Mario is Missing!

"...but I'm not sure we really want to find him...."

The year was 1993. America was in a crisis. Children across the nation were neglecting their studies and schoolwork, preferring instead to fritter away the hours in front of their televisions playing Nintendo. Fearing that the minds of their children would be soon to be turned to mush by these fiendish, ungodly "video game" systems, the parents of America called together their best and brightest to think of a solution.

They were locked for days in their meeting room, while countless ideas were brainstormed. Funding to the education system could be increased, parents could be encouraged to get more involved in their children's learning, but all of these solutions were simply too difficult to implement. Everything seemed hopeless, until someone came up with the idea of attacking the children on their own turf. They would turn their children's own Nintendo systems against them and use them for their parents own devious ends. Thus, a new breed of video game was born, a hideous bastardization of "education" and "entertainment." It was therefore dubbed "edutainment," and leading the charge would be Mario is Missing, licensed by Nintendo and developed by The Software Toolworks. It was a brilliant idea. Children all over the world knew and loved Mario, and no one would be able to resist Mario is Missing. Several other Mario edutainment titles were thought up, including Mario's Multivariable Calculus! and Mario Teaches Mandarin Chinese, but they were never to see the light of day.

Mario is Missing begins when Mario is kidnapped by Bowser, who apparently thought that he would be more receptive to his affections than Princess Toadstool. For some bizarre, inexplicable reason, Bowser's fortress is set in Antarctica, and not only that, his hellish army of Koopa Troopas has been terrorizing the major cities of the world; looting, pillaging, and raping (er, scratch that last one) everything in sight, and it's up to Mario's trusty-but-underappreciated brother Luigi to save the day. He must go to the cities in question, find the artifacts that the Koopa Troopas have stolen from various landmarks and return them to their proper place.

Now, here is where the "educational" part of the game comes in. Before he can return the artifacts to the landmark from which they were stolen, he must answer several questions about the landmark in question in order to prove that the artifact is not a fake. I'm not sure how knowing about history qualifies you as "not a forgery," but the developers obviously couldn't think of any other way to include the "learning" in this game. After answering the questions, the artifact is returned, and once all the artifacts are returned for that city, you must find out which city, exactly, you are in so that you can summon Yoshi and exit.

That sounds all very contrived and lame, but the real problem is that there is no real challenge to this game. Koopa Troopas pass right through you without doing any harm, there aren't any platform stages, and even the boss characters do absolutely nothing whatsoever except run back and forth! I suppose that the developers intended the questions asked of the player to be the "challenge," but that only highlights another of the game's flaws. The "educational" aspect feels like a tedious chore tagged onto a stunningly mediocre game, rather than as a part of the overall gaming experience. Mario is Missing resorts to the old-fashioned (and ineffective) "memorize this because we'll test you on it later" system of instruction, which will most likely result in the target audience tossing Mario is Missing for a game that provides what they're looking for. The developers lost sight of the most fundamental tenant of game-making: that when people plug that cartridge into their Nintendo, they want to be entertained. They do not want to be tested on historical facts, and they do not want to memorize said facts. The whole idea of "edutainment" was a failure, because no one knew how to make learning an integral part of the game, or better yet, making a game that would make people WANT to learn. I'd even go so far to say that, if Street Fighter inspired even one child to learn karate, it would be a far superior teaching tool than Mario is Missing.

All throughout the game are signs that effort was simply not put in. The sprites are ripped directly from Super Mario World, the city backgrounds repeat more than the backgrounds from The Flintstones television show, and each plays the same tune from Super Mario World, only remixed slightly to give it an ethnic "flavor." That, unfortunately, won't stop you from reaching for the mute button after the first few minutes.

All in all, Mario is Missing is an example of why combining education with entertainment is almost always doomed to failure. It was a noble idea, but game players saw through the thin facade at once, and now Mario is Missing joins the ignoble ranks of the worst SNES games of all time, a place it altogether deserves.

-StaplerFahrer is still waiting for Mario Teaches Muay Thai Kickboxing.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 09/02/04