With its latest entry now at more than 5 million copies sold, the Luigi’s Mansion series has become another household name in Nintendo’s stable of franchises.
Turns out it has also produced one of the company’s rarest pieces of memorabilia.
Mario fan blog Supper Mario Broth posted pictures to Twitter late Thursday of a promotional Luigi’s Mansion flashlight that was given to select attendees at E3 2001. The prop is a real-life model of the one Luigi has in the game, with a Nintendo GameCube graphic printed over the lens so that the console’s insignia casts a shadow when the light is on.
The flashlight also mimics its in-game functionality somewhat. The red button on the handle can be held down to keep the light off, just like holding the B button down on the controller does in the GameCube launch title.
Extremely rare promotional Luigi’s Mansion flashlight given to select invitees to E3 2001. The glass is patterned to cast a GameCube logo shadow. The red button above the on/off switch keeps the flashlight off while pressed, mimicking the B button functionality in the game. pic.twitter.com/ct4Rf19ZEn
— Supper Mario Broth (@MarioBrothBlog) February 7, 2020
It’s promotional merchandise at the end of the day, and not much separates it from any other standard flashlight. But to get an idea of how highly valued this thing is, antique and collectible site WorthPoint had an auction listing for the Luigi’s Mansion’s E3 flashlight back in Dec. 2013. It sold for $2,499.99.
After lying dormant for nearly 12 years, Luigi’s solo outing finally received a sequel with Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon for the 3Ds in 2013. A 3DS remake of the first game followed in 2018 — handled by Grezzo, which had developed Ocarina of Time 3D and Majora’s Mask 3D by that point — and Luigi’s Mansion 3 for the Switch came along a year later, doing well both critically and commercially. The sequels were developed by Next Level Games, the studio which will presumably continue to work on the franchise moving forward, with oversight from Nintendo.
For the sake of comparison, Luigi’s Mansion 3 also had a promotional flashlight that was given out at E3. But asking prices for that online come in at a much more reasonable asking price.
SOURCE: Supper Mario Broth (@MarioBrothBlog) on Twitter, WorthPoint
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