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.

Tantalus Currently Not Working on Twilight Princess HD

With the delay of the sequel to Breath of the Wild to Spring 2023, it seemed like a no-brainer that Nintendo would want to port over The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD to the Nintendo Switch, so that Zelda fans would get something in the year 2022. However, you might already have had your doubts, because this wasn't announced right away together with the delay and Nintendo has a lot in their pipeline for the rest of the year with Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Splatoon 3, and new Pokémon games.

Now, Tom Crago, the CEO of Tantalus Media, was asked in a podcast whether Nintendo has approached them for such a port or not, where the answer was a straight "no". See NintendoEverything for the full story.

Tantalus has made both Twilight Princess HD and Skyward Sword HD, where they seem like the obvious choice for the job. But of course The Wind Waker HD was made by Nintendo themselves and there is no need to remaster anything in this case, so they might just work on this in-house. However, Nintendo should have all hands full with the sequel to Breath of the Wild, where you would think it's best to let an external company do the job once more.

What would be important about such ports is that they get the same frame rate power-up as Skyward Sword HD, where the game runs now in 60FPS without any noticeable drops. This was still an issue with both The Wind Waker HD, for example during battles on the ocean, and Twilight Princess HD, for example in the swamps of Faron Woods. If they get ported over to Nintendo Switch, there will be no excuse for this at all after the smooth Skyward Sword HD, so simple ports wouldn't cut it.

And naturally, if only Nintendo were to work on such ports, we couldn't expect a remaster of Link's Crossbow Training as part of the collection. And we all know that this would be the true star. Well, not really, but it would make for an excellent extra, same as Bowser's Fury with Super Mario 3D World.

Skyward Sword HD Developed By Tantalus

Ever since Skyward Sword HD was on the table, it made sense that the port-happy, Australian studio Tantalus would take the job again, after their work on Twilight Princess HD for the Wii U, where this blog even kept reminding you of their existence for that very reason. And as confirmed by vooks.net, Tantalus is indeed still part of the Zelda family and had taken over the job of tomorrow's release.

Still... this comes of a slight surprise at this point, because Skyward Sword HD looks much closer to The Wind Waker HD in terms of development efforts, where only a small part of the Zelda team had been working on the remaster. Upscaled graphics, new controls, a small number of quality of life improvements, done is the new Switch release.

It's likely that they had to polish all the textures again to make them truly HD (with The Wind Waker they already had high resolution textures available), because otherwise there is nothing that really explains their involvement here. And overall it's a shame that they had an external studio working on this, but they didn't bother to add any new content...

Twilight Princess HD had the new Miiverse stamps to collect, which was really great, and the Cave of Shadows. The latter was essentially just a modified Cave of Ordeals, but it was better than nothing and they could have added a similar dungeon to this remaster for a good challenge.

In the very least there should have been more Medals to collect, but my dream for this remaster always has been late-game nighttime exploration of the surface world for some additional side quests. Of course this would have involved some larger efforts, because you would need the nighttime visuals for most of the surface world, but it also would gone perfectly hand-in-hand with the theme of re-exploring the major environments in different conditions. And if you hire an entire studio for such a remaster, you can think a little bigger...

The Many Studios Working on Zelda

That Zelda games aren't always developed by Nintendo alone, isn't a new concept. Ignoring the abominations made by Animation Magic and Viridis, the first successful cooperation between Nintendo and some other company to make a Zelda game was in 2001 with Oracle of Ages & Seasons on the GameBoy Color, which was developed by Flagship - a studio formed by both Capcom and Nintendo. This studio later would develop Four Swords and The Minish Cap for the GameBoy Advance, before it got dissolved.

In the following years we also had the studio Vanpool, which developed the Tingle spin-off series for the Nintendo DS and DSiWare, where Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland is probably the most noteworthy title. Then GREZZO took over the handheld Zelda realm and co-developed the Four Swords Anniversary Edition for DSiWare, as well as Ocarina of Time 3D, Majora's Mask 3D and Tri Force Heroes for the Nintendo 3DS.

So, on the handheld systems outsourcing the development has been going on for the majority of Zelda titles. But things have gotten more remarkable in the last year, where a total of five different game development companies aside from Nintendo have been spotted working on the The Legend of Zelda franchise:

• Koei Tecmo developing the Hyrule Warriors series
• GREZZO co-developing the Nintendo 3DS Zelda games
• Monolith Soft co-developing Breath of the Wild
• Tantalus Media co-developing Twilight Princess HD
• Jupiter developing Zelda Picross

Koei Tecmo with its development teams "Omega Force" and "Team Ninja" is currently working on the DLC for Hyrule Warriors: Legends and afterwards will most likely start developing Hyrule Warriors 2 for NX. This spin-off series certainly is going strong and will probably deliver the best fan service to Zelda fans for years to come, where all the many fan favorites get to be playable on Hyrule's battlefields.

GREZZO has finished the development of Tri Force Heroes last year and is now working on their own game, Ever Oasis. But we might see them return to the Zelda franchise at some point in the future, if they aren't already developing something on the sidelines.

Monolith Soft known for their extensive worlds in Xenoblade Chronicles is currently supporting the development of Breath of the Wild, where Hyrule never has been larger and certainly will profit from the additional workforce. Before they also assisted in the development of Skyward Sword and A Link Between Worlds, but were only credited under "Special Thanks". Their involvement seems to be somewhat more important this time around.

Tantalus Media delivered the HD remaster Twilight Princess HD, where it's possible that they are also supporting the development of Breath of the Wild with high resolution texture work. Future HD remasters like a potential Skyward Sword HD might also get outsourced to this Australian studio.

Finally, there's the Jupiter Corporation known for their many Picross titles, which now just tacked into the Zelda franchise with My Nintendo Picross - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It's entirely possible that they are currently developing a new Picross game based on another installment of the Zelda series, e.g. The Wind Waker. Potentially all Zelda games with 3D visuals could end up getting their own Picross game, so that Zelda fans will have something to spend Platinum Points on in the future.

And that's just what we know so far. It has been hinted by Nintendo that a Zelda anime movie could be a possibility, where some Japanese animation studio might be working on something as well. And hopefully one day we can see "Retro Studios" on the list above.