I always enjoy keeping tabs on Game Boy Competitions on Itch.io to see what budding Game Boy developers come up with. You guys know that I love a demake too, so when I came across this Game Boy Colour version of Luigi's Mansion, I grabbed the Analogue Pocket and put it through its paces.
The project comes to us from Distracted Coder and is, in their words, 'what the game might have been like if it had come out during the 8-bit era'. Starting with an 8-bit sprite of Professor E.Gadd, you step into the mansion and find a character that looks a little like a green version of Mega Man, but you and I can put two and two together and realise that this is our moustachioed, scaredy-cat hero, Luigi.
Luigi has two actions apart from moving - shining his torch, and using his Poltergust 3000 to suck up ghosts. The ghosts themselves look awesome, and when a stage is clear, it fills with colour to show that you have removed all of the ghosts from the area.
The ghosts come in 4 colours, and there's even a boss to tackle too. The GBC demake covers most of the 1st area of the GameCube game and has a reimagined version of the Lydia boss fight. It's not the world's longest demake or the hardest, but it's a fun little game to play through and one that pays homage to one of my favourite GCN games, so for that reason, I'm giving it a Dodo thumbs up.
With ModRetro sponsoring this year's GB Compo, the stakes to be the best of the best are very high. Other GB game competition winners have gone on to have their projects appearing on carts in ModRetro's catalogue, so who knows which game could be joining them next!
Take a look at the Luigi's Mansion Game Boy Demake page to give it a try for yourself!
