Leaning in with Luigi
Playing Luigi’s Mansion with my son reminded me that sometimes the journey is the destination
I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Luigi, Mario’s taller and greener brother. You know the one: his name, seldom if ever featured on game titles, the one who goes missing for huge chunks or swaths of games and can sometimes feel like an afterthought. He has a perpetual “always a bridesmaid” energy. I consider myself a proud “Year of Luigi” alum, having gobbled up Dr. Luigi and New Super Luigi Bros DLC for Wii U back in 2013. Yet the Luigi’s Mansion games never piqued my interest. I could appreciate the series, certainly, but to actively play them and like them? Not for me.
My children have learned that not all Mario (or Luigi) games are created equal. For every Super Mario Odyssey or Wonder - something akin to open-zone exploration or classic platforming types - there is a game like Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle with no platforming, no jumping, and very few enemies to stomp on. My son was surprised to discover this game’s existence last week: twenty minutes later he reported enjoying walking around, but little else.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie helped to spark my children’s interest in video games and the Mario series last year, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s getting off this train. Hungry for more Mario anything, we checked out the stock at our local library. It’s here where we discovered, among other gems, Luigi’s Mansion 3.
Luigi’s Mansion was released in 2001 as a launch title for the Nintendo Gamecube, and is one of a handful of games in the greater Mario series where Luigi is the main character. Players control Luigi who sets out to investigate a mansion he seemingly won in a contest he never entered. He discovers the mansion was a trap devised by King Boo as revenge against the brothers. Luigi teams up with Professor E. Gadd, who lends his inventions, including a ghost-sucking vacuum to free Mario and others who have been trapped in paintings by King Boo. Players must negotiate puzzles, hunt ghosts, and solve the mysteries of the mansion without relying on Luigi’s jumping or other abilities. The game is short and sweet, a sample of the mayhem to come in the series.
More than a decade later, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013. This sequel would be adapted into the 2015 arcade cabinet of the same name and was recently released as Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD for the Nintendo Switch. Luigi’s Mansion 3 was released for the Switch in 2019, featuring a massive gameworld (17 floors), smart expansions to gameplay elements and the formal introduction of Gooigi, a clone made of ectoplasm. This time, Luigi is searching for Mario and his other friends throughout The Last Resort, a haunted hotel they’ve been lured to as one of King Boo’s latest machinations.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a delight to experience. It’s one of the Switch’s best-selling games, is one of the console’s best-looking, and is the apex of the series. While I had some ideas about the game, I wasn’t sure what to expect when presented with it for consideration by my son. He needed to know why Luigi was upside down and covered in goo. That’s exactly what we set out to do.
The first few floors were easy enough, as we are introduced to the game mechanics: Luigi has multiple lights to deploy, a plunger, and even Gooigi to summon in tight spaces. Even so, I was surprised at how daunting the game quickly felt. Was I prepared to trek across nearly a dozen and a half floors, sucking ghosts and replacing elevator buttons after a series of increasingly difficult boss encounters? Why were there so many gems to collect, and why is Luigi straight up hoarding all this gold? Aside from my ethical concerns, the gameplay itself can be tricky.
My son was managing the basic commands surprisingly well, but the game requires attention to detail to finesse some puzzles or see what’s hiding in plain sight. I couldn’t fudge my way through this game. I needed to be invested in the game’s world in order to get the next elevator button and keep progressing through the story. Buckling down, I turned into a lean-and-mean operation squarely focused on plowing ahead. No gems, no boos, but also…kind of no fun? I felt impatient, quietly wishing my son would move a little quicker or solve a puzzle a little faster.
The eighth floor of the hotel is inexplicably a production studio. In it, Luigi is looking for the ghost director’s megaphone. I’m still not really sure why. It felt as if we were stuck here aimlessly for a few days, spending a handful of gaming sessions poking around before returning downstairs to search for Boos elsewhere. After the third or fourth session of scrounging around this level with nothing to show for it, I was flustered with wasting this time. I looked over at my son to see if he felt the same sense of frustration. Instead, all I saw were stars in his eyes.
I was approaching it all wrong. My son wasn’t playing the game to beat it, he was playing the game because he wanted to be immersed in the world that he imagines in so many ways. I had been chasing down finishing the game as the end point, but I was alone in that journey. Sure, he wants to collect more elevator buttons and “beat” the game, but it’s about so much more than that. He laughs at the physical humor, calls out for “Mario!” in a sing-songy Luigi voice, and cackles at every boss reveal. Playing the game with him, I can almost see the hearts bouncing off the top of his head. Sure, Gooigi melts in water; but spending this one-on-one time with my son? I’m the one melting.
We’ve clocked in plenty of hours - enough to where we ended up picking up our own copy of the game. I’ll never remember the more frustrating moments - well, maybe the ghost janitor boss. What I will never forget is how my son languishes in the professor’s lab, looking at ghosts we’ve collected or rewatching cutscenes a third or fourteenth time. I’ll remember imagining we are in Luigi’s Mansion while outdoors together, pretending to be a ghost running away from his vacuum. I love building a Poltergust together out of household items, and other ways his young imagination continues to explore this exciting world long after our screen time has ended for the day.
It’s taken some time (and encouragement from my wife) to reframe my perspective and focus on what - and why - we are doing it. I don’t need to focus on time management; this isn’t Persona 3. Instead, I am learning to enjoy the game and the time together for exactly what it is. Beating the game isn’t the destination or end point for our adventures. Spending time together is the point.
On Twitter I asked about people’s experiences gaming with their younger kids. It seems we have a generation of gamer parents doing things right, discussing healthy guidelines and playing games as a family: like Minecraft or even some licensed fare like Peppa Pig or Bluey. Others spoke about the importance of co-op, citing Kirby and Forgotten Land and Mario Kart. A few cited the recent TMNT games, which I have been enjoying with my kids. Games like World of Final Fantasy, Super Paper Mario and even Dragon Quest Monsters were suggested, with their cute graphics and accessibility for young readers.
I’m not sure which franchise or hobby is next for my fledgling gamers. We ended up finishing Luigi’s Mansion 3 the other week, and I couldn’t help myself with our follow-up: Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD.
“Mario, help,” indeed.