Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is a welcome return to an old haunt

As the Nintendo remake and remaster train trundles along, it occasionally throws up interesting timeline quirks. Its latest release is one such instance.

Nintendo released the Switch exclusive Luigi’s Mansion 3 back in 2019. Now, five years later, players are being offered a Switch port of its predecessor, Luigi’s Mansion 2 (previously known as Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon in North America).

While it may sound counter-intuitive to go back to the second game when a Switch-native third entry already exists, Luigi’s Mansion 2 still holds its own, even if its successor looks better.

When the second game arrived on the 3DS back in 2013  – as part of Nintendo’s Year of Luigi celebrations – it did so to critical acclaim, so we’ve little objection to Nintendo resurrecting it. Or, rather, to Tantalus doing it.

For it is indeed the Australian studio – best known for its HD Zelda remasters of Skyward Sword on the Switch and Twilight Princess on the Wii U – which was chosen by Nintendo to give the same treatment to Luigi’s Mansion 2, and it’s once again done a great job of bringing the source material to the 1080p world.

Given that the 3DS had a top screen that was a mere 240 pixels high, it stands to reason that the Switch version of Luigi’s Mansion 2 has been given a notable upgrade in quality. While Tantalus could have simply upscaled the original game and called it a day, it’s instead taken the time to ensure that the Switch version looks as sharp and visually appealing as possible.

Some textures have been recreated, while numerous character models – such as those of Luigi himself and the quirky scientist Professor E Gadd – have been replaced with more detailed, expressive versions, allowing the game’s fantastic animations to shine even more.

Naturally, it goes without saying that Luigi’s Mansion 3 still looks better, because it was built with the Switch hardware in mind, but that’s not to say that Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD looks prehistoric by comparison – far from it.

The tweaks have