Brothership

[Dark Jaguar]

I can't begin to express how much of a relief this trailer was.  After so many years of so very many dull Mario RPGs with nothing but toads toads and more toads thanks to some supposed internal "mandate" never to stray from existing characters being "on model" or whatever, we finally get an RPG (that isn't a remake!) going back to the weird!  Clearly Nintendo's done some thinking internally after the sheer success of the remake of Super Mario RPG, because after getting Paper Mario Thousand Year Door remade along with the amazingly creative Super Mario Wonder, Mario is finally allowed to be WEIRD again!

[A Black Falcon]

I never liked these games much.  I only have two of them and didn't get far in either one (the first one for GBA and Bowser's Inside Story for DS)... meh, I never liked their art style and found the gameplay pretty forgettably average at best compared to the vastly superior N64 and GC Paper Mario games.

With that said, I know that the previous developer went out of business five-ish years ago.  I wonder who's making this new one, and will it be any good?  Maybe the game will be okay, sure, but visually it is not promising.  The graphical style unfortunately looks a lot like the previous Mario & Luigi games, which is unfortunate; it's still, like, C-grade stuff compared to the other, better Mario games, just like the old ones were.  I actually wasn't sure if this game was new or a remake of the first M&L game until they showed a subtitle on screen, it looked so much like that (pretty mediocre) game.  Oh well.  I guess it gives the Switch another game, but unless it gets really cheap I doubt I'll be buying it anytime soon.

[Dark Jaguar]

Well, suffice to say I have a very different opinion on the quality of those early Mario & Luigi games myself.  I loved both the original and Bowser's Inside Story, but bounced right off the middle child with the time travel due to having to keep track of buttons for four different characters.  By the time Paper Jam came along, the genericism had infected that series too and I lost interest.  This is a return to form and frankly, I adore the visual design.  It's very "toony" and I like a Mario game that leans into that particular aesthetic.  All that said, I won't try to convince you because it's a subjective matter of taste.  I can see the argument for Super Mario RPG and the first two (or even three) Paper Mario games being the better titles.  I'll at least give that the remakes of Superstar Saga and Bowser's Inside Story were rather uninspired and altered the art design of many of the enemies from their unique looks to something far more generic.

But, here's some news for you.  Alpha Dream collapsed, but the employees by and large were absorbed directly into Nintendo's main office.