to be seen. In fact, none of the toads that were there to help were found. The only thing Luigi saw… was a floating key. I just about threw up, thank goodness it was broad daylight in the real world. Really took the edge off the spooky factor. Luigi, who should have turned tail and run, instead picks up the key and unlocks a door. He enters and is beset upon by ghosts. But Professor E. Gadd saves him. You might remember him from my Super Mario Sunshine post, What Mario Did on His Summer Vacation. If you don’t, you’re probably not a loyal reader and I don’t care about you or your opinion. E. Gadd came up with a vacuum that could suck up ghosts and he uses it to save Luigi. I mean he fails to suck up any ghosts but he distracts it and it forgets Luigi. The duo decides to retreat and heads to E. Gadd’s lab to regroup. E. Gadd decides Luigi should be the one to capture ghosts because he is now too old. He also mentions he saw Mario earlier so Luigi reluctantly does some quick training with the vacuum. E. Gadd decides minimal training is enough and sends Luigi out to fight ghosts.
The game is divided into four sections so I’ll briefly go over them. Section One is the west wing on the second floor. There’s a whole family of ghosts who are stuck over here, you capture the mom, the dad, and then their baby Chauncey. Fun fact: Being named Chauncey is actually worse than being born a ghost, which Chauncey was. Chauncey is substantially more powerful than his parents and shrinks Luigi and tries to kill him. Luigi canonically beats him and returns to E. Gadd to hand over the ghosts… that he turns into paintings…
Section Two is much larger, Luigi makes a mistake and unleashes all the boos like a… boo-foon. I’m so funny. Anyway, now he has to capture all 50 (but really only 40) boos along with every other ghost. Most of them are easy to capture, it’s really the game just padding its content. Nothing really important happens in the second section after that. Except Luigi gains the power to shoot fire and water out of his vacuum. There’s also a dog ghost which sadly debunks the theory that all dogs go to heaven. Luigi then fights a ghost that is a manifestation of fear but goodness it was an easy boss fight. Luigi heads back and E. Gadd turns the ghosts he’s caught into paintings.
Section Three starts with Luigi heading into the bottom of the well where he sees Mario… who has been turned into a painting! King Boo watches it with delight as Mario bangs on his oil prison desperate to get out. Luigi reaches a hand out but cannot reach him from his current position. With his only option to continue, Luigi does so. Luigi does more of the same, gains the power of ice, and finds himself on a balcony where 15 boos combine to form Boolosus. While they could have done this anywhere, they chose to do it where a pointy unicorn statue is which serves as their… unbooing. I’m convinced Nintendo put 15 boos in here so they could stop coming up with name puns. I probably should have mentioned they all have pun names. Like bamboo and gameboo. They’re not good puns. E. Gadd calls Luigi back, yada yada yada, on to area 4.
Luigi climbs the stairs all the way up to the attic when lighting strikes, causing a blackout. So Luigi then has to climb all the way down to the basement to hit the breaker switch to turn the lights back on, then he has to climb all the way back to the attic. If nothing else, Luigi’s calves are gonna be killer by the time this adventure is over. Eventually, Luigi has cleaned out every ghost except for two. The second to last is Vincent Van Gore who is the person ghost responsible for painting all the other ghosts. Which makes his origin really unclear but he serves as the last encounter before King Boo. With his whole army gone, Luigi heads to the formally inaccessible cellar where King Boo waits for him.
King Boo pulls a bad guy and starts monologuing without ever turning around and Luigi, instead of striking immediately, patiently waits for him to finish talking. King Boo then pulls him into a painting to fight him, instead of just turning him into a painting like he did Mario. Kind of unclear on the plan here, not sure why he put himself into a position where he could possibly lose. But hubris shines clear here and Luigi beats him which sets him free but not Mario for some reason. But it’s fine, he grabs his brother (in painting form) and heads back to E. Gadd.
After finishing turning the rest of the ghosts into paintings, E. Gadd throws his machine into reverse and turns Mario back into a human. Luigi is overjoyed that he’s finally done with his horrible adventure… and that his brother is safe. Throughout the night, Luigi was also finding money and rare gems, using this money he’s able to purchase a new home. Depending on how much money he found will affect what size house he gets. Or if you finish at a low amount of money the mansion will simply disappear, leaving behind a green tent. You can see all the endings here.
I remember that being the scariest eight hours of my life. But I definitely didn’t throw the game into the ocean when I finished.
Metacritic gave this game a 78, presumably after they finished recovering from trauma.
I made a video about this game, watchable here.
RatedB 