Mario & Luigi: Brothership's mystery developer has finally been revealed, and it's not who many expected. While a number of fans guessed ILCA, Next Level, or even a new studio made up of former AlphaDream developers, the actual answer seems to be Acquire, co-developers behind Octopath Traveler.
We (probably) know this from various screenshots posted from one of the game's official pages being shared around online, which attributes the copyright to the game to both Nintendo and Acquire. While it's always possible all these images going around are doctored somehow, this is also how we found out that Super Mario RPG Remake was made by ArtePiazza, so it's pretty unlikely.
CONFIRMED: Mario & Luigi Brothership was co-developed by Acquire (Octopath Traveler, Tenchu, Way of the Samurai) pic.twitter.com/MNZvtqdcPE
— Nintendeal (@Nintendeal) October 21, 2024
Acquire is one heck of a storied studio. It's a Japanese company founded waaaay back in 1994 that made its mark with the Tenchu: Stealth Assassins franchise, and has since gone on to make a number of games across several platforms. It was especially productive on the PlayStation Vita and PSP, but its most notable contribution perhaps is as a co-developer on Octopath Traveler and Octopath Traveler 2. Over the years it's been acquired by GungHo Online Entertainment, which owned it from 2011 until this year, when it was picked up by FromSoftware owned Kadokawa Corporation.
This year alone, Acquire released Ancient Weapon Holly, C.A.R.D.S RPG: The Misty Battlefield, Scars of Mars, and something called Hookah Haze. It also co-developed Amedama and All in Abyss: Judge the Fake.
Given Acquire's track record, especially with Octopath Traveler, the news about Acquire's work on Brothership is being received fairly well, although with some surprise. This is Acquire's first time developing a first-party Nintendo title, and it's interesting to see Nintendo branching out to even more external developers beyond its usual stable of Game Freak, DeNA, Grezzo, Camelot, Next Level, Good-Feel, ArtePiazza, Intelligent, and others.
That said, it remains very weird that we have to play these goofy games of checking French copyright info to see who makes Nintendo's biggest annual titles. We did it with Super Mario RPG Remake, we did it with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and Princess Peach: Showtime, we even dealt with something like this when Mario got a new voice actor. Just tell us upfront who the devs are, Nintendo! We promise we won't get mad.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
