AlphaDream

AlphaDream
The masters of the Mario RPGs.
Type: Private Founded: January 12, 2000 Defunct: October 1, 2019 Founder(s): Tetsuo Mizuno Chihiro Fujioka Headquarters: Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan Key people: Tetsuo Mizuno (president) Website: alphadream.co.jp

AlphaDream Corporation, Ltd. was Japanese video game developer founded on January 12, 2000 by Tetsuo Mizuno and Chihiro Fujioka. The company featured several members of Square. They were best known for the Mario & Luigi series, an RPG spin-off of the Mario franchise. AlphaDream ceased operations on October 1, 2019 due to filing for bankruptcy.

List of video games

Game	Year	Publisher	Platform(s)
Koto Battle: Tengai no Moribito	2001	AlphaDream	Game Boy Color
Tomato Adventure	2002	Nintendo	Game Boy Advance
Hamtaro: Rainbow Rescue	2003
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Games	2004
Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time	2005		Nintendo DS
Tottoko Hamtaro Nazo Nazo Q Kumonoue no ? Jou
Hi Hamtaro! Ham-Ham Training	2007	Marvelous Interactive
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story	2009	Nintendo
PostPet DS		Marvelous Entertainment
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team	2013	Nintendo	Nintendo 3DS
Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam	2015
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions	2017
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey	2018
Kedama no Gonjiro: Fit & Run	2019	ForwardWorks Corporation	Android, iOS
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020		Sega	Nintendo Switch

Why They and Their Games Were Dreamy

1. Their logo is charming and far from simple; featuring four orbs, three blue and one red, along with a special addition that makes the blue ones connected. This is especially notable in their logo's animation, which shows how the blue orbs are being connected and the red one is separate.
2. Their games were made entirely for the handheld platforms, meaning you can play them anywhere you want on the go. The only small exception is the game they helped working on, being Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, which was released for the Switch, a hybrid console where you can play it with the console plugged into the TV.
3. All of their games feature amazing and colourful graphics, with amazing sprites that have fluid and smooth animations, impressive backgrounds, and in general a great choice of colours for each of them. Their GBA games' sprites are especially the most notable, which have been used for various fanmade animations, especially Super Mario Bros. Z, which used the sprites from Superstar Saga for Mario and Luigi with some edits.
4. Their Mario & Luigi spin-off series is an amazing series which takes on a completely different approach; instead of being a platformer, the Mario & Luigi series is an RPG series which are longer to complete than any regular Mario game released for the GBA or the DS.
5. They knew very well how to design characters to make sure they have an amazing design. The most notable ones are Starlow and Stuffwell from Mario & Luigi, or the characters from Tomato Adventure, where they have a really adorable design that can make them suitable even for a Kirby game.
6. They have an incredible sense of humour, with their Mario & Luigi games having many scenes where the player will have a smile on their face or outright laugh. While many Mario games had a great chunk of funny scenes, AlphaDream took it up to 11 with Mario & Luigi.
7. They had great ideas for every Mario & Luigi game, such as Partners in Time having Baby Mario and Baby Luigi playable, Bowser's Inside Story having Bowser as a playable character with some parts taking place inside his body, or Paper Jam focusing on being a crossover with Paper Mario.
8. Aside from their amazing RPGs such as Tomato Adventure and especially Mario & Luigi, they made some really great Hamtaro games for the GBA and the DS.
9. Their games have really amazing soundtrack; most themes just make you want to stay longer so you can listen to the music, and their music does know when it should get serious. Most of the soundtracks in their games was composed by Yoko Shimomura, who composed music for some of the games made by Capcom and Square, which tend to have amazing music.

Bad Qualities

1. They never solved the cliffhanger Tomato Adventure has; the game was released in 2002, and for 17 years before their bankruptcy, AlphaDream never solved the cliffhanger and what happened to Alesa after she got kidnapped at the end of the game.
2. While it's a nice thing they focused on handheld platforms, the decision to make Bowser's Inside Story's remake for the 3DS was questionable and a bad choice since the 3DS was already outdated and many consumers already moved to the Switch. This unsurprisingly caused the remake to sell very poorly, with almost 35K units sold, being the lowest of the franchise. This is often considered to be one of the reasons for their bankruptcy in 2019. Bowser Jr's Journey, while an improvement over Minion Quest, was rushed and it had themes around discrimination and poverty (albeit done poorly and rushed), even though the former had the same themes, which done this a lot better.
   • Not to mention, both of these situations were considered controversial by fans.

Trivia

• Despite their bankruptcy in 2019, some of AlphaDream's workers return to work on a new Mario & Luigi installment - Brothership for the Switch. It is currently unknown who is the game's developer, though some speculations have rose around. Only time will tell who is developing Brothership.
• When AlphaDream was founded, it was known as "AlphaStar Software" and was a successor to AlphaStar as a video game division in general. In July 2000, AlphaStar was renamed to AlphaDream.
• AlphaDream's name is a play on Square's Final Fantasy series. Their name also means the "first dream".
• Koto Battle: Tengai no Moribito is the only game that they published; their other games were published mainly by Nintendo and Marvelous Entertainment, save for Kedama no Gonjiro: Fit & Run and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, which were published by ForwardWorks Corporation and Sega, respectively.

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