Your Favourite Protagonist

From Bowser as my favourite antagonist, you might be expecting my favourite protagonist to be Mario which would follow some logic but it's not. Of the two Mario Brothers my favourite has always been Luigi, from the first moment I got to play as him, which I believe was in Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels.

By now everyone probably knows the long and storied past of the sequel to Super Mario Bros, released as Super Mario Bros 2 in Japan but never released in Europe or the USA, until many years later when it was included in Super Mario All Stars. The rest of the world instead at the time got a reskin of a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic using Mario sprites.

The Lost Levels as it was referred to in All Stars, the true sequel allowed the player to choose to play a Mario Game or a Luigi Game, if the player chose the latter not only could they play as Luigi but the stages themselves were altered to better fit his play style. Luigi became a favourite of mine but wouldn't get his own game until the launch of the Nintendo GameCube when controversially at the time no Mario Game was released at launch, instead Luigi's Mansion was released which came bundled with most GameCubes.

As I said before, when I first got my GameCube I swapped out Luigi's Mansion from the bundle for Sonic Adventure 2, so it wasn't until seven months later when I got Luigi's Mansion as a Christmas present that I eventually played the game. I fell in love with the mechanics of the game, essentially Luigi's version of Ghostbusters. The Luigi's Mansion series would go on to expand on Luigi's character and establish a personality and life experience beyond that of being Mario's brother - although Mario does make an appearance in each game although briefly.

I would like to see Luigi have more games dedicated to him, I know if you complete Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii rather tongue-in-cheek you can unlock "Super Luigi Galaxy" which lets you replay the game as Luigi but I don't think that actually counts. I also never owned a Wii U so haven't played the New Super Luigi U expansion for New Super Mario Bros U but I gather that's pretty much the same deal, identical to the base game just with Luigi swapping places with Mario.

I want more Luigi content, I would like it to come for the Switch 2 considering it will be compatible with the original Switch catalogue another new Luigi game could be on the horizon. There are already rumours of a Luigi's Mansion 4 but it's getting harder to discern fact from fiction online, until there's an official announcement I don't trust anything I read anymore.