"Hey Luigi!" Luigi’s Mansion… There’s just something about the original
that I can never shake. The game itself is short and sweet, but I
find myself wandering these haunted halls time and time again. Honestly, it’s one of the smallest maps
for any game truly. The entire playable area for the game could
fit inside of one level within any other Mario game. It takes less than a minute to traverse the
whole mansion horizontally. Generally an area like this… Something this small, would cause one to grow
bored with it. But here we are again. Once fall rolls around I’m back in these
haunted halls on the GameCube. But I think there’s something neat about
that. This house, which would just be a single dungeon
in any other game, has enough pull for me to revisit it yearly… And every time I do there’s something new
to discuss. From lost coins in the void, to mysterious
winds that pick up our player and spit them out of bounds. To the hypothetical out of bounds areas that
were scraped from the game that still contain camera data. There’s always something new… And this time is no different. This is the story of how people thought you
could unlock Mario in Luigi’s Mansion… And the true origin of Gooigi. When the Gamecube launched, we found our two
favorite plumbers tossed into bizarre adventures. Super Mario 64 left us empty handed with all
the Luigi rumors that overtook the game. So when we found out Luigi would be starring
in his own adventure again, it was honestly pretty shocking. My last experience with that was Mario is
Missing… And we all remember how that went. Super Mario Sunshine was also in the works
too - so it was neat to see both brothers utilizing new devices instead of just their
normal run and jump mechanics. But there was a year long span between these
two games and a question started to burn inside of us. We had been all over this mansion - top to
bottom, clearing it many, many times. But something was missing. And that was Mario. Now I know I’m not alone when I say this:
Some of that L is Real 2401 magic was still floating around in my head. We all wanted to believe that Luigi was unlockable
in Super Mario 64… But now we wanted to believe that Mario was
unlockable in Luigi’s Mansion. The urge wasn’t as strong and a lot of us
had dial up internet by this point, but for some reason the idea still popped in our minds. Now that we were older though, we weren’t
exactly having lunch table conversations about it. And I think that’s exactly what makes this
whole concept even more mysterious than the wild goose chase that L is Real took us on. Luigi was never seen in Super Mario 64 and
we wanted to believe he was there… Whereas Mario appeared at the end of the game
in Luigi’s Mansion, right before a bonus mode was unlocked. This Hidden Mansion was confusing to a lot
of us especially those in the United States. For those of you outside of the country, perhaps
it wasn’t so much. Here in the states though, it was kind of
hard to tell what exactly was different about the hidden mansion. It looked exactly the same… So it was perplexing. Since we were already pretty good at the game
at this point, a lot of the ghosts didn’t deal damage to us since we knew how to defeat
them. Nor did we notice that poltergust was a bit
stronger. These were the only real two changes to the
mansion. It played and felt exactly the same so its
purpose was really confusing. At the time we had no idea that in other versions
of the game, the Hidden Mansion was a lot different. In the PAL version of the game, the Hidden
Mansion was actually mirrored as a level. Everything was essentially flipped, which
made the game immediately feel like the Hidden Mansion was an advanced form of the adventure. Not only that, but there was an increased
number of ghosts, the boss battles became changed - I mean, I would have loved to try
to take on the hidden mansion form of Boolossus. You get to ride around on the poltergust 3000
like its a miniature car. It looks hard as heck to control, but it sure
would have completely changed the experience than the normal Hidden Mansion boss fight
the USA got. Anyways, Boo’s had more health, there was
a lot more treasure available in the game, and overall it was a lot harder to restore
Luigi’s health. The PAL version of the game was just that
much more superior… But we didn’t know this was going to be
the case since it came out 6 or so months after the US release did. Beyond that, we didn’t know things were
different because things like YouTube weren’t around. People weren’t exactly showcasing the differences
between the versions… So we were confused. We were given an additional bonus mansion
in the game but weren’t able to tell what was different about it at all. Like, what was the point, really? It felt like something was missing… As if there truly was something hidden within
this “ hidden mansion” that we needed to seek out. And for myself, there was a part of me that
really wanted to find Mario. And not just save Mario… But to be able to play as him. And I imagine a lot of other people felt the
same way. The pointlessness of the Hidden Mansion, other
than a very slight difficulty increase, made us expect something that wasn’t actually
there. Or at least at the time, we thought it wasn’t
there. However, fast forward almost 18 years into
the future to today… And perhaps we weren’t as crazy as we thought. Mario was there… But just not where we could see him. As time went on and majority of the player
base put down Luigi’s Mansion to move on to other games, there’s of course always
a select group of individuals who had other plans. People who fell in love with the game’s
charm and were curious about how it all worked. Like many Mario games, there are lots of communities
who try to actively mod and alter the games to offer new experiences. And while it certainly isn’t as common as
things like Super Mario 64, there is a dedicated modding community for Luigi’s Mansion. However, a lot of this stuff didn’t happen
until 10 years after the game came out. The tools weren’t really readily accessible
back then. Even today, they’re not completely refined. But during 2010 through 2013, a lot of awesome
things were discovered. You can find a lot of these things documented
on The Cutting Room Floor or on the old forum archives of Luigi’s Bigger Mansion - which
was a proboards forum centered around the game. In the 3d model file directory of the game
were a lot of neat objects. Not all of them were utilized either… But there was one model that perplexed people. It was called bmario. And in the Luigi’s Mansion community, bmario
became a hot topic for a while. Originally documented by user Catley, bmario
was not the typical Mario model that was used within the game. The Mario we see at the end of the game when
he is freed is a different file. But bmario is more interesting because it
is Mario, stretched to Luigi’s height, with the poltergust straps fixated around his shoulders. This Mario even had animations tied to him
that were comparable to the old animations Luigi used to have in Luigi’s Mansion - prior
to them being improved. But this file was baffling because there could
really only be one reason why Mario would have these straps in the first place. He was a playable character. At the time, more than likely, Nintendo took
the rigging from Luigi and created a version of Mario from it. This “bmario” had much longer legs than
the original Mario, so it looked kind of weird. But with this things definitely hinted at
the game originally having multiplayer. Perhaps our fantasies of Mario walking around
in Luigi’s Mansion, outside of fan mods based around the concept, could possibly have
been real. But with that… The mystery of bmario kind of fell to the
way side. The proof was there, but nothing else really
came about for years. According to documentation, bmario’s last
change was on June 16th of 2001. Only eight days before the build of the US
version. Perhaps they were trying to implement him
before the US version launched - similar to how they spruced of the Hidden Mansion for
the PAL release. But that was the end of the trail. Going forward, lots of talented researchers
like LMFinish, Catley, Aromas for their BIN file viewers, Ralf, with his amazing Action
Replay contributions, luigim1, SpaceCats, ItsEasyActually, TheHappyFaceKing, AbsoluteG/Gambit,
LukieD, and many more continued to contribute a lot across the entire space. Slowly documenting the things that still remained
in the files. And time continued to pass. The dream of Luigi’s Mansion’s Mario started
to fade… Especially since only in a few years we’d
be hitting the 20 year mark of the game. During this time, multiplayer was of course
introduced in 2013 through Dark Moon and then later on in the inclusion of the rerelease
of Luigi’s Mansion for the 3DS. Gooigi was born and partnered up with our
hero as we trekked through the familiar rooms we knew and loved. And with Luigi’s Mansion 3, the dual nature
of the game puts a different spin on everything. But it’s funny because we never knew how
close we actually were to solving the mystery of the “bmario” file when we were playing
the 3DS remake of the game. What was experienced there wasn’t a new
concept at all… And it wasn’t until a monumental breakthrough
in the summer of 2019 did we realize what was hiding inside of Luigi’s Mansion this
entire time… June 26th, 2019. A modder by the name of KIRBYMIMI who normally
had focused on Pikman had been tinkering with Luigi’s Mansion occasionally. After singling out Luigi’s specific bytes
that reference him in the code, Kirbymimi located a number that determined the quantity
of Luigi’s… And when this was altered, a second Luigi
as added to the map. With some further coding supporting this Luigi,
a second controller could be paired with him allowing him to walk just like the first Luigi. But when he moved away from the current Luigi,
something interesting happened. The game generated a second camera and the
screen changed to split screen. Both Luigi’s could move and interact with
objects independently, although there were definitely some bugs and kinks that needed
to be worked out. But the split screen mechanic existed in the
game… Meaning that Luigi’s Mansion originally
had a two player mode that was scrapped. It was no longer a hypothesis based on a model… It actually existed, although in an early
form. Our second Luigi is loaded into the world
without a poltergust though, so it needs to be manually added. Kirbymimi, who had discovered this, went on
to mention that there is some more proof that the game designed with two players at some
point. Quote: “When the game is creating the equipment
of Luigi, it checks if it’s the second Luigi and if it is, it changes the equipment he
is going to have.” Due to the state of the multiplayer, when
the second Luigi leaves the main camera and triggers split screen, the objects in that
view including Luigi vanish. The second Luigi also has difficulties opening
doors and generally it takes a long time to do so. With some other alterations, these things
are able to be restored though in some capacity. And let me tell you. Playing the original Luigi’s Mansion with
2 players feels so awesome. Like a part of my childhood was restored somehow. I would have done anything to play this co-op
with my brothers back in 2001… It would have been absolutely amazing. It makes sense that the current multiplayer
clones the Luigi we have - as its the true, final version… But when this was in development, I could
totally see Mario and Luigi with their old animations being utilized too. Obviously they’re unfinished, but how cool
would the Hidden Mansion have been if Mario was freed and you were able to work with him
to clear the mansion? I mean technically, we also don’t know if
this meant that Luigi’s Mansion’s main story was different either. If Mario and Luigi were both always free,
and multiplayer was a focus, was the plot of the game different? It’s neat to see that this same mechanic
was revived in the 3DS version of the game. It seems even some of the same coding was
used. In Luigi’s Mansion, both Luigi’s can latch
onto the same ghosts like in the 3DS version. Gooigis limitations were the same as this
cloned Luigi too. Our Luigi struggles to open doors, while Gooigi
can’t even open them. Kind of funny to see how things just sort
of picked up right where they left off. So it took almost 18 years to uncover Gooigi’s
unknown origins - a scrapped multiplayer we never knew was there. To put to rest the rumor that Mario might
have been playable in Luigi’s Mansion. Because now we know. We finally know that unlike L is Real 2401,
there was truth to this rumor and speculation after all. I just can’t believe something like this
has laid dormant for this long. It’s truly remarkable that it was uncovered… But now that I’ve shared all that - what
are your thoughts on all of this? Let me know in the comments below. Also, if you want to check out a first look
at this 2 player mode and the unique challenges players face when trying it out, you can find
a video link to my gameplay walkthrough in the description below and at the end of this
video. A link to the Luigi’s Mansion discord where
this was discovered will be down there too. And with that… Thanks for watching guys and gals - and until
my next video, cheers!
