Mario & Luigi: Brothership Was Rated Well Ahead Of Its Release

(Looking at the picture above)

Luigi: WAAAAH...!!! Our game was rated very long before it get released. And we got 5/10 by IGN.

Mario: Seriously?! (Shocked Pikachu face)

"Nintendo has all sorts of games in the pipeline, but it doesn't always release them as soon as they're complete."

Another aspect to this would be design, physical production and distribution.
Some of it has to be done after the rating, as the rating is shown on the cover and cart.

Along with what Lofoten said, getting a rating has nothing to do with whether the game is "complete" or not, but rather it's content locked, so the devs/pub feel confident enough to secure a proper rating. It can still be many months before it is actually "complete," let along ready for manufacturing. They always have a say on when to publicize said rating (though they may forget to tell the ratings board that, or some slip-up occurs).

Twilight princess and windwaker remakes have been done for years but every time they get “leaked” it get pushed back a month

I think they just wanted this for a holiday release window.

Ok so, I get that Acquire had other projects to move on to, but it sounds like they could have spent at least a little of that 300 days optimizing Brothership a bit more.

Games don’t have to be finished to get a rating.. getting rating before game is done is common practice.

The game deserves all the loving praise it has been receiving. Love it to bits.

Pure speculation but possibly when they submitted for the rating they were hoping to have Switch 2 ready for this holiday season and this game would have been a summer send off. Then delayed M&L release to fill some of void left by pushing the SuperDooperSwitch back to 2025.

Edit: and I really want the console to be called the superdooperswitch now that I’ve said it.

Something I noticed: Recent Nintendo games don't show any year on the title-screen. In the past you could always see on the title-screen in wich year the game came out.

@VHSGREMLIN
Totally agree.

This game truly brought a smile on my face. Already so many hours in and still going.
This game has everything i love about rpg games.
The goofiness and at the same time super powered Mario and Luigi makes it even more fun.
They should build more upon this concept, that when they are together, they are unbeatable.

Sephiroth watch your back lol, the Mario brothers are back in business 🤣

@JohnnyMind I reckon the game was actually complete 1-2 years ago. The game only requires firmware 12 which came out in 2021. You’d assume it was signed with the latest firmware when it went gold.

Not like it would be a hard rating to gauge ahead of time.

@The-Chosen-one yes. Very well said.

Oh you just know damn well they are sitting on Prime 2 & 3 as well as Twilight Princess/Wind Waker.

@Dee123 It's really strange why they wait so long with porting over the Windwaker HD and Twilight Princes HD games.

I guess they plan to use them to pad the Switch 2 release line-up next year.

Nintendo absolutely plans their releases always after they finished developing the games. Instead of other publishers who plan their releases before they start developing.

@Jeronan If they come out over the next couple of years, I'd bet on them being Switch 1 releases. Nintendo doesn't need the horsepower of the Switch 2 to do justice to those two Zeldas.

There's going to be millions of Switch 1 owners still looking for the next big Nintendo release for several years during the generation transition and this will help Nintendo take advantage of that demand. And backwards compatibility was recently confirmed for the Switch 2.

So I'd bet money on HD remasters and the like being outsourced to outside studios and appearing on the original Switch, enabling them to be sold to all Switch and Switch 2 owners while freeing Nintendo's internal studios to focus on original Switch 2 projects.

The only big question in my mind are if we'll see something like the upcoming port of Xenoblade Chronicles X be "Switch 2 enhanced" so to speak, such as opening up a 60 fps mode when inserted into the Switch 2 on a game that may be capped at 30 fps on the original Switch.

@Atariboy I think you missed the memo of the Switch 2 being full backwards compatible with the Switch 1.

@Jeronan I think you need to reread my comment. I'm not sure how you managed to get it completely backwards, but you sure managed to do so, lol.