Nintendo’s famous Mario has a brother named Luigi and for some reason, the taller of the bros has been found in a prototype build of the Sega Dreamcast racing game Sega GT. Luigi was found in a prototype that’s part of a massive release of over 40o Xbox and Dreamcast prototypes and unreleased games.
This odd Luigi was discovered by video game preservationist CombyLaurent1 and then shared on Twitter. They found Luigi in a secret race inside the unreleased prototype. CombyLaurent1 told Kotaku that this build of the game was not intended for retails release and they theorize that Luigi is in 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 looks to catalog, preserve, and released video game prototypes, early builds, canceled projects, and more. The team had previously released over 700 PS2 prototypes and unseen builds back in March 2021. Yesterday, the group released its latest Deluge dump containing 349 Xbox and 135 Dreamcast prototypes.
However, CombyLaurent1 had yet to analyze the prototypes they sent to Hidden Palace. They usually do this beforehand. Instead, during a Hidden Palace live stream announcing the latest dump of games as part of Project Deluge, CombyLaurent1 stumbled upon the secret Luigi in Sega GT. He’s hidden in a race named “SonyGT2" which appears to be a reference to the PlayStation racing game Gran Turismo, which Sega GT was directly competing against.
“When I discovered Luigi yesterday, I was laughing out loud,” CombyLaurent1 told Kotaku. “I knew that this kind of thing existed from old dev’s anecdotes. I never thought I would come across it on one of my prototypes.”
As far as anyone can tell, Luigi isn’t in the final retail release of Sega GT or its Xbox sequel Sega GT 2002. CombyLaurent1 believes it was an inside joke among the devs working on the game, something to make them laugh as they toiled away on the racer. It was never intended to be found or seen by players.
You can read up on more discoveries by CombyLaurenT1 over on the Sega Dreamcast Info website or by following them on Twitter. And you can check out the full details about Project Deluge on the Hidden Palace website.