Luigi’s Mansion Could Have Been A Nintendo 64 Disc Drive Game

It’s no secret that a good amount of games later released for the Nintendo GameCube were originally planned for a Nintendo 64 release, and Luigi’s Mansion is no different.

This, as well as a whole bunch of other interesting information about the iconic Luigi-led GameCube title, comes in the form of a fantastic YouTube video from Video Game Docs, a high-quality documentary/video essay channel dedicated to the video game world by Justin Schofield.

If you’re not too well-versed in any of Nintendo’s failed projects, the Nintendo 64 Disc Drive (otherwise known as the 64DD) was a magnetic floppy disk drive peripheral for the Nintendo 64. It was announced in 1995, prior to the launch of the actual console in 1996, but it didn’t actually get a release until three years after in 1999.

In total, the 64DD only had 9 games released in floppy disk form, with one extra disk being the Randnet Disk, a dialup utility disc that allowed for the Nintendo 64 to connect to the internet through a dedicated online service called Randnet. There were a LOT of games that were planned for release as floppy disks for the 64DD, but they either were just released on cartridges, canceled entirely, or later released on other more powerful consoles. Luigi’s Mansion was rumoured to be one of the latter.

Hideki Konno, the director of Luigi’s Mansion, has stated in previous interviews that the prototyping stages of Luigi’s Mansion saw it as a Nintendo 64 title, but these prototypes have been connected to Nintendo 64DD prototypes of ‘a game where the levels revolved around a large building complex or mansion’. Putting the dots together, it’s believed that these 64DD prototypes were in fact for Luigi’s Mansion before it was ultimately moved to the GameCube.

The video itself also includes a bunch of really cool tidbits about Luigi’s Mansion in the development stages, as well as a rundown of the game itself and the future of the series. Here are just a few more bits of info:

• The setting of Luigi’s Mansion went through a few different changes. Originally, it was going to be a huge Japanese-style ninja house, and then they shifted it to an apartment complex before finally falling into the American-style mansion that we see in the final product. As well as this, the original plan for the mansion was for it to be a dollhouse before they eventually decided to make it a full-sized haunted house when the aim of the game switched up.
• As Luigi’s Mansion was a launch title for the Nintendo GameCube while also being a game originally planned to have more limited capabilities, the designers behind the game ended up having a say in what the GameCube would need in order for Luigi’s Mansion to work. This meant that the GameCube was capable of ‘dynamic lighting with really crisp shadows’ thanks to Luigi’s Mansion.
• Luigi’s Mansion was almost Mario’s Mansion, as Mario was slated as the main character while the game was still supposed to be set in a dollhouse. However, because Mario is considered to be a pretty courageous guy who wouldn’t be afraid of ghosts and it ‘wasn’t part of his personality to be surprised or frightened’, they decided to make Luigi the protagonist. This was thanks to the fact that Luigi had already garnered a ‘coward’ reputation in little bits of Nintendo media in the past.

That’s just a fraction of the really good stuff mentioned in this video essay, so I highly recommend giving the full 35-minute video a watch. It’s a solid conglomeration of interviews and information about Luigi’s Mansion, as well as a great exploration of one of my favourite games for the GameCube! Consider this a Ruby Recommends Redux.