Mario & Luigi 3 Update

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Early in October of last year, Nintendo revealed that the company would be publishing a third game in the Mario & Luigi series of handheld role-playing games, releasing sometime in 2009. Though the company's been relatively hush on the project since the reveal, the game's set for release in Japan next month so details of the title are starting to hit the public scene.

The Mario & Luigi series began way back in 2004 on the Game Boy Advance in a fresh adventure: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. The game was designed and developed by Alphadream, who at the time was best known for its work on a quirky, almost insane Game Boy Advance Japanese-exclusive handheld adventure game called Tomato Adventure. The team's success with that game – or rather, with its wacky design – enticed Nintendo to hand over control of its plumber characters for an original adventure that offered the same craziness that never would take itself seriously.

In this non-canon Mario adventure, players set Mario and Luigi loose upon the Beanbean Kingdom to defeat the evil Cackletta after she stole Princess Peach's voice for nefarious means. The game itself borrowed similar aspects from Intelligent System's Paper Mario Nintendo 64 game and Super Mario RPG on the Super NES, mostly in its turn-based battles. When players find themselves in a fight, the game kicks over to a battle system where players can enhance specific moves with well-timed button presses that correspond with the action happening at that particular moment.


The start of something special.



What really set Mario & Luigi apart from the other Mario RPG titles at that time was its "partner" system. Players controlled both Mario and Luigi at the same time, with independent commands assigned to the A and B buttons. Need to get both characters up on a ledge? You'll need to make both characters jump at the right time by pushing each character's button. Deeper in the game you'll need to have the brothers "abuse" each other to gain access to specific areas: Luigi must get a bit of guilty glee smashing Mario flat with a hammer just so Mario can sneak under gaps in walls.

AlphaDream followed up the Game Boy Advance game with a Nintendo DS sequel: Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, released in November 2005. It was more a sequel in concept than in storyline, as the game never made direct reference to the original in its story. In fact, where Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga introduced Beanbean Kingdom as its central location, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time returned to the Mushroom Kingdom. In this adventure, Mario & Luigi find themselves whisked off into the past after Princess Peach disappears into an activated time machine. Turns out, these newbie characters called Shroobs kidnapped Peach and invaded the Mushroom Kingdom, so Mario and Luigi hop back through time, meet up with their baby selves and work together to save Peach.

The gameplay remained similar in both exploration, puzzle solving, and the turn-based battle system. In fact, the partner system introduced in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga was changed to incorporate four characters instead of two…mirrored on the DS system's four buttons as compared to the Game Boy Advance's two. What the Nintendo DS version brought to the table was the dual-screen aspect: in several parts of the game, the group would separate into two different locations, and thanks to the two different screens of the DS players could keep track of, as well as control, all characters in both locations simultaneously.

It's been more than three years since the last Mario & Luigi game, but their time to return to the RPG genre is soon here. Details on Mario & Luigi RPG 3 (tentative title, we're hoping) are slim, but from our brief and early look at the game it looks like AlphaDream is keeping with its style of whacked-out situations, storyline, and dialogue, as well as the similar gameplay mechanics that made the first two so darn good on the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS.


Bowser's belly is quite...liquid. And apparently candy is very fattening.



Case in point: Bowser's involvement in this adventure. Apparently through some mysterious power, a giant Bowser sucks up all the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom…including our plumber heroes. Gulp. Burp. Now lost somewhere inside the king koopa himself, Mario and Luigi must work together to get out of Bowser's tummy. Luckily – or unluckily, depending on your perspective – helpful citizens have also been gulped down Bowser's gullet, so the two plumbers have a good amount of help at their disposal.

Just as players controlled individual characters independently in the previous Mario & Luigi games, Bowser becomes a player-controlled character as well. In fact, when Bowser's out for battle, players will rotate their system and hold it in its "book form" to perform touch-screen attacks. The microphone will come into play for flame attacks: blow into the system and unleash the fire.

The Japanese version of Mario & Luigi RPG 3 is set for release on February 11th, with a US date currently undetermined. Watch this space for more details on the craziness as we get closer to its release