We're sad to report that AlphaDream who are the company responsible for creating the fantastic Mario & Luigi RPG series of videogames has had to declare itself bankrupt following a 465 million yen debt.

Sales of their recent remakes of various entries in the series including Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions and the very recently released Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey were not as significant as the company had hoped they also cited "sluggish revenues and high development costs, among other reasons" for their having to file for bankruptcy.

It would be nice to think that Nintendo may well step in to outright purchase the developer, especially seeing as they have been working exclusively on the Mario & Luigi series for many years now, it would be a great shame to see such talent go to waste, especially when there's a certain Paper Mario series which could do with a new entry on the Switch perhaps? There are certainly possibilities here to avoid AlphaDream just simply vanishing into nothing which is a very sad prospect indeed.

AlphaDream was founded on January 12, 2000 by Tetsuo Mizuno and much like Monolithsoft who we reported on yesterday, was a company made up mostly of former Square staff who made Koto Battle, Tomato Adventure and other titles before they even worked on the Mario & Luigi series exclusively.

Perhaps things might have turned out differently if Nintendo had allowed the company to have either an exclusive Mario & Luigi title for the Switch or even a HD remake collection perhaps? I know personally that I would have very much like to have seen a remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for the Switch and if Intelligent Systems are seemingly more than happy enough to work exclusively on Fire Emblem while largely ignoring Advance Wars and Paper Mario (assuming that they aren't working on it as I type this of course) then this would seem to be the perfect project which could at least salvage some of Alpha Dream potentially and benefit everyone involved. (rant over, I know that's not really how the games industry works but I think it's a valid alternative)

Here at N-Europe we wish to express our sorrow at this news and wish the staff at Alpha Dream the very best for the future because as it stands, this is very bleak news indeed.

Are you a fan of Alpha Dream's work over the past Nineteen years? Would you like to see them saved by Nintendo? Will you miss seeing the Mario & Luigi series in the future?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section or join in with the discussion on our forum.