A portion of an MTV Multiplayer interview with Yoshihito Ikebata of Nintendo, plus Brian Davis and Bryce Holliday of Next Level...

Multiplayer: One thing that is instantly recognizable in "Luigi's Mansion" is the level of humor that's been incorporated in it. I was just curious how you gauged what was included, was it influenced by the first game, since this one seems a little bit lighter, whereas that one was a little darker?

Yoshihito Ikebata: So, yes, I think you're right. We did intend that "Luigi's Mansion 2" should be good for a wide range of ages in the audience, and we certainly were not setting out to create a very grotesque and scary horror game by any means.

Bryce Holliday: Yes, that was the first question with comedy that I've gotten, and that's a lot of what I was trying to put into the game. Interestingly, at the beginning of the project Japan mentioned that they thought Next Level Games did a really good job with their character animations, and that we were "funnier than they were" so they we going to rely on us to put a lot of comedy into the game. I'm just thankful that you led with that one - it's one of my personal favorites in the game. I think creatively, comedy and being scared and laughing are a little closer than other emotions so were constantly trying to get the player building up tension for either a joke or building up tension for a little spook. "Spook" was kind of the word that, as Ikebata-san mentioned, would apply to a lot of ages, so I'm glad to hear that you said that, and it was definitely a conscious decision right from the get-go to be funny.

Brian Davis: In terms of the ghosts themselves, I think a lot of their emotions came through in the animations to provide funner game play as well. They do a lot of trying to spook Luigi, but Luigi can also spook them back with this flashlight, so we were able to develop new ideas straight from that tone.