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"Phew! Made it!" Luigi's post-stage cry is a classic example of Nintendo's economical approach to characterisation. While his brother's celebratory "Oh yeah! Mario time!" is the sign of a man enjoying himself, happy to be bounding through these joyously bright, precision-designed worlds, those three words reveal a humble guy just happy to have made it to the goal pole in one piece. Luigi's no hero: he's just bound by duty, tasked with rescuing the Princess while big bro's away. The trouble with Nintendo's first major experiment in downloadable content - it's dabbled before, but this 80-stage remix is easily its most substantial add-on - is that Mario's absence is too keenly felt. Here, Nintendo has taken the original's levels, trimmed them down significantly and made them much tougher: a fine idea in theory, but one which Luigi's presence often seems to undermine.
He's meant to feel different to his brother, a little more skittish and difficult to control. That's a problem, though, when you have stages seemingly made for precision speed-running. Sure, the trails of coins might be a perfect match for the parabola of Luigi's leap, but that extra bit of airtime seems counter-intuitive when you're being asked to race to the finish. The best 2D Mario levels have a consistent rhythm; here it feels like the metronome is skipping a beat every fourth bar.
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