Luigi doesn't get enough love. "He has his own game!" you're saying. "He's being voiced by Charlie Day, the best Always Sunny cast member, in the new movie!" you cry. Sure, but he's always gonna be player two, and sadly, that means he's been dropped from Nintendo's new year's post altogether for 2023."Happy New Year from Nintendo and the Mushroom Kingdom! Wahoo!", Nintendo tweeted in an innocuous celebration with a photo attached featuring Mario, Yoshi, Peach, and Toad. No Luigi in site. And this is after last year's art got slated by fans for using an old 2007 render of Luigi, despite having crisper up-to-date ones for everyone else. I repeat, Luigi doesn't get enough love.Understandably, plenty of commenters jumped to the plumber's rescue, asking where he was, sharing memes (like one of Luigi saying that "You will now be escorted to the Hall of L's"), and sharing tier lists of their favourite 2022 games. Okay, I don't really get how that one's related, but you do you.
Others pointed out that Luigi got swapped for Yoshi in the Happy Holidays art too, so it looks like Nintendo is replacing Luigi with Yoshi as the new green mascot. That, or Mario's shoved him out of the family altogether, sending him to yet another haunted mansion.
Funnily enough, all of this is happening on the ten year anniversary of The Year of Luigi. Haven't heard of it? Neither had I, and I love Luigi, promise. From February 14, 2013, to March 18, 2014, Nintendo celebrated "The Year of Luigi", 30 years since his creation. That means that, from February of this year, we'll be celebrating 40 years of Luigi, so he should be all over the new year's material. He isn't, though. It's Yoshi's time to shine.
There's some speculation about this (which is definitely, absolutely canon, plausible, real, or whatever else you want to call it). Some think Luigi has had an off-screen death, maybe even pushed off a cliff by Yoshi as revenge for all those times player two dropped Yoshi down a hole in Super Mario Bros. Or, maybe, Luigi is in hiding for some horrible scheme he's gotten involved in. Hell, maybe it wasn't his fault, and he's taking the fall for Mario. Who knows?
The reality is Nintendo excluded our little bud from the promotional material and probably won't celebrate 40 years of his existence. Bit of a boring answer, but it's hardly the worst thing a game company has ever done. So, for now, we'll have to be content with Yoshi. The real crime, of course, being that Wario and Waluigi aren't being plastered over all the promo - we all know who the real kings are.