Game Review: Luigi's Mansion (GCN)

Few video games in the Super Mario franchise present as strong of a divergence from the typical Mario title as Luigi’s Mansion (2001) for the Nintendo GameCube does. Luigi’s Mansion is a third-person action-adventure game, and one of its most noticeable aspects is that it is the second game in the franchise in which Luigi is the protagonist instead of his older brother, Mario (the first being Mario is Missing, an educational game for the NES and SNES). With the recent announcement of a Luigi’s Mansion 3 for the Nintendo Switch, I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit this game. I found that in addition to creating a fun, unique gameplay experience, the formal and narrative aspects of the game lend themselves well to a gendered analysis.

At the beginning of the game, we see the first of many horror video game tropes, a haunted mansion, which Luigi believes that he and his brother have won in a contest. Luigi hesitantly, with a terrified look on his face, walks through a forest of dead, gnarled trees and up a path into the mansion. We quickly learn that it is infested with ghosts, as Luigi is saved from one by Professor E. Gadd, an old man who has been capturing ghosts and turning them into paintings for years. However, King Boo has freed all of Gadd’s portrait ghosts, who are now taking refuge in the mansion. So, the player takes control of Luigi and must explore the mansion to capture these ghosts, defeat King Boo, and rescue Mario. This plot already departs from the typical damsel-in-distress narratives that most Super Mario games follow, in which Mario must rescue Princess Peach from the clutches of his main nemesis, Bowser. Luigi, who is often presented as a clumsy, less masculine, less heroic second fiddle to his brother, is now elevated to the role of protagonist, in a new setting dominated by psychological terrors instead of just physical threats. Moreover, through discovering that King Boo created the Mansion, and has trapped Mario in a painting, the player sees the masculine hero that that they are used to controlling in a new light, becoming a victim of his own hubris.

The game’s subversion of traditional masculinity is even more visible in its design and play elements. In most Mario games, the player exerts a mastery over their environment by running through levels as Mario, attacking enemies by jumping on their heads, hitting them with a hammer, shooting fire at them, etc. In Super Mario 64, for instance, the player navigates the 3-dimensional landscapes through tactile platforming, and defeats bowser by physically dominating him (grabbing his tail and launching him into explosives). Even in less linear RPG-style Mario games like Paper Mario, the emphasis in combat is placed on speed and physical prowess through mechanics like weapons, items and damage points. However, when taking control of Luigi, the player is quick to learn that they cannot speed up their movement or jump, and are instead confined to what can best be described as scurrying and sidestepping through narrow hallways and dark rooms infested with ghosts. What is usually the main button in a Mario game (the A button) carries a useless function of Luigi shouting his brother’s name to no avail. When I played this game as a kid, I remember repeatedly pressing the A button, hearing the desperation in Luigi’s voice and hoping that it would serve some purpose, causing Mario to pop out of the shadows. When standing still, a look of sheer terror is frozen on Luigi’s face as he hums along to the game’s main theme. These changes in the game atmosphere and mechanics that Mario fans are used to does not merely serve to further emasculate Luigi, but more importantly, they disorient the player by introducing them to a new, more careful way of navigating space in a Mario game (or in this case, a Luigi game), placing them in the shoes of a protagonist that less confidently exerts control over his surroundings.

However, as one plays through the game and gets used to these new mechanics, so too does Luigi, a character who has often been in the shadow of his brother, gain confidence by progressing through the different floors of the mansion, allowing him to develop his own alternative form of masculinity. For instance, the main “attack” in the game is shining your flashlight on a ghost’s heart and then quickly sucking them up with the Poltergust 3000 (a vacuum cleaner designed for catching ghosts). The typical ghosts do not immediately reveal themselves while wandering through the mansion, but instead appear suddenly in dark rooms, causing Luigi to gasp. The portrait ghosts have more distinct personalities and are more difficult to defeat, since causing them to reveal their heart often involves solving a puzzle in their respective room that catches them off guard. This could mean hitting the pool playing ghost with billiard balls, or sucking up the dinner of the heavyset ghost, for instance. When first getting used to this attack, I remember jerking the control stick around trying to not to lose my hold on the ghost. If one does so, Luigi falls over and the ghost disappears. However, over time, the vacuum attack becomes more manageable and as second nature as jumping on a Koopa. Likewise, when Luigi defeats a portrait ghost, he confidently spins the Poltergust around and chuckles to himself, revealing a brief moment of self-assurance. In the typical Mario game, Mario attacks enemies directly, except for boos, which must either be avoided (in most games) or attack from the side (Mario 64). In Luigi’s Mansion, however, where boos and other ghosts are the main enemy, Luigi develops his own method of fighting them that relies on intelligence and the use of a repurposed cleaning device rather than his own strength. Thus, the mode of defeating enemies in the game, leading up to the final confrontation with King Boo, is an exercise in facing one's fears, another horror trope successfully adapted into the Mario universe.

While Luigi’s Mansion is not a purposeful deconstruction or even a critique of masculinity, it presents an alternative avenue for fans of Super Mario through its narrative and gameplay style. Most games in the series allow for an unquestioning form of platforming and combat with the goal of rescuing the princess, whereas Luigi’s Mansion forces the player to reorient their play style and patiently maneuver their way around a precarious, disturbing environment as the less traditionally masculine number two. This experience both creates a newly enjoyable and rewarding gameplay style and elevates Luigi to a role in which he can defeat enemies in a way that his more successful older brother had not been able to, and thus ultimately come to his rescue.