When the successor to Nintendo Switch is finally revealed, there’s a good chance that Mario fans are going to be treated pretty well. After all, the character is Nintendo’s mascot, and the company has no shortage of beloved spin-offs to draw from. It should come as little surprise then that a new batch of rumors is claiming that Paper Mario and Luigi’s Mansion games are in development for the “Nintendo Switch 2.” These supposed leaks come from the website 4chan, which has a dubious record, but there are reasons not to dismiss the rumors entirely.
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Let’s start with Luigi’s Mansion. The source of the rumor claims a new entry in the series is being developed by Next Level Games, and will be released in October 2025. The source says that they believe this game will be Luigi’s Mansion 4, but also notes that it could be a full on remake of the original Luigi’s Mansion, which was initially released on GameCube. Ignoring the fact that this source doesn’t have any sort of track record, a new Luigi’s Mansion is a very safe bet. Nintendo acquired developer Next Level Games in 2021, less than two years after the highly-successful Luigi’s Mansion 3. Since then, the developer’s lone release has been Mario Strikers: Battle League, which came out in 2022.
We don’t know what Next Level Games has been up to since, but a sequel to a game that sold more than 12 million copies is a very safe bet. It’s worth noting that Luigi’s Mansion 3 was released on Halloween day in 2019, so the idea of history repeating doesn’t seem too unbelievable. Nintendo’s big developers all seem to be working on games for Switch 2, while most of the games coming to the current system are from outside partners, like Tantalus Media, who handled the HD remaster of Luigi’s Mansion 2.
The second rumored game is a new Paper Mario that will apparently pull in elements from The Thousand-Year Door and The Origami King. The source of the rumor claims that new partner characters will appear, with the first one being a detective that will appear in an area with a film noir theme. There are a lot of details, which posters have likened to “fan fiction,” but we do know that Nintendo has big plans for Paper Mario. The company released a survey earlier this year asking fans about the direction they want to see the series go in. That survey made it sound like Nintendo is still figuring out what to do with the franchise given the lukewarm reception many of the games have received outside of The Thousand-Year Door and its 2024 remaster. While a new Paper Mario on Switch 2 is basically a given, it seems hard to believe it would be this far along.
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Nintendo has said that its successor to Switch will be unveiled at some point before the company’s current fiscal year concludes in March 2025. That means an announcement has to be coming pretty soon, so hopefully we can finally put all these rumors to rest and see what Nintendo has in store!
Do you want to see new Luigi’s Mansion and Paper Mario games on Nintendo’s new console? What do you think about these rumors? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp, on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!