The Mario Bros are the last people you’d expect to show up in a SEGA game. However, Mario’s brother Luigi made a surprising appearance in the prototype version of SEGA GT.
Video game preservationist CombyLaurent1 discovered the Luigi cameo while examining the prototype for Dreamcast racing game SEGA GT. All of this work is part of an effort to record prototypes of video games by The Hidden Palace. Dubbed Project Deluge, the SEGA GT prototype is only one game in the massive dump containing 349 Xbox and 135 Dreamcast prototypes.
CombyLaurent1 found Luigi during a Hidden Palace live stream on Twitch announcing the latest game dump of Project Deluge. Apparently, Mario’s brother is hidden in a race named “SonyGT2.” This in itself is a hidden reference to PlayStation’s racing game Gran Turismo. The name implies an inside joke aimed at SEGA GT’s main competitor.
The inclusion of Luigi is also likely an inside joke amongst the developers of the game. CombyLaurent1 believes his appearance served the purpose of providing laughs to the developers while they worked on the game. Although the developers never intended for anyone else to discover Luigi in SEGA GT, his reveal by Project Deluge is a humorous discovery.
The Hidden Palace’s Project Deluge continues to provide records of unreleased prototypes and early builds of video games. Earlier this year, they also revealed over 700 PlayStation 2 prototypes. You can learn more about the video game preservationists and Project Deluge by visiting Hidden Palace’s official website.
Via Kotaku
