This is somebody's nightmare.
The developer of the Mario and Luigi series has been forced into bankruptcy.
AlphaDream declared bankruptcy in Japan yesterday (October 1), citing debts of ¥465m (approx. US$4.3m at current mid-market rates). The company cited higher development costs and lower sales as the reason for the bankruptcy.
Originally founded in 1991 as a construction company, the firm pivoted to games in 2001 with a Japanese-exclusive Game Boy Color game called Koto Battle: Tengai no Moribito. During their 20 years of game development, AlphaDream developed all of the Mario and Luigi RPGs, and three games based on the popular Hamtaro franchise. AlphaDream's final products were a mobile app called Kedama no Gonjiro (Japan only) and a remake of 2009's Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story which released for 3DS in January.
Mario & Luigi seems like a valuable series and they would need someone to make them.
... Played Bowser's Inside Story for the DS last year and that game was terrible. ...
I think Nintendo would be more likely to want to poach individual employees they liked than buy the whole company. That's what they did when Flagship went under, for instance, and one of them directed the last couple Zelda games.
The best they can hope for is Nintendo either steps in to buy them or just hires them like they did with the Mario Party team at Hudson after Konami killed that company.I didn't know that Nintendo did that w/ the Hudson MP team. If they brought on a full team like that one can only wonder what happened to support for that game (DLC), unless they are moving right on to a sequel.
TSo maybe the market for Mario RPGs that put in platformer elements to appear less RPG like to sell to an audience that doesn't play many RPGs doesn't exist anymore. An audience playing the games I listed above would probably find Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario overly simplistic.
So Miyamoto ruined Paper Mario and then via the Paper Jam crossover essentially ruined Mario & Luigi so what hope is there in any future Mario RPGs? The great ones from the past all break Miyamoto's stupid rules.
You have to remember its Koizumi who overlooks Nintendo's software divisions now. This is the guy who snuck Rosalina's backstory into the first Mario Galaxy, which is one of the reasons Miyamoto lost his **** and Galaxy 2 had no story.
I recall an interview with Miyamoto from years ago (post "Celda" outrage era) where he talked about the emotional turmoil he went through with "losing" control of Link/Legend of Zelda. Specifically citing the design changes he went through int the 3D era (specifically citing that Link now had a piercing, which was not his decision). I wonder if this is why he was being protective of Mario, because he didn't want to lose creative control like he did with Link.
I recall an interview with Miyamoto from years ago (post "Celda" outrage era) where he talked about the emotional turmoil he went through with "losing" control of Link/Legend of Zelda. Specifically citing the design changes he went through int the 3D era (specifically citing that Link now had a piercing, which was not his decision). I wonder if this is why he was being protective of Mario, because he didn't want to lose creative control like he did with Link.
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To be fair I didn't like the earring at the time either. Seemed like a very blatant attempt to come across as hip, late 90's style.
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To be fair I didn't like the earring at the time either. Seemed like a very blatant attempt to come across as hip, late 90's style.
This is in past tense - did you come around, or just decide that it doesn't really matter?
For what it's worth, I still think that Link's earring is lame, but it's a small enough detail that it doesn't really matter.
