Nintendo won’t reveal Mario & Luigi’s new developer, but says ‘original staff’ are involved

Nintendo won’t reveal who’s developing its just-announced Mario & Luigi revival, but claims that some of the series’ original developers are involved.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership is the first new entry in the Mario & Luigi series in almost nine years. One of the biggest questions from fans has been who is developing the game, since the series’ original developer Alpha Dream went bankrupt in 2019.

Asked about who is making the game, a Nintendo rep told Game File on Saturday: “Some of the original developers who worked on the franchise are involved in the development of Mario & Luigi: Brothership. For more information about the developers, please stay tuned to the game credits at release.”

The claim that original staff are working on Brothership seemingly doesn’t provide any significant hints at who its developer could be, since some key AlphaDream developers already work at, or with, Nintendo.

For example, Hiroyuki Kubota, AlphaDream’s former development manager, joined Nintendo-owned Monolith Soft after his former employer’s closure. Series director and producer Yoshihiko Maekawa recently supervised the Nintendo Switch remake of Mario RPG, and producer Akira Otani remains at Nintendo.

Nintendo has acted unusually secretive about the developers behind its recent collaborations, frequently declining to confirm the identity of game creators until after release.

Previously, Nintendo declined to confirm who the new voice actor behind Mario was until people with early copies of Super Mario Wonder discovered it in the credits. After that, it was similarly secretive around the developer of Switch’s Super Mario RPG until its identity was discovered on a store page.

The company was also secretive about the developer behind Princess Peach Showtime, declining to confirm if Good-Feel was working on it when asked.