I’m here to tell you why you should be voting for Luigi. Yes, he has had some extraordinary success the past two years. In fact, Nintendo declared 2013 the Year of Luigi. Several Luigi specific games and DLC, such as New Super Luigi U or the 3DS Luigi’s Mansion were released to great acclaim. It all culminated in the “Luigi Death Stare” meme from Mario Kart 8. But why was the Year of Luigi a success? Why is the character so beloved?
Like many, my first exposure to Luigi was being forced to be the second player in the original Super Mario Bros. Whether it was because an older sibling demanded the right to be first player, or it because you were playing on your friend’s console, the message was clear; you weren’t cool enough to be Player 1 and had to wait. So we would come up with whatever excuse to make Luigi seem like the better choice. Usually this would result in the argument that green was a better color than red.
In the early days, the color of their clothes was all that was different between Luigi and Mario, but beginning with Super Mario Bros. 2 that started to change. Nintendo gave Luigi a different sprite and a different skill-set. Sadly, Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World went back to featuring largely interchangeable “Mario” brothers. Things started to change for good in the N64 and Gamecube era. Luigi was different from Mario again, not just in looks and moves, as they gave him a personality all his own. This is where my true love of Luigi came from.
Nintendo made Luigi a dork. He’s always fidgety, constantly in his brother’s shadow, and couldn’t do anything as well as Mario. In a way, Luigi was like us, those forever forced to be Player 2. We came to identify with Luigi, so when he would win a round of Smash Bros or Mario Kart, that was us winning. When he finally got out of Mario’s shadow and got his own games to star in, that was us stepping out of the shadow of our Player 1s.
I urge you to listen to your inner Player 2 and vote for Luigi.
By now, you all know that Luigi was narrowly defeated by Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, in the first round of our March Madness competition. It was neck and neck until the end, but once we sorted through the extra votes in the zero-hour, Luigi came up short once again. Prevent this tragedy from happening again, and vote today for your favorite characters. Oh, and no revenge voting, please. Luigi would have wanted a fair fight.
