Aléatoire: Luigi a été trouvé dans le prototype Dreamcast de Sega GT

Over the course of the ’90s, Sega and Nintendo were obviously direct competitors – we’ve seen this documented in texts like the ‘Console Wars‘ by Blake J. Harris. conception unifiée de l'émetteur et du récepteur, it seems there was some rather incredibly weird stuff going on behind the scenes at one of these companies – so weird actually, that it was “borrowing” its rival’s mascots…

Sega, in particular, apparently had a thing for Luigi from Nintendo’s Super Mario series. It all stems from a recently discovered prototype of the Dreamcast title Sega GT, which is part of a “Project Deluge” – 135 Dreamcast prototypes and 349 Xbox OG prototypes ranging from unreleased games, unreleased ports, tech demos, early builds, localisation prototypes, debug builds and more.

In the prototype of Sega GT – a build that has never been accessible to fans until now, a model of Luigi has apparently been discovered in a secret race within the game – posing as the starter. If that’s not already got you wondering what’s going on here, the race is also titled “sonygt2” – likely a reference to the PlayStation title Grand tourisme 2 – released just a few months before Sega’s own sim racer in 1999.

Nobody is really sure what to make of this at the time of writing, as Luigi is (et a toujours été) Nintendo’s property. It’s likely some sort of joke or perhaps he was even a placeholder – but it’s certainly there and we’re guessing this was never intended to be shown outside of the walls of Sega.

Sega GT was co-developed by Wow Entertainment (Sega AM1) and TOSE – known for its close ties with Nintendo platforms since the ’80s. TOSE is also behind series like Game & Watch Gallery et The Legendary Starfy, and more recently some Nintendo-published Switch titles – so perhaps it had something to do with this odd inclusion of Luigi in Sega GT’s prototype.

Alors, Voilà – Luigi is real and it turns out he’s been hiding away inside Sega GT on the Dreamcast all along.