Luigi's Mansion is a 2001 action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for the GameCube. The game was a launch title for the GameCube and is the first game in the Mario franchise to be released for the console, launched in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, and in Europe on May 3, 2002. It is the second title in the franchise in which Luigi is the main character, instead of Mario, with players controlling him as he explores a haunted mansion, searching for Mario and dealing with ghosts that lie within its rooms by capturing them through a special device supplied by Professor E. Gadd.