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RETROspectives: Mario is Missing


The Super Mario games, classics that shall be remembered forever. The formula as old as time itself, defaet Bowser and rescue Princess Peach by jumping your way through 8 worlds and clearing out 8 different castles. The formula is still being used to this day and titles in the series which move away from this are considered inoovative. Examples of these include Super Mario Sunshine (Gamecube) and Super Mario Galaxy (Wii). But what about the other games that don't follow the formula? The ones hiding under the carpet, let's dust off one of these and take a look at a regrettable addition to the franchise.

The game was released on the MS-DOS, the NES and the SNES and all ports are more or less the same so we'll mainly focus on the NES version. The game focuses on the idea that Mario has been kidnapped by the koopas and it's up to Luigi to rescue him. Luigi travels through the castle and travels to different real life locations across the world like New York. It is up to Luigi to return objects to the Information Desk in each location, the objects are supposed to be things that are from each location and which are stolen by the koopas. As you speak to the various inhabitants in the different locations they begin to tell Luigi facts about where he is and then the player learns that this is an educational game. There were many educational Mario games on the MS-DOS such as Mario Teaches Typing and these were mainly aimed at children. If you are making an educational game aimed at children you would at least make it accurate, right? In the game it is stated that the koopas have stolen King Kong from the Empire State Building! Why include King Kong in an educational game as a thing that exists in New York? Also King Kong, in a Mario game? The character that inspired Donkey Kong and began the ;egal battle between Universal and Nintendo?

There are koopas in the game, but they can't hurt you. They can walk through you but you can still jump on them. Jumping on a koopa can give you a bag, this bag contains one of the objects that need to be returned to the Information Desk. These bags are smaller than Luigi and the koopas so how does King Kong fit in the bag? The game makes him out to be bigger than the Empire State Building! You would at least think that returning the item would be easy but no, you can't just speak to the person at the Information Desk. Luigi is too short to speak to the Information Desk attendee so must call Yoshi from often the other side of the world to the Desk. On Yoshi, Luigi can finally reach the Information Desk and return the object.

Even the controls are somewhat bad, once you cross the road to get to a new screen the controls freeze for a moment. You can press every button on the controller but you won't move until the game lets you. In the NES version even crossing the road is misleading children. You cross the road by walking in the excact middle of it (you have to be pixel perfect, dead centre for the screen to change). In the SNES version though this is fixed as you have to walk on the pavement to change the screen. Finally though, if you can stomach the entire game you rescue Mario who doesn't even say thank you or even seem to acknowledge Luigi's presence. He's probably looking forward to his time travelling adventures. Mario, travelling in time? What could be better, Mario with a time machine! That couldn't go wrong, right? Right? Next time!

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