I passed up a lot of great games for stupid reasons, even slept on them when they hit rock bottom on the secondhand market. Luigi's Mansion is a fine example of this, by the time I got my Gamecube it was already pretty cheap for a brand new copy, and yet I just... never bothered. I mean, a game starring Luigi?? That could never work!

Of course I know now that Luigi's Mansion is a certifiable classic, and thankfully emulation for the sixth generation consoles is in a good enough place that it doesn't take too much effort to get this game up and running. I even went the extra mile and picked up a USB Gamecube controller to play it with, though I would argue that should be a pre-requisite for playing any Gamecube game on the PC. Its brightly colored and unconventionally shaped buttons, bizarro form factor, useless D-pad, and massive triggers... Bop-it ass controller, looks like it's made for toddlers. And yet, I can't imagine playing Luigi's Mansion with anything else. Nintendo first party games were designed around it, after all, and in the case of Luigi's Mansion the directive to use every part of the buffalo meant having a dedicated button for shouting "Marrrioooo...!"

Gameplay is fairly straightforward, but structured in a way that makes its core loop feel incredibly satisfying. Each ghost you hunt down is its own little puzzle to solve, resulting in some very fun and inventive boss battles. It helps that solution to each encounter is fairly intuitive, and the game controls well enough that it never feels like you're fighting against it. The pacing is damn near perfect, and the size of the mansion is large enough to pack away its share of secrets without being so huge that it overstays its welcome (like Luigi's Mansion 3's high-rise hotel.)

The only area where I feel the game really falters is boo hunting. Having an especially wily one get away from you can be annoying, but the mansion is easy enough to navigate that chasing a squirrely boo between rooms is never more than an inconvenience. While this gimmick certainly could have been improved upon, I never found it too frustrating. A small blemish on what I think is otherwise one of the better games on the system.

I think the Gamecube might just be the last truly great system Nintendo put out. Its library is solid and unencumbered by silly system gimmicks, even if its controller looks like it was designed by a highly skilled team of clowns. It may not have outclassed Sony or Microsoft in terms of hardware performance, but its software never felt held back for it either. And they launched it all with a Luigi game. It's a little weird to think about now, but then so was the scene where Luigi gets his shit sucked by a ghost, what's up with that