Mario is Missing Review
Overview| # of Players | 1 |
| Genre | Edutainment |
| # of Levels | 3 rooms with 5 cities each |
| Controllable Characters | Luigi |
| Story | Not satisfied with trying to take over The Mushroom Kingdom, Bowser has set his sights on conquering our world! Having a castle set up on the frozen continent of Antarctica, he wreaks havoc by stealing the most valuable artifacts around the world. Now it is up to Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi to storm Bowser's castle so that they can warp to each city and return these artifacts! Unfortunately, on the way there, Mario falls through a trapdoor right in front of the castle and is gone! Luigi and Yoshi now have two tasks- to retrieve the stolen valuables of the world and rescue Mario! |
Review
| Feature | Rating | Comments |
| Graphics | 4 | It is so obvious that most of the graphics were practically stolen from Super Mario World, but otherwise, each of the cities have their own unique architectures and backgrounds that set them apart and make you feel like you're really there. |
| Sound | 5 | You'll definitely recognize the soundtrack from Super Mario World. Each city also has its own remixed theme of the SMW overworld music. |
| Challenge | 6 | There is no danger of dying in this game, so the main challenge lies in the educational aspect of it- mainly being able to remember some pretty detailed trivia about each major city's landmarks. But you don't necessarily need to read through an encyclopedia; the pamphlets given to you throughout each city has all the information you need. Just have a good memory for the details. |
| Replay Value | 3 | You could replay this game to see if you can get a higher score, but otherwise nothing really changes over each play. |
This is the very first game that Luigi stars in, and also one of the many games that seem to veer from the adventure/platformer familiars of the Mario franchise. Intended to educate and exercise players' knowledge about geography and history and also to entertain, Mario is Missing gives you the opportunity to do both by placing Luigi in situations where he must defeat familiar enemies like Koopa Troopas in order to retrieve stolen artifacts, and then return them to where they belong by answering a few trivia questions about them and their locations. Pokey guards the warp pipe back to Bowser's castle so you must enlist Yoshi's help to get rid of him so you can return. But in order to get Yoshi you must know exactly where you are in the world! So you need to go around and pick up some hints from locals and only then will you be able to figure out what city and country you are in.
Unfortunately, it seems like too much focus was put on the educational aspect of this game, leaving the actual gameplay and aesthetics repetitive and boring at times. As was mentioned above, the sprites of Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, and Princess Toadstool (which were the curators), and even the music were straight out of Super Mario World. Other than that, the photographs of the landmarks were beautiful. This game is fine if you want to learn about world trivia or put your already vast knowledge to the test. However, if you're expecting a Mario masterpiece like you've experienced with the previous platformers, you will be sorely disappointed.
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