Mario is Missing!

"A Very Educational Game That Gets a Bad Rap."

Mario is Missing was not intended to be fun. Sure the game developers hoped children playing the game would find it fun, but its primary purpose was to educate. This is probably the reason why a majority of the people who have reviewed this game gave it such a bad review-- they were evaluating the enjoyability of a game that really isn't meant to grab your attention.

In the game, Luigi much search for his brother Mario, who has been kidnapped by the evil Bowser. Bowser transports Mario all through out Earth and Luigi must traverse the planet via a transporter within a castle to find his brother. The transporter sends Luigi to a random city and Luigi needs to find out which city he is in to be able to escape from it. While trying to escape from the city, Luigi also needs to recover three artifacts stolen by Bowser and return it. After escaping out of a certain number of cities, Luigi must do battle with one of Bowser's underlings by stomping on them. One of the reasons so many people scoff at this game is because Bowser's underlings cannot really hurt Luigi as they do battle. The battle scenes are more of a formality, rather than an actual task. I'm not very bothered by this fact. Afterall, if a bunch of six year old kids kept losing during these battles, wouldn't it discourage them from playing any longer, thus depriving them of the opportunity to learn anymore?

If you can overlook the obvious lack of gameplay value, you will be enthralled by the facts you will learn in this game, and the learning part will keep your glued to your T.V. instead. I say "you" because many of the things you can learn in this game would be interesting for people well beyond the age of six. Each artifact you recover contains a very extensive article that can be quite captivating. It also includes a picture that can become very fun to look at. The way the game is designed, you must become atleast somewhat acquainted with every artifact you encounter because a quiz awaits you after each article you read on an artifact.

What caught my attention the most about the game is the fact that it takes you all over the world. It covers virtually every continent, along with the cool things you'd expect to find in every country you visit. A trip to Nigeria, for example, will require you to recover a skull from Olduvai Gorge. If you go to China, you need to find a headdress from the Forbidden City. When I first played this game when I was nine, I hadn't heard of many of these places. During the course of my education, I would often say "hey, I heard of that place," referring to something I had remembered while playing "Mario is Missing".

Sure your enemies don't do any real damage when you touch them. You can easily disregard this game because of that fact. But the things this game will teach you or someone you love will stick with you more than any other game you will have ever played.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/04