Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of AlphaDream, the company
responsible for the cult favourite Mario and Luigi series of roleplaying games.
While gone, this studio will not be forgotten.
They have left an indelible mark on the Super Mario universe, and have been instrumental
in defining the way we view many of the core characters from this series.
Instead of focusing on the loss that we feel at this time, let’s instead celebrate the
life of AlphaDream.
Let us look back on how this very unusual studio came to be, all thanks to a friendship,
and then falling out, between Nintendo and Squaresoft.
Before we can talk about AlphaDream, we have to talk about Super Mario RPG, arguably the
proto-Mario and Luigi game.
In the early ‘90s, Squaresoft (which had not yet absorbed rival Enix) had a problem.
Their games, particularly their Final Fantasy series, sold very well in Japan.
Their long, nuanced, well-crafted story-driven roleplaying games were a labour of love, and
domestic audiences appreciated this.
Outside the country, though, Square’s games didn’t fair quite as well.
Perhaps there was a language barrier, or a general challenge at getting foreign children
to sit still and read dialogue.
Maybe Square’s signature battle mechanics were simply too complicated for Westerners
to wrap their heads around.
For whatever reason, many Square games were simply not living up to their potential.
It was costly to localise such long games into English and other European languages,
so Square needed a big hit to help break into this market and develop a reputation.
One attempt at doing so was Mystic Quest, a roleplaying game that was envisioned as
a very simple, dumbed-down version of Final Fantasy.
This, alas, didn’t exactly grab Western audiences’ attention in the way Square hoped
it would.
So what else could they do?
They needed a cuddly, cute, eye-catching character that could drive sales of their game.
They decided that they needed Mario.
Square and Nintendo had a fairly good working relationship at this point in time.
When contacted about the chance of a collaboration, Mario overseer Shigeru Miyamoto jumped at
the chance.
Then he saw what Square had actually envisioned.
They imagined the game as a 50-50 hybrid of Mario and Final Fantasy, and showed off a
piece of concept art featuring Mario riding on a horse and wielding a sword.
Shigeru was unimpressed.
“That’s not right!” he announced.
Mario could use a hammer as a weapon, perhaps, but he would never use a sword.
Bear in mind that we were still nearly a decade away from Super Smash Brothers at this point.
It became clear to Square that if this collaboration was to work, Shigeru expected a Super Mario
RPG to look and feel like a Mario game.
Square’s own signature design choices would need to labour under the surface instead.
So, the game was designed as a fun, silly, lighthearted affair – one that perfectly
reflected the Super Mario aesthetic of the time.
The directors for the game were a pair of Square employees that had previously worked
as writers on Mystic Quest.
Yoshihiko Maekawa and Chihiro Fujioka were both relatively new to game design, although
Chihiro had enjoyed a long career as a game compose already, having made music for such
classics as Combat Simulator: Battle Gorilla, and Earthbound.
No, not that Earthbound.
Another one.
From 1983.
Yoshihiko and Chihiro, along with other staff members from Square, poured their heart and
soul into Super Mario RPG, and the result was the breakout hit that the company had
been hoping for.
While it came right at the end of the SNES’s lifespan and was expensive to produce thanks
to its costly cartridge hardware, the game ended up selling well enough in America to
justify more Mario RPGs.
It didn’t sell particularly well in Europe, though.
This is possibly something to do with the fact that it wasn’t actually released on
the continent.
Square was still hesitant about localising the game into a bunch of different languages,
so they hedged their bets and didn’t bother trying.
Flushed with success after seeing the North American sales figures for Super Mario RPG,
Nintendo and Square were eager to work together again.
Then, seemingly overnight, their partnership fell apart.
As Nintendo worked on their 64-bit follow-up to the SNES, rival Sony was pushing the PlayStation
– a console that Nintendo had inadvertently helped to create when they reneged on a deal
to release a disc-based games system.
The PlayStation used discs which were very easy to develop for, and very cheap to print
and sell.
Nintendo’s insistence on sticking with cartridges meant that its console was a lot less appealing
to developers.
So, Square jumped ship.
Their next Final Fantasy game took advantage of the PlayStation’s unique features, and
as a result, Final Fantasy 7 ended up being the big super global smash hit they’d been
dreaming of.
Not to be outdone, Nintendo partnered with Intelligent Systems to create Paper Mario.
This game was made without the input of many developers that had worked on Super Mario
RPG, and as such, had a flavour and feeling that was very much its own.
So where did AlphaDream come into all of this?
Tetsuo Mizuno, the former president of Square, left the company in 1998 amid a dramatic shakeup.
At the end of his gardening leave in 2001, he formed a brand new company.
This company would make classic roleplaying games.
It was staffed by many veterans of Square, such as Chihiro and Yoshihiko.
It was destined for big things.
That studio was called…
Alpha…Star?
They later changed the name to AlphaDream.
AlphaDream’s first game, Koto Battle, is a card game for the Game Boy that’s not
dissimilar to the Pokemon Trading Card Game.
It won acclaim domestically, but it was never released to foreign markets, again because
localisation is very, very expensive.
After this came Tomato Adventure for the Gameboy Advance, which I wish we had got outside of
Japan.
Chihiro served as the director for both of these games.
Then, in 2003, came Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, directed by Yoshihiko.
This perhaps more so than the Paper Mario series was the spiritual successor to Super
Mario RPG.
AlphaDream’s staff had worked on the first game, and knew how Nintendo liked things to
work.
Shigeru Miyamoto served as a producer on the title.
Essentially, the gang was all back together, and they were able to take the ideas they’d
tinkered with in their first Mario roleplaying game and expand them into something more.
Luigi’s inclusion in the game was particularly important during development.
This was the first time the character had been included in a major role in a roleplaying
game, and as such, AlphaDream had a lot of scope to flesh him out and develop his personality
and relationships with others.
To put things simply, they kicked him.
Then, when he was down, they kicked him again.
Luigi became something of a punching bag in this game – a meta commentary on the way
that he was often viewed as little more than Green Mario in main series games.
It built upon his cowardice from Luigi’s Mansion which had been released two years
prior, and really ran with that as a theme.
It was here that Luigi developed the persona of an earnest underdog; not as popular or
cool as Mario, always in his brother’s shadow, but always trying to do his best.
Just between you and me, this makes Luigi far more relatable and interesting as a character,
and it’s probably why he’s developed his own enthusiastic fanbase over the years.
Together, Yoshihiko and Chihiro, along with the rest of the team at AlphaDream, delivered
an enjoyable roleplaying game that went on to be one of the standout hits of the GBA’s
library.
While many other handheld games of this era were simply ports of existing SNES games,
Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga is a wholly unique labour of love which sparkles with
wit and originality.
The studio went on to make several other games that built on this formula.
Partners in Time, Bowser’s Inside Story, Dream Team, plus a crossover with the Paper
Mario series, Paper Jam.
Some of those games were so good, AlphaDream made them twice!
Remakes of Superstar Saga and Bowser’s Inside Story were among the last games to be released
for the 3DS.
So as we say goodbye to this dedicated, creative, inventive studio, let’s take a lesson from
their triumphs and successes.
The bittersweet moral of AlphaDream’s story is that there’s more to success than financial
gain.
While the Mario and Luigi series was often popular, it was never very profitable for
the amount of work that went into the games.
These big, sprawling epics took a lot of resources, and often launched on dying consoles when
sales were at their lowest.
Thus, the company has run out of steam, and money.
It has, however, left behind a legacy of engaging, enjoyable games that have left an impression
on the Mario universe as a whole.
While it’s sad that we won’t get any more Mario and Luigi games from AlphaDream, we
can at least enjoy what has been left behind, and be grateful that we ever got such beautiful
games in the first place.
Maybe sometimes it’s better to make the thing you want to make, rather than worrying
about what you should make.
If that means losing money?
Fine.
At least you’ll be proud of what you’ve accomplished.