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Taito has revealed that it will release the Poltergust 5000 from the Luigi's Mansion series as a crane game prize toy in Japan. The item will start appearing in Japanese amusement centers on December 21, 2024.

The toy will be known in Japan as "Obaccum Sound Light." However, it is very clearly modeled after the Poltergust 5000 from Luigi's Mansion 2. The 2013 3DS game was alternatively known in North America as Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, but Nintendo uniformized the title when it released a remaster of the game for Nintendo Switch in June 2024 worldwide as Luigi's Mansion 2 HD.

While the original gadget had swappable heads to switch between vacuum and light modes, this toy will simply have a light placed on the vacuum head. The toy can also play a random sound while the light is turned on. It will have five kinds of audio, which range from the gadget's machine noise to Luigi's voice.

The toy vacuum light modeled after Poltergust 5000 from the Luigi's Mansion series will be available as crane game prizes in amusement centers across Japan starting from Saturday, December 21, 2024. People can also immediately play Luigi's Mansion 2 HD on Nintendo Switch to see the actual item.

The post Luigi’s Mansion Poltergust 5000 Will Become a Crane Game Prize appeared first on Siliconera.

When you have a handheld installment in a series, especially when its a less powerful platform than its counterpart or it involves a unique gimmick, it can be easier to accept accommodations or quirks. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is a good example. You could accept the approach to castle exploration and certain design decisions because, well, that’s what Next Level Games had to do to get it to run on the 3DS. While I appreciated seeing Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD again on the Switch, the new platform made some of the earlier inconveniences more difficult to bear.

Professor E. Gadd, now famous for his ghostly research, was working peacefully alongside the spectral counterparts in Evershade Valley. It was all thanks to the Dark Moon hanging in the sky. However, after it is shattered by King Boo, all of the ghosts turn hostile. E. Gadd (forcibly) call in Luigi to head into five locations in the valley to collect the ghosts and Dark Moon fragments.

The general gameplay for Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD isn’t markedly different from the other entries in the series. After reclaiming the Poltergust 5000 and Strobulb from the Gloomy Manor, you can get to work stunning ghosts with lights so you can suck them up, triggering switches or other puzzles with light. The Dark-Light Device also involves revealing hidden objects. So you’re still searching for ghosts, trying to get through dilapidated buildings, and also collecting treasures to upgrade your equipment or repair the valley’s moon.

What makes Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD feel a bit dated and occasionally out of place is the structure. Both the first and third entries in the series involved a more open approach. Luigi could explore the locations as you saw fit, progressing deeper through locales. You could take your time with things. The penalties for facing ghosts didn’t feel terribly drastic. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon adopted a mission-based approach. So you aren’t just going through one whole manor as you see fit, tackling all of its tasks in a leisurely way and going back and forth between them.

You pick a quest. You go in and accomplish it. E. Gadd plucks you out again. While the general idea is still fun, it hurts the immersion a bit. It was more than fine for the 3DS too, since we were dealing with smaller screens, potential battery life issues, and maybe even going to the handheld for shorter play sessions. Given since the Switch already is home to the exceptional and perfectly paced Luigi’s Mansion 3, I felt it made the pitfalls of this format stand out.

This isn’t to say it isn’t fun! Perhaps that’s why it can feel like an issue. The different types of places Luigi goes on his journey to restore the Dark Moon are all quite varied. There are some challenging ghosts to fight, forcing you to think strategically when trying to approach them, stun them with the light, and suck them up. It requires thought and is enjoyable. So when you can’t just keep going and need to report in to E. Gadd after doing when you came there to, it’s like your mom calling you inside to play when you know your friends (or in this case more ghosts) are waiting for you.

The other issue stems from a similar issue. There aren’t checkpoints during missions in Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. Tantalus and Nintendo didn’t add them for Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. It’s fine. I mean, this is clearly defined as an HD remaster, after all. However, once you get to the latter third or fourth of the game, there are some missions and situations where that kind of accommodation would have been helpful.

However, I will say that Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD both looks great and I enjoyed the ScareScraper multiplayer mode a bit more this time around. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon was a really vibrant and expressive game the first time around, especially when it came to Luigi and Polterpup’s expressions and animations. That remains unchanged here, though I will say you can tell from the textures and designs that it started as a 3DS game and not, say, a console one. As for the ScareScraper, which involves four people working to catch ghosts either in set blocks with certain difficulties or endlessly as it gradually grows more challenging, it felt easier to play and like I had a better time. Perhaps that’s due to a wider multiplayer pool at launch? Maybe! I just know I had a better time going through it together, though I did prefer the newer Luigi’s Mansion 3 take on it with its additional goals.

I suppose what really hurts Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is that Luigi’s Mansion 3 is on the Switch and feels like the definitive entry in the series. It’s great to be able to go back to the earlier installment on the system. Especially since it is fun for what it is. It’s still enjoyable, and it looks great. I suppose my only regret is that the format of it felt better on the 3DS, and the limits of the more mission-based approach are more strongly felt on this console.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is available on the Nintendo Switch. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is available on the Nintendo 3DS. 

The post Review: Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD Felt Less Limiting on the 3DS appeared first on Siliconera.

After 11 years, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon left its Nintendo 3DS graveyard and is coming to the Nintendo Switch via a new remaster. I went through the first couple of hours of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD to discover whether it’s worth diving into in 2024 or whether it should have stayed in the past.

Back in the Nintendo GameCube era, Luigi’s Mansion was one of my favorite games. Fast forward to 2013, and I was so excited to play the sequel Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, on the Nintendo 3DS. I put hours and hours into it, collecting every single Gem. I think I even preferred it to the original title! After getting to experience the remaster on the Nintendo Switch, it brought back all those nostalgic memories. I wasn’t sure if I’d much of it, given that it’d been so long since I last played the game, but from the second I dived into the first mission in Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, everything came flooding back. It was amazing seeing the game I’d once sunk long hours into in a new light.

In Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, you play as Luigi as you gather pieces of the Dark Moon to restore peace to Evershade Valley. These pieces are skewed throughout various mansions, and it is Luigi’s job to best the ghosts inside and collect them using what’s ultimately a modded vacuum cleaner called the Poltergust 5000.

Immediately, what stood out to me was how the game looked on the Switch. Gone are the restraints of the Nintendo 3DS 5:3, 800x240 pixel screen, with Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD now looking vibrant and beautiful. This seemed especially true on my Nintendo Switch OLED screen, where the colors really popped off the screen. In each mission, you’ll need to solve various puzzles in order to progress. Some of them require new tools for the Poltergust 5000, which are unlocked through the story.

I found myself racing through the first handful of missions so that I could unlock new tools to find hidden secrets or Gems. There are several of these Gems scattered throughout the game, each hidden behind a puzzle. For example, in an early mission, you get a Gem by revealing a statue with the Dark-Light Device, an attachment for the Poltergust that allows Luigi to dispel illusions. It’s secrets like this that make you want to explore every corner of the mansion to see what you’ll discover next - it’s great.

As you explore, you’ll encounter different types of ghosts, which you must stun and suck up into the Poltergust 5000 so that Professor E. Gadd can study them. Some ghosts are easy to conquer, while others take some work due to blocking your flashlight with sunglasses or other objects. You’ll even come across boss ghosts from time to time who have a gimmick you must pull off to defeat them. In the first mansion alone, I saw multiple ghost types and was curious about which one I’d meet next each time I entered a new room.

The one negative that stands out to me in the first couple of hours I played, which has carried over from the Nintendo 3DS original, is the frequency that Professor E. Gadd bothers you via the Dual Scream, a Nintendo 3DS-like device that allows him to call Luigi. Each time there’s a new puzzle to solve in the story, he calls you to essentially tell you what you do next rather than letting you figure it out yourself. The first couple of times are fine, given that it’s tutorial stuff, but I was still getting these calls a couple of hours in, to the point where I’d physically eye-roll because it was so annoying. I can only hope this happens less as I progress further.

Overall, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD seems like its going to hold up really well on the Nintendo Switch. From what I played so far, the graphics are beautiful, and the gameplay is still as charming as ever. Whether this continues deeper into the game, we’ll have to wait and see. But I’m excited to dive back into this classic sequel!

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD will be released on the Nintendo Switch on June 27, 2024.

The post Preview: Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD Seems Scarily Good appeared first on Siliconera.

Nintendo made new Mario-related announcements on the 2024 MAR10 Day. The main highlight of the video was the announcement of a new Mario animated movie that will be available in theaters in April 2026. Nintendo also shared release dates for a number of new and classic Mario games coming to Nintendo Switch in the first half of 2024.

Shigeru Miyamoto opened the presentation video by announcing the new Mario animated movie. Illumination, which previously worked on The Super Mario Bros. Movie that launched in April 2023, will also produce the new film. The studio's head Chris Meledandri also appeared in the video. He revealed that his team is working on "storyboarding scenes and developing set designs for new environments." The animation processes will begin "soon."

The new Mario animation film will appear on April 3, 2026, in the US. Meledandri also added that a number of other select territories will also get to see the new movie within April 2026.

At the end of the 2024 MAR10 Day video, Nintendo showed the release dates for some of its Mario game releases, all of which will be available on Nintendo Switch. The lineup also included three games from the Game Boy and Game Boy Color that will be available via the Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - May 23, 2024
• Luigi's Mansion 2 HD - June 27, 2024
• Dr. Mario - March 12, 2024 (Game Boy version getting added via Nintendo Switch Online)
• Mario Golf - March 12, 2024 (Game Boy Color version getting added via Nintendo Switch Online)
• Mario Tennis - March 12, 2024 (Game Boy Color version getting added via Nintendo Switch Online)

The post MAR10 Day 2024 Reveals Include New Mario Animated Movie appeared first on Siliconera.

We got an even better look at the HD remaster of Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon at the September 2023 Nintendo Direct. Up to four players can play online together in multiplayer mode. Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD will be available on the Nintendo Switch in Summer 2024.

You can view the full trailer on YouTube below:

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIP2_LJdi0I[/embed]

Luigi’s Mansion 2 was originally released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2013. It now makes a return with this HD remaster ten years later.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD will be available to play on the Nintendo Switch in Summer 2024.

The post Get a Better Look at Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD for the Switch appeared first on Siliconera.