Completion Time: 8h:00m:00s
Rating: 9/10

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A Spooky Start

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It’s time for Halloween, once again, and I’ve been immersing myself in tons of horror games already, as I do every year. I figured that meant I should try and do the same for my GameCube Gauntlet series. Now that being said, there aren’t that many horror games on the GameCube, and a good chunk of the ones that are in that list are Resident Evil games. But regardless, I think there’s just enough to warrant this (with a couple of stretches) for a couple of seasons so let’s go for it! First one up: Luigi’s Mansion. A week after Super Mario Sunshine, what are the odds?

Luigi should've been suspicious, this manor is literally right up the road from his house

I never actually owned Luigi’s Mansion growing up, didn’t own it until years after the GameCube had already bit the dust. I did, however, rent the game from my local Blockbuster twice when I was a kid. I never made it past the baby boss, Chauncey, which is pretty much when I stopped renting it. In my time owning the game I’ve beaten it a couple of times now, but I’ve never been able to achieve that fabled A Rank, so that’s what I went for this time around. What trials and tribulations await us in this decrepit manor? Time to find out.

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Ghostly Games

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Luigi’s first solo outing is rife with peril in this launch title for the GameCube, running around a spooky old house teeming with ghosts the likes of which we haven’t seen in a Mario game up to this point (for the most part), and all to find his lost brother Mario. This isn’t the first time Mario has gone missing, and it isn’t the first time Luigi has embarked on a quest to locate him either. But it is the most entertaining, and I’m glad to say that Luigi’s Mansion still holds up after all this time. Luigi on his own may not have been the most auspicious choice for a console launch at that time, but I’m glad that people have come around to the idea and that the game has turned into a full-blown series of its own at this point.

I haven't played the other Luigi's Mansion games, but I'm just gonna assume this guy is in every single one

Armed with only the Poltergust to defend yourself, you navigate your way through the dusty manor floors with a flashlight and a haunting tune to guide you. This game really nails the spooky atmosphere for what is ostensibly still a Nintendo-helmed Mario game, and a lot of that has to do with not just the environment and soundtrack, but the overall design, theming, and even presentation works well as an actual horror game, even for how cartoony it is. For example, a toad crying on a balcony is a breath of fresh air on your journey since there really isn’t anyone else to interact with in the entire house. Even Professor E. Gadd, the inventor of the Poltergust, has a lab separate from the mansion itself and you only visit him in between acts of the game. For all intents and purposes, you’re on your own here, and it’s fantastic. It’s been noted plenty of times before, but the nervous humming and whistling of the main musical theme that Luigi does while strolling through the haunted halls is a great design choice. Plus, the fact that once a room is cleared out and the lights are on Luigi will be more upbeat in his singing is humorous icing on the cake.

Hopefully all the gold we're sucking up will cover this electricity bill

The controls of the game still hold up, but they certainly are difficult to master. And if you want to be getting a good rank, you need to get better at catching the boss ghosts. Once latching onto a boss, you need to pull in the opposite direction the ghost is heading while also occasionally rotating the analog stick rigorously, and the further along you get in the game, the more restless these spirits can be. But it’s still a lot of fun, something that I never really got tired of! One of the more complicated bits for those unfamiliar with the game is knowing where to go, the mansion can feel like a labyrinth at times, but so long as you go room to room and use your Poltergust on any and everything you can, you’ll be just fine. The biggest pitfall I encountered was trying to be better about checking the map to make sure the doors present actually led to a room. At a certain point the ghosts will start tricking you with fake doors that slam you against the wall, and you can lose money this way! Not great for those vying for A Rank.

In this house, entering any room could cost you

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Completing the Game

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There are a couple of different things that factor into completion, though they all feed into the same thing: money. Yes, almost as if we were playing Wario’s Mansion instead, everything that you manage to do in the game translates to the amount of gold you receive, and the final tally at the end of your adventure directly correlates to the type of mansion you receive. Here, H Rank is the lowest and A Rank is the highest. I was certain that there was an S Rank that you could achieve as well, but that appears to only apply to the 3DS version of the game. At any rate, your primary goal is vacuuming up the ghost as you move forward, no surprise there, and the amount of money that you receive from these ghosts is related to how well you do in the fight. The more often you get hit or the ghost is able to break free of your Poltergust, the smaller your rank is, which can be seen by the type of frame on their portrait at Professor E. Gadd’s lab. Additionally, whenever you get hit while in the mansion you also drop money that quickly disappears, so it’s important to try and not take damage as best as possible. There are also missable ghost bosses that you should strive to get, as that’ll only help you to increase your monetary worth.

So this guy's optional, but the toy soldiers aren't? Come on, he's cool!

There are plenty of other things to give you money too. As you progress, be sure to suck on absolutely everything in the environment with your vacuum. From the drawers in the halls to various curtains and bedspreads, you never know when billed currencies or gold bars will fly out at you. There are also gold mice and “speedy spirits” running amok that are incredibly difficult to catch, but those will catch you a lofty sum as well. Don’t forget the Boos that are hidden around the mansion either. There are 50 total and if you get all of them, you’ve got a gold diamond on your hands. Finally, there are a few jewels to be found by solving “puzzles” throughout the manor. These can be as simple as lighting the stove in the kitchen with fire, and as complicated as continuing to water the plant in the garden in every act until it fully blooms. All of these are necessary to some degree if you want to get that A Rank, and to be honest this was the part I was dreading most of all. I didn’t know how many times I would have to play through this game, but shock and awe when I was greeted with that A Rank screen at the end of my first (and only) playthrough this run. I played as carefully as possible and sucked up quite literally everything I could, but I still had problems holding onto the main ghosts themselves, so I knew my ranks weren’t that good. But I got all the jewels and a good number of other items too, which I guess cinched it.

It's all I had hoped for and more

I loved revisiting Luigi’s Mansion, and I think it was a great jumping off point for the remaining GameCube games I’ll be playing and writing about this October. Although honestly, it really makes me want to visit the other games in the series, as I haven’t played the second or third games before and I know people love them. Maybe that’s something that I can work towards as well, as this is a series that I already feel pretty invested in after only 1 game! Or, maybe 2, as I HAVE played the Luigi’s Mansion Arcade cabinet and loved that one as well!

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 7/652