For starters, the remastered version of the game is dropping the original’s subtitle, and will instead be called Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. Its newest trailer showcases its enhanced and updated visuals, which might not be on the same level as something like Luigi’s Mansion 3, but do certainly look like a significant upgrade over the original 3DS version of the game (which looked pretty good in its own right).

The trailer also shows off several glimpses of gameplay, showing Luigi crossing paths with different kinds of ghosts, whipping out his trusty Poltergust and other gadgets, exploring different environments, and solving puzzles. Check it out below.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD launches for the Nintendo Switch sometime in Summer 2024.

Vancouver-based developer Next Level Games has been acquired by Nintendo. The deal will be closed on March 1st, after which Next Level Games will become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Switch manufacturer. Nintendo will purchase 100 percent of outstanding shares in the process.

In a press release, Nintendo stated that the acquisition is a result of the owner-directors looking to sell their shares. “Completion of the acquisition will serve to secure the availability of Next Level Games development resources for Nintendo, including development expertise, as well as facilitate an anticipated improvement in development speed and quality by enabling closer communication and exchange of staff with the Nintendo development team.”

Though it’s worked on a number of titles for Nintendo in the past, including Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon and Metroid Prime: Federation Force for the 3DS, it’s perhaps best known for Luigi’s Mansion 3. The Switch title launched in October 2019 and received a strong amount of critical acclaim. It sold a whopping 5.37 million copies within just two months of release.

You can check out our review for Luigi’s Mansion 3 here. What could Next Level Games be working on next for Nintendo? We’ll likely found out in the coming months, so stay tuned.

While Pokemon Sword and Shield have dominated recent headlines with their absolutely bonkers sales figures, it’s worth noting just how well Luigi’s Mansion 3 has sold as well. Selling 5.37 million units in just 2 months, the game has immediately become one of the top-selling first party Switch titles, and has even outsold the likes of Super Mario Maker 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (both of which have been on the market longer).

In their recent quarterly financial report, Nintendo shed some more light on the pleasant surprise that is the impressive commercial success of the action-adventure title. As per the Japanese publisher, the sell-through figures of Luigi’s Mansion 3 in its first 9 weeks on sale are far outpacing the figures for its predecessor, the 3DS’ 2013 title Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon in that same period. In fact, Nintendo states that “it is off to more than twice as fast of a start.”

Luigi’s Manson 3 is a game that’s very easy to root for, and it’s success, as such, is very good news indeed. Read our review for it through here to find out just why we’re so crazy about it. Luigi’s Mansion 3 is also getting two multiplayer DLCs this year, the first of which is coming out in April.

Next Level Games, the developers behind Luigi’s Mansion 2, has just announced via an interview with Gamasutra that they are signing an exclusive development deal with Nintendo. Studio co-founder Jason Carr was quoted:

“We are doing only Nintendo products now. We’re super happy with our relationship with Nintendo. There’s no reason to look anywhere else. They keep giving us better and better IP to work with, and as long as we do our job and make good games for them there’s no reason for us to venture out.”

Next Level Games has worked with Nintendo on several games in addition to Luigi’s Mansion 2, including Super Mario Strikers and the Wii edition of Punch-Out!!

Carr continued, “We got up to four teams. We were about 115, 120 people. We spread ourselves way too thin. We just ended up making sh***y games, really.”

The team’s renewed focus and deal with Nintendo will only improve things from here, Carr added, “There are a lot of benefits to working with a first party. Nintendo’s great. They give you the time to make they games good. They’ve done really well – the Wii’s done really well, the DS has done really well, the Wii U is not the strongest start but we trust that they’ll come up with something to get it going, and the 3DS was a blast to work on.”

While worldwide sales are 5.4 million units, territories outside of Japan account for 1.19 million copies. Even now, the game can be found hanging out in the top 10 of Media Create’s software sales charts.

Worldwide sales for Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon have also been revealed and are currently at 2.65 million units, which again includes both retail and digital downloads. Unlike Animal Crossing, the game has been on sales since March this year for all territories.

Seeing as how Nintendo’s Wii U is facing severe sales problems worldwide, at least the 3DS is going great guns. The year will be far more encouraging as Pokemon X & Y releases this October with other titles like The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and Super Smash Bros. on the way.

Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 made a comeback at number 2, but many of the spots in the top 10 were occupied by 3DS games. These include Donkey Kong Country Returns, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon and Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, which premiered at third, fifth and tenth place respectively.

Dead Island: Riptide continues to hold on at number 4, making up the remainder of the top 5. Meanwhile, Battlefield 3 reappears on the charts at the ninth position.

According to the NPD, the Nintendo 3DS handheld also reportedly sold more than the Xbox 360, marking the end of Microsoft’s reign at the top in the US.

Compared to the same quarterly period from 2012, the company managed to sell this many first party games within just 18 weeks, while it took roughly 30 weeks – or around 7 months, give or take a week – to sell the same in 2012. Obviously this indicates the console has risen in popularity.

This can also be attributed to some of the more critically acclaimed launches to happen this year, which includes Fire Emblem: Awakening and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, with Animal Crossing: New Leaf to follow. Brain Age: Concentration and LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins round out the remaining first party titles the company has put out.

Of course, in comparison, the company only put out two first party titles last year, namely Kid Icarus: Uprising and Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir, developed by Tecmo-Koei.

While overall hardware sales saw a drop from the previous week, Nintendo’s Tomodachi Collection: New Life still managed to reign on top, selling 103,479 units for a total of 862,054 units in lifetime sales. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon came in second, selling 31,345 units (for a lifetime sales total of 691,921 units).

Animal Crossing: New Leaf is still going great guns with 25,460 units sold this week for roughly 3.2 million lifetime unit sales thus far. Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, the only non-3DS title in the top 5, managed to sell 13,314 units for a total of 169,996 lifetime units, and Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission sold 7,359 units (with 184,516 lifetime sales).

This week saw the Vita drop to the fourth position in sales, and was synonymous for the lack of any big releases.

Releasing for the 3DS handheld on April 18th, it even managed to beat out Namco Bandai’s Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3. The latter debuted on the same day for the Sony PlayStation 3 but even with the rabid fan base of the Naruto franchise behind it, it only managed to sell 87,661 units in its first week in Japan.

Another new release was Sega’s Seven Dragon 2020 II for the PlayStation Portable, which premiered at the third spot and sold 73,697 copies.

Meanwhile, other releases like Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon and Animal Crossing sold 41,296 units and 34,482 units respectively, with lifetime sales records of 557,271 units and 3,096,559 sales respectively.

And no, there wasn’t a single PlayStation Vita release in the top 10 this week, whether new or old.

Some of the other sales figures of note include Super Mario 3D Land selling 8.29 million units, Mario Kart 7 selling 8.08 million units, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D selling 2.95 million units and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon selling 1.22 million units. Overall, not a bad run of sales (but seriously, less than 3 million for Ocarina of Time? Sacrilege!)

Let’s not forget Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which is currently only available in Japan but is on its way to selling 4 (!) million units. The title will be making its way to North America and Europe soon, so we expect larger sales in the coming months.