Luigi's Mansion - Nitro Rad

[Music] man here's one that really brings me back Luigi's Mansion was one of the first GameCube games I ever got to see it wasn't one of the first ones I ever owned but I do have a lot of fond memories with this one I've beaten the damn thing next to a dozen times over the years I remember there was a time when it seemed not a lot of people really liked this game I guess it was this weird offshoot launch title that really only existed to demonstrate the GameCubes hardware then it was kinda fleshed out into a full game about Mario's brother Luigi you know just a Mullis over until the actual Mario game Mario Sunshine would finally launch about half a year down the road but whether people loved or hated this game it left a strangely large impact on the Mario series in fact it's probably the only Mario spin-off title that has directly influenced the main Mario series there's something here that's not Mario Golf for Mario Tennis or Mario Kart instead of a big get-together with all of your favorite Mario characters Luigi's Mansion is this weird character study of a game grounded in the genre that nobody really thought a Mario game let alone a Nintendo game would ever be suited for survival horror well kinda okay not really it's an action-adventure game in a spooky mansion does that make it a horror game absolutely not it's the gameplay and game mechanics that define the genre not just simply the aesthetics but either way we're looking at spooky in Pindell games this year so we got a look at Luigi's Mansion yeah absolutely um yeah I haven't played this game in quite a while but this is one of those games one of those very few games that my friends and I will bring up every now and then and we always remember these little details that even still we find really cool and impressive so yeah I guess if anybody on the planet is gonna make you appreciate the Frick head of this game it's gonna be me so let's do it the game really cuts to the chase with an opening to Luigi approaching the mansion already look at this Dom has he's so scared it's even got a map to the place that's cute I really like these birds a lot I don't know why they remodeled just for this one shot you never see them in the entire series again that is unless these are the same birds I don't know once inside Luigi encounters a ghost and he's like Oh guess this is a haunted mansion he then meets professor egad a scientist and ghost expert who's trying to recapture all of the ghosts that have escaped his laboratory Luigi egad deduced that King Boo was the one behind both releasing the ghosts and for tricking Luigi you see Luigi thought he won this mansion in a contest he didn't even enter the contest he just got a phone call one day and he was like mentioned nice so of course he planned a meeting Mario there who got kidnapped upon arrival and now it's up to Luigi to use the Gans Poltergust 3000 to recapture the ghosts and save his brother it's a Mario game so dad died the plots gonna be real simple but even still elements of this game's plot will carry on over to many other Mario games professor egad has even directly mentioned in mario sunshine and even he would go on to make appearances and tons and tons of mario games to come so yeah Luigi's Mansion is an action-adventure game there's a lot of exploration and there's a lot of action sequences dealing with ghosts you'll explore each room looking for the ghosts are a way to solve a puzzle this could be as simple as blowing some candles out with your vacuum or it could be something like figuring out you need to put water in the dog's dish and then defeat a skeleton so you can use a bone to distract the dog you can interact with the environment by approaching an object and pressing the a button this will get Luigi to knock on it or give it a light shake opening it up and having an item or something like that pop out of it a lot of this reveals coins and bills that'll tally to your score a great chunk of this game is spent searching every room thoroughly trying to find every bit of cash possible and I think it's really smart in its design how it goes about this pretty much any object in the room can hold something but there's this level of how much something needs to be shook either by the vacuum or by grabbing before it'll drop what it's holding but there's this nice little dust effect that directly tells the player that the object has been searched like that's it just some dust falling off the object that's all it takes Luigi's Mansion uses a lot of subtle cues to let the player know something another great example is this yeah yeah you guys all know the one you have to push this button up on the foreground wall before this mechanism will move the wall on the left at first when you come in here it just looks like this empty meaningless room but there's a couple of things you'll notice that will seamlessly steer you in the right direction firstly our eyes are drawn to the corner of the wall because of this broom leaning against it it's almost like an arrow pointing our eyes that the gears lodged in the corner of the room we see that we're like okay so there's something to do with this wall and if you uncovered this mirror you can see what looks like a button on the front wall so we go over and we're like oh you can push it in yeah there we go that's what we got to do the whole game is just full of stuff like this nothing is always obvious but there's these delicately place nods just the right amount of visual information in the perfect spots that'll have your brain connect those dots and of course the other major element of this game is collecting ghosts using the Poltergust 3000 Luigi will be able to stock up anything he encounters this is done in conjunction with a flashlight you can hold down the B button to keep the flashlight turned off but then you can turn it on when it's directed at a ghost and you'll stun them and you'll be able to suck them up during this phase the ghost will try to get away so you'll have to yank the control stick repeatedly in the opposite direction trying to pull it in almost like you're reeling in a fish or something there's something oddly satisfying about this input you know slamming that stick over and over against the ghost effort to escape every slam takes out another chunk of hell and when it gets to zero that's when you suck them up I find a lot of early GameCube games really nailed this kind of game feel Pikmin that is another fantastic example mashing that a button adding more and more Pikmin to the fight gradually making that health meter tick down like a clock at Dunkirk this satisfying feeling of overwhelming your enemies it comes with the mechanic being executed by repeated button push but each push actually achieving an individual action it's not like uncharted you know where you mash the button open the door doesn't matter how fast you're mashing it really doesn't matter how many times you push it it's just okay mash button open door it's not like that in Pikmin because one button push is one Pikmin so if you bash the button exactly a hundred times that's it's all 100 Pikmin in the fight Luigi's Mansion is the same thing one yank of the stick is one chunk of health I really miss that kind of game field where every button push felt like it was its own action like there weren't any button pushes that were missing or didn't matter it gives these games this direct an analog feeling and it just feels really good the sound effects are just as important to every rapid tick has this gratifying sounds that raises in pitch with every successful timed yank like you're pulling him in further and further and further and further got him I always do this thing when I suck up a ghost that I've eyelet ate the stick right when he's reeling it in so Luigi's violently rotates the vacuums nozzle I don't know why it's just so funny and I don't know why that happens but I know I can't be the only one who does that every single time gotta be someone else here anyway now while the gameplay is satisfying it is pretty repetitive you know you interact with every random item in the room and you suck up the ghost those are pretty much the two things you're gonna be doing over and over throughout this game though I guess they do a decent job of keeping this moderately fresh though there's a really good variety in ghost types we've got like what like eight main types before we start counting palette swaps and stuff that's pretty good we've got the standard ones you know orange low health don't really normally do much there's the pink ones a little bigger a little slimmer more health packs a bigger punch we've got the grabby guys these bowling guys guys that hang from the ceiling I love these banana dudes what kind of bum as ghosts as this eating these bananas and leaving the peels behind for Luigi to slip off what is this cartoon malarkey dude I love it I think my favorite one is the shy guy ghost it's the closest we've ever come to officially seeing a shy guy without his mask on and he looks cool it's got those glowing eyes I dig it and of course when it comes to ghosts in a Mario game you to have booze right there's 50 total and they're hidden all across the mansion after a room is cleared and the lights come on your radar will then tell you whether or not there's a boo in the room you'll flush him out by you know browsing around interacting with object finalization sucking up booze is a little different though you don't lock them into this game of tug-of-war but rather simply the gust of wind colliding with the boo will just lower his health instead of having to gang back on him though they'll be able to still freely move around the room and this is a little annoying because the boo can still flee while you're draining its health and they can even leave the room to for the booze with the greater amounts of health it can potentially turn into this irritating game of cat and mouse if they go into the wrong room you can end up having to do a lot of backtracking - this is my biggest complaint about this game it really doesn't happen often but when it does the pace goes from this to this this is probably gonna sound weird as hell but progression and Luigi's Mansion is honestly kinda similar to that of a survival horror game more notably like a Silent Hill level you know it's a large building that you're free to explore you've got a map detailing every room you have and haven't been to yet and you find a series of keys that'll allow you to progress further and further in the mansion this was the first game I ever played that was like this and honest to god I think that's why I had such an easy time getting into the Silent Hill series because I've already loved this style of game structure before as a kid and I love that again when I saw it fleshed out in those games but you know of course Luigi's Mansion really cuts that fat and makes it as simple as possible despite being in a large mansion it's still quite linear you've got all these doors to go in but your map tells you exactly which ones are locked and which very few you can actually go in though - its credit I do love that you can actually visit every room in the game unlike a Silent Hill level where they'll make up excuses not to render every single room in the building every time you get a key it tells you exactly what door to use it on and while of course this formula is the ideal way to go about it for a game or two are you tonight kids playing it as an adult I couldn't help but to wish they'd just let you do rooms a little out of order more you know I mean take this very first chapter for example generally to progress you need to catch these boss like ghosts called portrait ghosts these are the ghosts that escaped from egads lab so you walk into the first hallway and you fight the dad ghosts and you get a key to another room where you fight the mom ghost and you get a key to another room where you fight the baby ghost the mom and dad aren't of any particularly escalating challenge so honestly it wouldn't really matter which one you did first I think the game would feel a lot more open if it lets you do them in whatever order you wanted before fighting the baby I think this could easily work for the entire game you know like like Metroid Samus Returns that game simply requires you to have a certain amount of Metroid's before passing on doesn't matter what order you got them in right so imagine if they did the same thing for Luigi's Mansion just give you the whole area at once and let you fight the chapters main boss only after you've captured a certain number of portrait ghosts doesn't matter which ones are what order just a certain number of them I mean that would work super well especially considering that you already don't even have to get all of the portrait ghosts to advance there's a handful you just straight-up don't need a fight and that's only because you don't need to beat them to leave to the next room the strongman dude in the glutton guy these are just two examples of several more but you can just walk past them into the next room nothing is stopping you and you might not even realize this but for beating these guys you just get a chest full of money nothing you actually need to progress so skip them if you want it doesn't matter this guy's working out whatever when I was a kid I imagined that when the mansion vanishes at the end of the game these two guys that didn't get would just still be standing there eating and working out or whatever and they look around they're like but the actual fights with the portrait ghosts themselves are fairly simple but there's always this extra layer to every single one that makes them really cool there's usually some sort of simple puzzle you'll have to figure out like the mother for example she's just invisible when you look at her you can't interact with her whatsoever so you got to find out to use the vacuum to move the curtain to the right creating a draft in the room that she'll get distracted by and while she goes to pull it back that's your chance to go and get her while it's really not hard to figure out these things on your own you're supposed to use this camera feature to analyze the ghost and briefly see what they're thinking this is often a hint about how to beat them but the most interesting part of this function is just scanning random objects and seeing what Luigi has to say about them it turns us game into a character study finally figuring out what's going on in this guy's head Luigi goes from this age old flat cartoon character to something so unexpectedly elaborate I mean like I know a lot of these messages were probably pre-written and just kind of bound to multiple objects in the room so doesn't always make sense that he's saying that about certain objects but even still there's something quite fascinating about Luigi looking at a doll's head and saying I've been wanting one of those for quite a while and that being a real thing he actually thinks in a game that's considered can into the series this is the kind of thing I'd put in the bathroom Luigi you are a strange strange man but what was he before this game combined every shred of personality luigi has demonstrated in any games prior and you get this plain character that only exists because Mario exists but after Luigi's Mansion he's no longer just player to Luigi's now this lovable coward on the verge of having a nervous breakdown but determined enough to face his fears and save his brother we really get to learn just how weird this man is because for the very first time in Nintendo history we simply get to hear what he thinks about the things around him everything from the games writing to Luigi's physical behavior I mean listen to how he nervously hums along with the music while he explores [Music] no matter where or when were always given this constant feed of Luigi's emotion through this genius combination of diegetic and non-diegetic sound to build the game's music this is more of a filmmaking term but diegetic sound is sound that's actually there like a character playing a piano or something playing off of a radio the characters in the scene can hear it because it actually exists within the world that these characters inhabit non-diegetic sound on the other hand is stuff that's not really there you know the score the soundtrack when you have blast out of a launch star in that orchestra swings in that's just for the players that year mario can't hear any of that because there's not an actual orchestra there physically playing the mario galaxy music but the music of Luigi's Mansion takes this brilliant approach that actually combines the two we've got the non-diegetic instruments you know the cello the strings those heavy deep notes slowly pushing us through each long narrow hallway and in conjunction with that we have Luigi's nervous humming completing a song and the game makes sure it feels organic Luigi's actually humming because if you perform an action that makes them speak or grunt or use his mouth he'll stop for a little bit it's as if this iconic Luigi's Mansion theme song is simply an exaggeration of something Luigi illustrated with in his head and then just hum to himself to keep himself calm this calming tune elaborated into something so harsh representing what he's actually feeling instead of what he's trying to make himself feel Luigi's Mansion may be a short repetitive game with simple but satisfying gameplay but it's all of the genius carefully placed details like this that make the game so memorable you know this was a weird offshoot spin-off of the Mario series I mean different in that it wasn't a minigame collection or a racer no this was like a real adventure game just totally different genre than what we're used to seeing it's easy to see why when this game was new it was so easily brushed aside and not given much thought when you look back on this game you realized while the gameplay is very simple as expected from a launch title this game is so damn packed with charming stuff so wonderfully illustrated on this bizarre canvas I mean like look at the device you use to view the map and scan the area it's a game boy the game boy horror I mean it could have just been a generic or original device but hey let's make it a freakin Gameboy why because it's more fun that way what were you like expecting this elaborate breakdown why it's a gameboy and not like a something else no no sometimes it really is just that simple and Nintendo understands simple better than anybody while the game does look pretty dated I mean like this is definitely not Luigi's most flattering character model there's a lot of elements that still look really great the ghost dude first of all it's just the way they're transparent but they also have this odd glow it really makes them feel like these otherworldly strange beings instead of you know just a see-through version of enemies we've already seen before even the boos which were characters we've seen time and time again now radiate this eerie glow like they're finally in an environment where they can really shine literally every single portrait ghost they all have their own personalities dialogue strategies I love the little blurbs you can read about every single one I loved having made sure to say that chance he was born as a ghost as if to avoid implying infant mortality in a Mario game touch the bullet with that one guy's then again sue straight-up says that she died in her sleep was meant to be a short nap seems to have turned into eternal oh my lord that is Wow this is a Mario game the games got so many secrets under the hood - I remember never being able to figure out how the hell to get in this room and I was younger maybe it's just an unused square I don't know I must have beaten the game five times over without ever getting in that room was until I was a little bit older that I found out you can access it through this hidden mouse hole in the butler's quarters when I found that out it was like finding out I won the lottery holy crap kinda - because it's just a room full of money so yeah oh and like how you can take a picture of mirrors to warp back to the entrance yeah yeah a lot of people know that one all right but back then it was one of those tricks that not everybody knew about oh yeah that little seed you can water by the doghouse and you come back to it after beating every boss to water it some more until you get like all of this money that that was a huge one I never knew about his kid I always loved how you can see Luigi's breath in a room with ghosts because you know like ghosts are supposed to make the room cold or whatever's that's like a really cool detail speaking of cold rooms there's okay there's no way there's no way I'm the only one who does this every time I replay this I make sure I do that oh yeah here's another one y'all probably know this by now but this glitch about the the lighting engine that makes it look like Luigi shadow is hanging himself and he's on the phone I always loved weird stuff like this you know a family-friendly game but it's in a spooky setting but there's always that one thing in there that's like actually a little unsettling but I really don't think there's anything I love more about this game than just how organic everything feels all the dust effects as you vacuum the way the cloths and everything reacts to the gusts of wind with the vet like it just feels so legit you know I could probably go on and on about all the little details about this game but that's what it's really all about the little things because this really isn't a huge game if you know what to do it can only be as long as three hours it really is that short and I guess that's probably why I was able to beat it so many times as a kid wow it was never like one of my favorite games but I do still really like it you know it is a little bit repetitive yeah but at least it's fun and it's really good at hitting those quirky beats that Nintendo was just so good at doing they weren't afraid to get a little bit weird this time and finally let everybody know yeah there's a little bit more to this strange Green Man than just being the brother of everyone's favorite plumber other games would attempt to further flesh out Luigi's character but when you look back Luigi owes his entire individuality to Luigi's Mansion this was the first game a said hey it's more than just a player too he's a character he's his own person and peers his own game Luigi's Mansion had a huge influence on the overall series too I mean for like a long time it was kind of hard to find a Mario title that didn't have some reference to Luigi being a ghost hunter or to the mansion itself the Poltergust 3000 has sinned become a staple of Luigi's moveset even landing in games like Mario Tennis and Smash Bros even in the main series Mario titles like Mario Galaxy in Mario 64 DS Luigi continues to be associated with ghosts having this consistent theme to this previously flattest paper character has become one of my favorite motifs of the entire series we did eventually finally get a great sequel to this game on the 3ds Luigi's Mansion dark moon I think they just called it Luigi's Mansion 2 and Europe was that uh I don't know anyway I remember playing that game way back when it first came out and yeah I don't know it was good but something about it just didn't just didn't click with me the same way the original did I do think it is a mechanically better game with much better game design and much more fleshed out gameplay and it is a lot of fun but I don't know I felt like it was missing all of those little brilliant details like the sound design all of the weird dialogue you could read by scanning things in the environment you never got to see what Luigi really thought about everything and it didn't have the portrait ghosts you know all these ghosts with their own unique personalities and all these I don't know it just felt like this shrunken down more vanilla version of Luigi's paranormal side job but regardless I think the original game is still really solid even today it's definitely not like one of the best games on the console but damn it it is one of the most lovable and charming projects Nintendo has ever taken a risk with if you're able to I'd say give it a shot if you never have before you may have never given this game a second thought in the past but you might just be surprised at how interesting it can really be but yeah I guess that's it for the Halloween marathon this year thank you guys so much for watching all the Halloween specials I've been putting out for you guys I hope you had a good time watching them yeah I was definitely doing things a lot differently this year you know spending two months instead of just one I got a lot of comments so many comments of people being like uh you know it's like a September right yes I know it's September I'm just starting things a little bit early this year but yeah and then I was also not just sticking to one series kind of all over the place evil within some Nintendo games yeah it'll be a lot more focused next year I wanted it might even be three months next year I want to do both the Clocktower series and Resident Evil that could last for months who knows we'll see what happens next year but as of now thank you guys so much for watching I hope you guys have yourselves a great night but most importantly y'all have yourselves a radical Halloween take care guys [Music] you

Channel: Nitro Rad

Views: 442,300

Keywords: luigi's mansion, boo, ghost, mario, super mario, vacuum, professor e gadd, poltergust 3000, diegetic, non-diegetic, diegetic sound, sound design, music, humming, whistling, chauncey, dark moon, secrets, appreciation, luigi, bogmire, boolossus, nitro rad, review, halloween, special

Id: 7gTr2be990Y

Length: 24min 5sec (1445 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017