After you complete the game, you will return to Professor E. Gadd's laboratory. When he asks you where you want to go, you'll notice a new option, the "Hidden Mansion". This is essentially the game's "hard mode". The Poltergust is about 1.5 times more powerful, but ghosts put up more of a fight to escape its pull. There are more powerful ghosts in earlier rooms: for example, the invisible Grabber ghosts first appear in the Wardrobe Room, but appear much later in the Normal Mansion. Because of all this, there is much more treasure to be found in the Hidden Mansion, making it more rewarding, and easier to achieve a Rank A mansion at the end.
PAL version differences[edit]
The PAL version of the Hidden Mansion has been altered to increase difficulty. Some of these changes were added by Shigeru Miyamoto himself.
- In the Hidden Mansion, the entire mansion is mirrored. If following directions in this walkthrough, all left-right and east-west directions must be changed to its opposite; i.e. left becomes right, and so on.
- Boss battles are made harder. Chauncey's rocking horses are more difficult to avoid, since they zig-zag towards Luigi, and travel faster than in the Normal Mansion. During the Bogmire battle, some Black Bogmires will be outlined in red and track Luigi down much faster. During the Boolossus battle, when trying to 'pop' him, you must ride around on the actual vacuum itself, making controlling Luigi harder. Lastly, during the King Boo fight at the end, the spiked bombs explode quicker.
- The rooms are significantly darker when compared to the Normal Mansion.
- 45, rather than 40 Boos are required to access the final boss.
- The amount of cash required to achieve Rank A at the end is increased, so the only way to do so is in the Hidden Mansion, where more cash is available. Here, Speedy Spirits and Golden Mice now drop a Silver Diamond when sucked up. This raises the total amount available to 186,440,000 G, as opposed to 142,390,000 G in the Normal Mansion.
- Boos are more agile, and harder to catch. They usually have more HP, but some have less. Those with lower health are often much faster, often leaving a room in seconds.
- All ghosts cause more damage if they attack Luigi.
- Locations that always have hearts in them no longer have them. Only two 50HP hearts can be found: one in the drawer cabinet in the Foyer (there is a roughly 1 in 10 chance of finding one), and in the Courtyard, found by vaccuuming the Slim Bankshot statue.