Episode 17: Luigi's Mansion full script

Below is the full script for episode 17. It's not too late to offer suggestions for edits, so please feel free to. Cheers guys.

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Hey folks, Dr Lava here. Well over the past month we went over the best cut content from Pokemon Generations 1-4, and we'll have some more Pokemon episodes coming up soon. But with the Luigi's Mansion series back in the limelight, and after receiving a few requests, I thought I'd take a quick break from Pokemon so we can catalogue all the best material that didn't make it into the release version of Luigi's Mansion back in 2001. The game was first revealed at Spaceworld 2000, at that time it was just a tech demo to show off the graphical capabilities of the Gamecube, which was due out the following year. Soon after, Nintendo decided to turn the tech demo into a full-fledged game to launch alongside their new home console, assigning veteran Mario series directors Miyamoto and Tezuka to serve as the game's producers. Luigi's Mansion released just a year after its initial reveal as a tech demo, going on to become a cult-classic and the Gamecube's best-selling launch title. But like most games developed in such a short timespan, Luigi's Mansion had a lot of unfinished business. So let's have a look at the top 5 scrapped ideas and chunks of cut content that didn't make it into the final build of Luigi's Mansion.

According to the game's director Hideki Konno, there were a few ideas for the mansion that weren't included in the final release. In a 2001 interview with Nintendo Online Magazine, he explained that they wanted to include an underground cave connected to the basement that would extend the geographical environment, like something you might find in a Resident Evil mansion. He went on to say that early designs had a sort of RPG system that would, as he put it, upgrade the stage after certain actions. By that I think he means that after meeting particular in-game objectives like defeating a boss or maybe capturing a specified number of Boos, the entire mansion or at least certain sections of it would be affected in some way, maybe by spawning more ghosts, raising the HP of its existing ghosts, or possibly something a little more novel like additional power outages.

Luigi's Mansion was released in Europe 6-8 months after the US and Japan, giving Nintendo time to create what was essentially Luigi's Mansion: Masterquest. This new difficulty setting, titled Hidden Mansion Mode, was included in the PAL release but never made available to Gamecube owners outside of Europe. In Hidden Mansion Mode, the entire game is mirrored left-to-right, there's an extra $50 million worth of treasure to collect, and there are fewer health pickups. Boss battles and some of the other more prominent ghosts are made more difficult -- for example, during the Boolossus fight, Luigi actually has to ride his poltergust, making him much harder to control. In the Hidden Mansion, most Boos have more HP and 45 of them are required to finish the game rather than the standard Boo count of 40, and there are more regular ghosts floating around the mansion as well. Like the Artist's Studio for example, where there are normally 3 of each type of ghost, but in the Hidden Mansion there are 5, totalling an additional 14 ghosts in just that one room. A watered-down form of Hidden Mansion Mode did eventually make it's way into every country's version of the 3DS remake, but the extra treasure, more difficult Boolossus battle, and most importantly the mirrored mansion aspect, were not included.

A handful of notable ghosts were scapped from Luigi's Mansion as well. The game's internal data includes these two ghosts, labeled Ghost01 and Ghost02 in Japanese, who went unused in the final  build, and appear to be leftovers from the Spaceworld trailer. This spirit, often referred to as ELH, can be summoned back into the game using cheats. The model isn't finished, lacking a texture and some of its animations, but it does have a half dozen animations assigned to it, including for when it attacks with fire and ice. This E3 2001 pre-release screenshot shows a chef ghost in the kitchen. In the release version's kitchen, spinning pots and pans mysteriously attack Luigi all on their own, so probably it's the chef that was meant to be hurling cooking utensils. In the screenshot, the chef ghost is holding a tomato -- that tomato is actually still left over in the game's internal data, along with an animation of it spinning, just like the pots and pans. The October 2001 issue of Nintendo Power makes reference to an Australian hunter spirit in the Safari room, who it says will want to add Luigi's head to his collection of trophies on the wall. The Australian hunter is sometimes cited elsewhere as one of Luigi's Mansion's unused ghosts, but as there's no evidence from the beta, developer interviews, or the game's internal data, it seems most likely this ghost was just a rumor started by a Nintendo Power photo caption, and nothing more.

In a 2013 interview conducted by NintendoLife, the sequel's co-supervisor Yoshihito Ikebata, explained that the developers wanted to include a multiplayer mode in the original Luigi's Mansion, but weren't able to pull it off. Based on the game's lightning-quick development, it sounds like they just didn't have enough time to put it together. But clearly they did put some effort into the multiplayer concept -- in addition to the Mario model used in the release version, the game's internal data also contains an unused model of Mario that's stretched to Luigi's proportions, wearing a Poltergust and sharing most of Luigi's animations. With that in mind, and considering the structure of the game, with a little more time it must have been a traditional 2 player co-op mode that they were working on. Most likely there would have been some competitive elements worked in as well, like competing over the amount of ghosts and treasures collected. If Mario had been a playable second character, it probably would have been Peach that was stuck in King Boo's painting. Or it might have been Daisy, who's image can be found in the game's internal data, though she never appeared in the final build. When the game was remade for the 3DS in 2018, multiplayer co-op was finally included, utilizing Gooigi as player 2, and leaving Mario locked inside the picture frame.

In a 2011 Iwata Asks interview, Satoru Iwata revealed that both Luigi's Mansion and the Gamecube itself were capable of displaying 3D images. Iwata explained that every Gamecube unit sold worldwide had 3D-compatible circuitry built in, but the liquid crystals that are used to power 3DTV's were prohibitively expensive back then. Ultimately they decided it just wasn't going to be economically feasible and they never brought it to market. But apparently, Iwata and his buddies were gettin' down on Luigi's Mansion in full 3D back at Nintendo HQ, which he said actually looked pretty good. Miyamoto was also present at that interview, and he chimed in to say that the 3D would jump out at you pretty nicely. Of course the 3DS remake finally brought Luigi's Mansion back into the third dimension, but I can't imagine the 3DS version could possibly compete with the experience of playing on a big screen TV with the Gamecube's superior graphics. The game's 3D capabilities were ultimately removed, but if you've got a 3DTV and an old Gamecube, with some hacking skills, hypothetically you could get the full Luigi's Mansion experience in your own home theater. As far as I can tell, no one outside of Nintendo has ever gotten a chance to play Luigi's Mansion the way it was originally intended.

Okay, just one more thing worth mentioning before we wrap up -- according to the game's director and one of its map designers, early ideas for the game's environment included an apartment complex, a ninja mansion and a Japanese-style house, they even did some work on prairie and desert levels, before they finally settled on the idea of a European-style mansion. Okay, subscribe and check out our past videos if you'd like to see more Nintendo cut content. If there are any corrections that need to be made, I'll put them in this video's description, along with all my sources. Okay, thanks for watchin.