Last month, it was discovered the Japanese developer AlphaDream filed for bankruptcy after the development costs of its projects got the better of it. The company was best known for its Mario & Luigi RPG series and had most recently released Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey on the Nintendo 3DS at the beginning of 2019.
What wasn't known, though, was the developer had actually helped out on an upcoming Nintendo Switch exclusive before making headlines. As stated in the title above, this game was Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. This information is featured in the game's credits and is on display here, courtesy of the YouTube channel Zephiel810.
AlphaDream was reportedly one of four developers Sega had contracted out to help provide support on its latest Mario and Sonic themed Olympics title. The other three teams contributing were Racjin, Yuke's and Success Corp. Yuke's also helped with Sega's Tokyo 2020 game and Racjin worked on the Mario & Sonic series in the past.
The October report from Yahoo! Japan revealed AlphaDream was 465 million yen in debt (roughly £3.5 million / $4.3 million USD) as of March 2018. At this point in time, its unclear what will happen to the Mario & Luigi series going forward. Sales for the latest Mario & Luigi re-release on 3DS were so poor, Nintendo allegedly decided to cancel its future plans for the system.
[source gonintendo.com, via goldmetalsonic.wordpress.com]
Comments 38
That’s honestly really sad
I'm more interested in this than Luigi's mansion. That's weird to admit.
Does this mean no more Mario rpgs?
@sixrings Well, while I can't imagine myself enjoying Mario & Sonic more than Luigi's Mansion 3, I don't see anything wrong with looking forward to Tokyo 2020 more than Luigi's latest adventure: this looks like a solid party game and the 2D version is a nice feature. Might be getting it if it turns out fine.
Remember that they just filled bankruptcy
A company can come back from such a thing, and the story actually pushed some fans to buy copies of their games that they didn’t own yet to try and save the company, I am sure it wasn’t nearly enough but it might have help them slightly
If they worked on this game as well, they will get part of the money from sales (if they have percentage contract, if not it is different situation)
I still hope that Nintendo will just pick them up, 4 million dollars in debt means Nintendo can buy the debt for less than 4 million and actually acquiring the whole studio for another few millions (if not lees), that is basically getting a good studio for free
Nintendo should imo just pick them and Grasshopper manufacturers up and few others Small/medium sized talented studios with good IPs
So it seems like (some) Alpha Dream developers did have some experience in HD development, albeit only for a game primarily developed and published by another company.
@Tantani "Nintendo should imo just pick them and Grasshopper manufacturers up"
I'd love that but wasn't Grasshopper Manufacture bought out by GungHo?
Why are gallons of water coming out of my eyes
@Kirbyfan There's still Paper Mario, since that is essentially an in-house IP (Intelligent Systems).
@KingMike What the chances of Intelligent Systems making a proper Paper Mario RPG(with partners and the like)?
This makes me happy to be buying it, the only Mario and Sonic Olympics game I have bought.
Mario & Luigi at the Olympic Games
...Sorry, too soon.
@RadNitro89 I'd say pretty good since Nintendo brought Mario Party back to its roots, gave us another sandbox 3D Mario, made a new Luigi's Mansion with unique character ghosts and a more open structure, released the definitive version of Smash with some of the most highly requested characters (K. Rool, Ridley, Banjo-Kazooie), made an open-world Zelda free from the conventions people felt were getting stale... I could go on and on. Switch-era Nintendo is a Nintendo that listens to its fans.
@sixrings I'm the opposite, but I'm still interested in this.
"Sales for the latest Mario & Luigi re-release on 3DS were so poor, Nintendo allegedly decided to cancel its future plans for the system"
It was a full-priced, 2D remake of a game you can already play on the console. What the hell did Nintendo expect?!
I swear I feel like someone has stolen all that money from Alpha Dreams.
@LaytonPuzzle27 If someone did, it was probably the scoundrels at Game Freak. /s
@Jack_Goetz yes, grasshopper belongs to gungho, but it looks like they tried to separate from them a while back
It seems less likely now but for a while it really looked like they try to leave gungho in order to move to Nintendo
Can’t help but feel if Bowsers Inside Story and the first game remake came out on switch instead of 3DS this would be a different story, man those games are great!
Come on Nintendo, buy them out and make them a new first party studio...
They could start work on switch’s thousand year door remake! Hehe
@Tantani GungHo was always a bad idea for Grasshopper I thought. A Nintendo buy out would be amazing though.
@Danpudding It's sad they had to release a game on a system that was pretty much dead. Would have sold much better on Switch but I think they were going downhill a while before that anyway.
@Tantani Exactly! For some reason people thing bankruptcy is “company over”. It kind of is, but that’s only if it fails.
Sooo... no post-release support, updates, patches etc?
@RainbowGazelle
It was a weird choice but it’s also possible that Nintendo set expectations really low and it still underperformed. Should have been a Switch game.
Not sure why Nintendo put this burden on them, like how hard is it to help your loyal second party dev here. Sure their remake doesn't sell well but it's clearly Nintendo's fault for having it being a 3DS release to begin with when everyone is already moving on to the Switch. It seems like if Nintendo's dev made one game that isn't successful then they throw them under the bus, Alpha Dreams made Bowser's Inside Story remake and the game was unsuccessful so Nintendo refuse to help them with bankruptcy.
This reminds me of the old Rare situation on the GameCube where Rare made Star Fox Adventures, the game was good but didn't sold very well so Nintendo just sell Rare away like really, you couldn't wait til they finish Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo for GameCube first. Such foolish decisions at Nintendo. I had a feeling that soon Alpha Dreams may become one of Sony's dev as they are looking to buy studios for support of their next-gen system, the PlayStation 5. If they got a hold of Alpha Dreams, Nintendo would had to kiss their Mario & Luigi franchise good-bye. The series will never be the same without them.
Insert [Please buy Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games - Tokyo 2020 to hopefully give AlphaDream more opportunities for work.] plead here.
I think they should re-release the Mario & Luigi games on the Switch. The 3DS was pretty much done once the Switch started gaining momentum. The Mario & Luigi remakes should have been released on the Switch to begin with.
I'm glad they went bankrupt. Those mario and luigi games sucked so much.
@Not_Soos Couldn't have said it better myself. Absolutely glued to my Switch for this reason. A Ninty fanboy wet dream come true!
Sad. But what caught my eye was the word re-release.
"Sales for the latest Mario & Luigi re-release on 3DS were so poor, Nintendo allegedly decided to cancel its future plans for the system."
Nintendo needs to choose re-releases wisely. I enjoy seeing re-releases, I especially love the GBA Mario 2 and 3.
Need new original content.
I hope Nintendo tries a new IP or two in 2020.
I'm still hoping there is one for a surprise in December.
@retro_player_22
Rare was a studio that turned hit after hit in the SNES and N64 days. They were technical master of whatever hardware they were given and redefined entire genres.
Alphadream is a studio that's mainly been producing lower budget games and have little experience in producing 3D or HD games. I like M&L as the next guy, but I doubt Sony would see much value in a company that mainly makes 2d turn based RPGs, especially since Sony will want to show off the power of the PS5.
@Danrenfroe2016
“Need new original content.
I hope Nintendo tries a new IP or two in 2020.“
They’ve released 3 in 2019 to be fair
@retro_player_22
>This reminds me of the old Rare situation on the GameCube where Rare made Star Fox Adventures, the game was good but didn't sold very well so Nintendo just sell Rare away
I'm sure I remember feeling the "betrayal" of Microsoft buying Rare shortly before SFA actually released. I'm sure the development was done before the sale but I don't think the game was actually out.
Damn, and here I thought they were a second party company of Nintendo. All they needed to do was keep the quality up for the Mario & Luigi series but it's slowly started declining with the sequels and remakes didn't help rejuvenate anything.
Welp I feel like my world as ended my fun.
I didn’t know that this would be the (probably) last trace of them. I was a huge fan of the Mario & Luigi series. This just seems like an underwhelming send-off. No offense to people that are into the Mario & Sonic Olympics series.
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