If you’ve recently played Mario & Luigi: Brothership, then chances are you might have noticed something rather familiar with its opening cutscene. That is, of course, if you’ve also seen The Super Mario Bros. Movie from Nintendo and Illumination.
You see, both the game and the movie feature our favourite platforming siblings hurtling through a portal, desperately clinging onto each other before ultimately being torn apart and flung into different locations.
According to the developers at Acquire and Nintendo, however, they had no idea how the movie itself would play out when creating Brothership. Call it a happy coincidence, but it seems that in chasing the same theme of ‘brotherly bonds’, the game and the movie wound up essentially doing the same thing.
Here’s what the team had to say during the latest instalment of ‘Ask the Developer’:
Akira Otani (Nintendo EPD): We didn't actually have the movie in mind when we made it. Or rather, when we made it, we didn't have any information about The Super Mario Bros. Movie. I assumed the movie would probably also express the bond between the brothers in some way, but I decided not to worry about how this would be depicted and to just focus on portraying it in the right way for Mario & Luigi... But yeah, I've been told that the opening cutscene bears an uncanny resemblance. (Laughs)
Everyone: (Laughs)
Haruyuki Ohashi (Director, Acquire): I got a shock when I saw the movie. (Laughs)
Hitomi Furuta (Designer, Acquire): It felt like they really got us good with it. (Laughs)
Otani: Just like Snoutlet says in the game, “Some coincidence, huh?”
Ohashi: To be fair, the movie and the game share the same foundation – this brotherly bond.
Otani: We were also really happy about the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. I'd be really grateful if people who've seen the movie are then motivated to try out games starring Mario and Luigi.
In an earlier instalment of ‘Ask the Developer’, the team also commented on how the Mario & Luigi franchise was almost abandoned entirely before Nintendo approached Acquire to commence co-development. At the time of its release earlier this year, it had been nearly a decade since the launch of the previous original title in the series: Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam in 2015.