E3 2005: Mario & Luigi 2
Article by Colin Castro
Mario & Luigi, released for the GBA in late 2003, was met with critical acclaim. Uncontent with a simple sequel, Nintendo has taken the series in a fun new direction with Mario & Luigi 2. Baby Mario and Baby Luigi have been added to the mix and fight alongside Mario and Luigi in the game. The demo presented at E3 didnt give an explanation as to why this is possible, but it was, nevertheless, obvious that the babies were going to be extremely helpful throughout this adventure.
However, according to Nintendo, the games story goes something like this:
the brothers travel back in time to retrieve Princess Peach, only to come face to face with baby versions of themselves, the princess and Bowser. Teaming up with their young selves will soon send Mario and Luigi on a quest of lunatic proportions as players must control both the adult AND baby versions of the Mushroom Kingdom heroes. Players use the top screen to study the land, keep track of the pair of brothers not under their control or maximize combo moves in battle. With twice the Mario brothers and twice the laughs, this massive side-splitting adventure could only find a home on the dual screens of the Nintendo DS. -- Press Release
How they travel back in time is anyones guess, but it seems Nintendo has found a fun way to allow Mario and Luigi to interact with themselves. This begs the question: do they remember all of this from long long ago? Time paradoxes are so fun.
The E3 demo had three levels from which to choose from. There was Toadwood Forest, Energy Factory, and Yoster Island. Each level also had different objectives attached to them. In Toadwood Forest, your objective is to collect five stars; in Yoster Island, you must find a golden egg; and in Energy Factory you have to take out a boss. We still arent very sure what the purpose or results are for completing each objective, as the demo refused to say. But by showing three different levels with three different objectives, Nintendo is trying to assure us that Mario & Luigi 2 will feature a healthy variety of gameplay.
The most important factor in any video game is its gameplay. In this area, Mario & Luigi 2 improves upon the original in a most fascinating way. Like the original, you control Mario by pressing the A button and Luigi by pressing the B button. But with the emergence of the babies, gone is the original function of the L button, which was used to swap which of the Mario Brothers was in front. Instead, its now used to toss the Baby Brothers off their respective partners back. Thats right. The brothers carry the babies on their back, piggyback style. By pressing the L button, you can pitch the babies off the Brothers backs and they can go adventuring on their own. The great thing about the controls is that the babies have their own buttons set up for their actions. Baby Mario is X and Baby Luigi is Y. Mostly, youll use those to make the babies jump up ledges and such as they meander through the levels. Just remember that in battles you use the same buttons for each of the characters as you employ on the level overworld, whether or not all four of the heroes are together.
Which brings us to the most intriguing aspect of Mario & Luigi 2: the battle system. There are basically three different sets of fighters you can use in this game: Mario and Luigi, Baby Mario and Baby Luigi, or all four together with the Babies riding piggyback. The way each character fights is virtually the same as the original, except the babies have less power than their grownup versions. With that in mind, lets just discuss a battle with all four characters involved. Most of the battles take place on the lower screen with the heroes attacking whichever foe they choose. However, the top screen is used in some aspects of combat. For example, the piranha plant enemies can stretch out to the top screen and shoot fireballs down onto the heroes from above, thus making it that much harder to figure out which hero the plant is actually attacking.
The good news is the enemies are not the only ones that have the ability to attack from above. In the demo there was an item referred to as the trampoline, which basically launched all of your characters into the air and had them rain down on the selected enemy. The characters would fall down one at a time and you saw which one was coming via the top screen. If you timed it just right, and pushed the appropriate button, you could get your character to jump off of the head of the enemy and right back onto the trampoline, thus launching them again. However, if you miss-timed your attack just once, the character would fall off the enemy and knock the trampoline out of the way, ruining any chance of repeated attacks from the rest of your squad.
You can still dodge attacks by pressing the appropriate button at the correct time. (Each of the buttons corresponds to a different character. For example, to dodge with Mario, you press A, and to dodge with Luigi you press B.) When paired together, the brothers attack using the jump command and the babies attack using the hammer command. There were also a few other battle commands available. The obvious one is escape, which lets you leave the current battle. The other two were a 1-up icon, representing support items and a shell icon, representing attacking items.
One of the more fascinating attack items was the red shell. With the red shell, you select an enemy to attack; the current brother or baby that you have selected kicks the shell at the selected enemy. The shell flies out and whacks the selected enemy then flies back to the opposite brother/baby. As long as you keep pressing the appropriate button at the correct time, the brother/baby will kick the shell back at the enemy again. If the enemy is defeated, the shell moves onto the next enemy in line. Gradually the more you kick the shell the faster the shell begins to go. If you are somehow able to defeat all the enemies on the screen without letting the shell past you, you character grabs the shell and puts it back into your inventory. In essence, you are rewarded by getting to keep the item you used.
Another interesting aspect of battles with all four characters involved is if one of the adults fall during battle, say Mario, Baby Mario will drag Mario off screen and take his place in battle.
After each battle, experience is gained by all characters that were present during battle. So if all four characters were in battle, even if the babies just rode on the brothers backs and watched them jump on enemies all day, they still earn the same amount of experience as their older versions. However, during the times when the two pairs are separated, experience is only gained by whichever pair participated in the battle. Whenever a character levels up, there are five skills that are upgraded: Hitpoints (HP), Power (POW), Defense (DEF), Speed, and Stache. Interestingly enough, the babies gain Stache points even though they have no staches of their own.
Now lets discuss actions while traveling the levels themselves. As stated earlier, the babies ride the backs of their older versions. But with a push of the L button, the two groups can split up; normally with the babies traveling in places that the adults cant reach alone and vice versa. For example, in Toadwood Forest, you had to toss the babies into tree stumps to activate switches. Interestingly enough, when the babies enter a separate area that the adults could never reach, they move up to the top screen, which normally displays a birds eye view of the level. What this does is enables you to work both characters through different areas virtually simultaneously. All you need to do is press L to change which group youre currently controlling. However, no matter which group youre in control of, you still have the ability to make the second group jump by pressing their appropriate button. This tactic is actually used in some puzzles in the game as demonstrated in one of the levels of the demo. Basically, the babies were controlling a platform from above while the brothers traveled on the platform hitting blocks on their way. Another clever use of the top screen-bottom screen concept was one where the babies had to shoot water out of a pipe from the upper screen and have the water land in a tornado that is swirling back and forth down below.
The demo had two boss battles, one against a caterpillar and one against Kamek. The Kamek battle was fairly straightforward and the primary purpose of his battle seemed to simply show that Kamek is somehow involved in this new adventure. The caterpillar battle was an entirely different story. The caterpillar has a drink next to him that he sips from. Depending on what color the drink is, between orange and gray; the caterpillar will change into that color. The two different colors give the caterpillar different abilities during the battle. The caterpillar also has two underlings that will hold various items in their hands from time to time. By attacking the enemies, you could knock their item into the caterpillars drink, changing its color. We found it was most advantageous to make sure the caterpillar was drinking the gray drink, since it seemed to make him weaker.
In the limited amount of time I was able to play Mario & Luigi 2, I was convinced that I would need to own this title at launch. The simplicity of the controls combined with the unique battle system and mysterious plotline all combine to make Mario & Luigi 2 an excellent follow up to what was an originally great game on the GBA. Based on what the demo showed us, there is no doubt that it will improve upon its predecessor in a number of ways and should be a must-have game for your DS.