Mario is bland. He’s about as interesting as a piece of white paper or a David Cage game. His entire life is an abusive relationship he has with a princess he claims he loves; then goes and plays Tennis with her kidnapper. If he wasn’t like Teflon, I’d suggest he joins the Mitchel brothers, adopt an east London accent, and say the words, “You slag,” more times than I use the word “However.”

However, one series of games he and his brother are in give him a character. That’s a good thing because an RPG without a character is just a Fallout 76. The Mario RPG/Paper Mario/Mario & Luigi series is a collection of some of Mario’s best bits and according to many, some of his best games. Most notably Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Sadly we’re not reminiscing for the good old days today, as there’s some sad news about the developers of the Mario & Luigi series.

Thanks to Yahoo! Japan; and Gematsu for translating, we know that AlphaDream has filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo’s District Court. The company behind the Mario & Luigi RPG series has fallen into some very serious financial trouble in recent years following the release of their most recent Mario game (that’s not a remake) in 2015.

Founded in January 2000 by Tetsuo Mizuno (previously president of Square), AlphaDream was then known as Alpha Star. With several staff members reportedly working at Square (now Square Enix) before joining the new studio. Their first game was Koto Battle: Tengai No Moribito, supposedly a Pokémon-like role-playing game; with that setting a president for the company. A couple of games later, including a release in the Hamtaro series based on the manga of the same name, they were onto Mario next.

Since then AlphaDream has been recording a yearly income of about 300 million yen (about 2.8 million US dollars) through 2014 with regular Mario & Luigi releases. However, since then with income stagnating and troublesome development costs, the company has fallen into a deep hole. This has prompt the company into bankruptcy this week, with debts of 465 million yen (about 4.3 million US dollars) reported in 2018.

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