Nintendo isn’t just a family-friendly company, they also look after the people who work for them too. Can you remember when the late great Satoru Iowata cut his wage in half and distributed it amongst his employees so they wouldn’t have to make any cuts? That’s one of the most wholesome moves in the history of gaming and something that other companies should have mirrored in recent times. Well, it seems that Nintendo is also bringing back devs from the bankrupt studio AlphaDream to continue work on the epic Mario & Luigi series.
We’ve not had a new Mario & Luigi game since Paper Jam back in 2015, and the studio’s bankruptcy claim is the main reason behind that. All we know at this time is that Nintendo has confirmed that “some of the original developers who worked on the franchise are involved in the development of Mario & Luigi: Brothership” and that we’ll need to wait until the game’s credits roll to find out who is behind the highly anticipated return of the RPG duo.
An Air Of Mystery
Part of me finds it strange that Nintendo doesn’t let people know who is developing its games, but then again, I wouldn’t want to know what my Christmas presents were before Christmas Day. It’s an odd one, as games aren’t like books; you might buy a new book written by your favourite author with a plot point that you don’t know much about, but you buy a Mario game because it’s got Mario on it and not necessarily because one studio has worked on it.
Perhaps if it’s a new studio, Nintendo wants to keep an air of mystery surrounding them, or maybe they just want to concentrate on the content rather than who is behind it. Still, the Minish Cap is great even though it was made by Capcom and not Nintendo – I’ve talked myself into a wormhole I can’t get out of here, so let’s move on.
Of course, Nintendo isn’t the only company to bring back old studios (or elements of them at least) of late. Atari has recently brought Infogrames back from the dead in a move that brought a massive nostalgia wave with it for the Retro Dodo team. Perhaps Nintendo has plans to revive AlphaDream if the game takes off and is keeping its cards close to its chest. Time will tell, as will the end credits once we complete the game!
