Luigi was found in a Dreamcast racing game

Nintendo’s famous Mario has a brother named Luigi and for some reason the taller of the brothers was found in a prototype of the Sega Dreamcast racing game Now GT. Luigi was found in a prototype that is part of a massive release of over 40o Xbox and Dreamcast prototypes and new games.

This strange Luigi was discovered by the curator of the video game CombyLaurent1 and then shared on Twitter. They found Luigi in a secret race inside the never-before-seen prototype. CombyLaurent1 Recount Kotaku that this version of the game was not intended for a commercial release and they theorize that Luigi is here as a joke.

Yesterday, CombyLaurent1 shared with The Hidden Palace website two Dreamcast prototypes as part of the site’s ongoing “Project Deluge”. This project aims to catalog, preserve and publish video game prototypes, early versions, canceled projects, etc. The team had already released more than 700 PS2 prototypes and unreleased versions in March 2021. Yesterday the group released their latest Deluge dump containing 349 Xbox prototypes and 135 Dreamcast.

However, CombyLaurent1 had not yet analyzed the prototypes sent to Hidden palace. They usually do this in advance. Instead, during a Hidden palace live broadcast announcing the latest game dump as part of Project Deluge, CombyLaurent1 stumbled upon the secret Luigi in Now GT. It is hidden in a race named “SonyGT2” which appears to be a reference to the PlayStation racing game. Grand tourism, who Now GT was in direct competition.

“When I discovered Luigi yesterday, I was laughing out loud,” said CombyLaurent1 Kotaku. “I knew this sort of thing existed from the anecdotes of old developers. I never thought I would meet him on one of my prototypes.

As far as we know, Luigi is not in the final version of Now GT or its Xbox suite Sega GT 2002. CombyLaurent1 thinks it was a joke between the developers working on the game, something to make them laugh while they were working on the runner. It was never intended to be found or seen by players.

You can read more discoveries by CombyLaurenT1 on the Sega Dreamcast news site or by by following them on Twitter. And you can see all the details on the Deluge project on the Hidden palace website.