NES Games Nick and I Beat #49: Mario is Missing

Mario is Missing is a late release in July of 1993 for the NES and is a pretty uncommon game. It’s also an educational game. 

The gameplay is simplistic but has a certain amount of charm to it. You find and stomp Koopas to get items, then you take those items to information booths and answer questions, and once you do that, you move on to the next area. You can’t just go to any of the information booths, you have to do them in order, even when you have all the items. The cities are sort of confusing and hard to navigate but there is a map that makes this issue a moot point. You can’t access this however until you get Yoshi to come to your location so that’s a minor complaint. 

The graphics are nice and are almost SNES level given they ripped the sprites straight from Super Mario World. The music in town is super repetitive and while there are a lot of tracks, one for each of the 14 real world locations, only a few were really memorable. The game also makes a lot of racist puns based on your location and the items you pick up so there’s that. 

There’s a computer that tells you all the information you’ve learned so far which is a nice touch. Also, it has nice, short passwords after every level. The game has an attempt at replay value by randomizing the questions about the items which is good for an educational game so you have the chance to learn something new every time. The difficulty is questionable as the age group was supposed to be young children but the questions are a lot harder than early children’s knowledge. A lot of the wrong answers are pretty funny so it gets props for humor. 

Nick gives it a history book/10. I’m giving it a 4.5, it’s not the worst game ever and it’s very educational but at the same point it’s a bit tedious and pretty easy. Here’s hoping I get Mario’s Time Machine pretty cheap!