Tantalus Developed Luigi's Mansion 2 HD

Luigi's Mansion 2 HD was released on Nintendo Switch just yesterday and of course people have already seen the credits roll, confirming that the remaster was developed by Tantalus Media. The Australian studio is best known on this blog for their work on Twilight Princess HD and Skyward Sword HD.

Together with GREZZO they have supported the Zelda main team with such side projects, where both now have also worked on the Luigi's Mansion franchise in some form, since GREZZO has remade the first game on the Nintendo 3DS.

For a while I was worried that GREZZO is making the Luigi's Mansion 2 remaster as well, because I wanted some more top-down Zelda goodness from them, after their Link's Awakening remake became my absolute favorite Zelda game. And I got my wish, so I'm happy that these two studios are taking turns here. But of course there are Zelda fans who would have preferred to get Twilight Princess HD instead.

As for The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD on Switch, I believe that they became a victim of the postponement of Tears of the Kingdom. Originally, Nintendo planned to release the big new Zelda in 2022, but then they had to move it to 2023. In 2024 we're already getting the next Zelda game with Echoes of Wisdom, so there wasn't any real need for some filler releases. And Nintendo doesn't want to distract you from a new Zelda release with some remasters, which is why they have likely cancelled any plans of porting over the ones from Wii U. If there ever were any to begin with.

However, if Tears of the Kingdom's development had finished in time, we could have gotten The Wind Waker HD and/or Twilight Princess HD in 2023, just to have something for Zelda in that year. That wasn't meant to be, where Tantalus was available to develop else something else in the meantime... like Luigi's Mansion 2 HD.

But they are also available again now, where they might work on getting much requested Zelda HD ports out on the Nintendo Switch in early 2025. There won't be anything new in the foreseeable future for the Zelda franchise. They are apparently working on a remaster of Breath of the Wild for the next system (see U-King-O), but it will take many years to make new open world game. So, 2025 could become the year of remasters for Zelda.

I've said this before, but it still makes sense for Nintendo to port over the Wii U games onto the Switch, because on the next system they won't get away with mere ports, especially in the case of Twilight Princess. Time is ticking here.

As a side note, they did the Metroid Prime Remastered credits thing again, meaning that they only list the people who have worked on the remaster and not the original Luigi's Mansion 2. "Based on the work of the development team from the original Nintendo 3DS version."

Well, I get that the credits are already long enough as they are, but it's still disrespectful towards Next Level Games and everyone who has put their blood, sweat and tears into making this game. This new trend needs to stop. Credit where credit is due.