The June 2024 Nintendo Direct was arguably a huge turning point for both Nintendo and the Switch itself during the year. Up until that point, there had been one truly new 1st party game release on the Switch and a bunch of remasters/remakes alongside it. With rumors of the Switch 2 not arriving until 2025, gamers wanted to know why they should keep playing the current system. In that Direct were several shocking reveals across numerous franchises, and one of the biggest shocks was Mario & Luigi Brothership, which would be the first new entry in this beloved spinoff series in nine years!
The question that many had both before and after launch was, “Why did they bring it back now?” Nintendo held a special interview with the teams at both Nintendo and Acquire about this, and the answer is a bit more basic than you might realize, according to supervisor/producer Akira Otani:
“We’d been having a number of internal discussions about a new installment in the series following Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam. We needed to aim for something new that would keep up with hardware advancements while maintaining the appeal of the classic Mario & Luigi games. It wasn’t easy to achieve both at the same time… We kept trying various things, but there was a time when we thought it might not be possible to make any more games in the series and considered giving up. There were a lot of discussions, and eventually we decided to reach out to Acquire. After speaking a number of times with Ohashi-san, I felt that Acquire might be able to realize our dream of making Mario & Luigi in 3D, so we agreed to start joint development.”
As for why they brought in Acquire at all, the past games had all been 2D adventures, and Acquire had done multiple 3D RPG works, including 2.5-HD titles like Octopath Traveler, which were huge hits.
Admittedly, Acquire didn’t know that a co-development option with Nintendo was possible, so they jumped on it. Of course, as we revealed earlier, the co-development process for Mario & Luigi Brothership needed a bit of fine-tuning, but the result seems to be something that gamers truly love and appreciate.
The question will now be whether the franchise will continue after this new Switch entry. Based on past Mario RPG experiences and the fact that this is an all-new game, it would go to reason that it will be another million-seller and continue on, especially with the Switch 2 coming out. Only time will tell for sure.
