The Mario and Luigi franchise is a series of RPG style games that were released for various handheld systems, such as the Game Boy Advance, the Nintendo DS, and the Nintendo 3DS. The first entry in the series, Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, came out in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance and was met with a massive amount of success. This would later spawn several more games that fell under the Mario and Luigi banner and even a remaster of Superstar Saga for the 3DS.

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Though, as time has gone on, this series has seen some inactivity over the years, much to the chagrin of dedicated fans of the series. The last original Mario and Luigi entry was Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam, a game that came out in December of 2015 and was essentially a Mario and Luigi crossover with Paper Mario. However, Nintendo has recently filed a trademark for the words “Mario and Luigi.”

Based on the description of the trademark application, the “Mario and Luigi” trademark will apply to all sorts of different media, such as video game cartridges, memory cards, game software, and many others. Nintendo has yet to expand on anything having to do with the filing of this trademark. Though, this isn’t the first time that fan speculation on a new Nintendo product has been sparked due to a trademark filing.

This trademark filing could be interpreted in a multitude of ways. On the one hand, Nintendo is rather stringent when it comes to the company’s intellectual properties, so this could be just be Nintendo tightening its grip on a particular IP. However, given all of the excitement surrounding the release and development of Metroid Prime 4, it’s possible that Nintendo could be revisiting an older franchise like the Mario and Luigi series in the same way Nintendo is tackling Metroid Prime.

Then again, no matter how much of a cult classic the Mario and Luigi series is, it can never hold a candle to some of the more colossal franchises that Nintendo is responsible for. In addition to Metroid Prime 4, Nintendo has also begun production on a sequel to the largely successful game Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. At this point, a new Mario and Luigi game is not entirely out of the question, but is also somewhat unlikely.

MORE: The 10 Best Luigi Games Of All Time (According To Metacritic)

Source: VG247