Let's Wander the World- Mario Is Missing!

Now I’ve always liked Luigi. I liked him before he even had a name and my cousin and I would fight over who got to be “the green one”. Some of the love may be a result of the fact that I didn’t realize there was a “green one” until I could afford a second controller and so his presence was new and exciting, but that’s beside the point.

Mario is Missing! features Luigi trying to save Mario from, um... well, it’s not too clear... by running around the world visiting famous places for uh, well, you don’t know why.



But I admit to finding it fun.

The first city is Rome!

This game is how I got my parents to buy me an SNES.

After the rather rude entry, we discover that Mario has been dropped into a snowfield where Luigi and Yoshi are hanging out by a castle. Why not?



Ladies and Gentlemen, in case you didn't know, Mario has a great ass:



After dusting himself off, Mario attempts to join Luigi and enters the castle by another means:





Luigi heads inside, and Yoshi wonders what the heck is going on:

Oh fuck YES.

Oh my Lord. I was once stuck in the hospital for major surgery and they had a Super Nintendo and THIS WAS THE ONLY GAME THEY HAD FOR IT.

It did not improve on morphine, by the way.

You won't find adobe, here in Nairobi!

Wow those pants leave nothing to the imagination. o_o;

No! Because I didn't enter the first door during the screenshot-taking playthrough since I was confirming that the cities are not random. So the first and the second cities will be switched, mwa hahahaha.

Anyway, Luigi enters a room with several doors and the gate closes behind him... and there's football, hooray!





And emerges from a pipe in a city that is not in Antarctica.



Which is promptly blocked off.



Poor Luigi! Where could he possibly be? What horrors await him? Hey, is that a cop? Cops are helpful, right? But it must be really hard to figure out where you are since this game teaches geography, huh?



Oh.

Huh, this may be the only game I've ever beaten out of real SPITE. I just remember my friend and I were so bored and for some reason we forced ourselves to finish this POS.

I think in my head it was going to be a Mario platformer in the REAL WORLD, but if I remember right it's more like a bad Carmen Sandiego in Mario's clothes.

I was stuck on this game forever until I realized that you can go down the streets in the background and foreground. After that, I actually came to enjoy the game in a way, even playing through the whole thing in one sitting every so often.

The rest of tonight's updates are going to focus on game mechanics for those who are interested, the remaining days of the playthrough are going to be more about the cities than the game itself, but talking about actually playing the game is useful, eh? Beijing is probably a good one to go light on the city discussion anyway since people heard about it so much this summer.

First, the "pause" menu:



I'll go through all of these tonight, for now we're just going to take a look at the city map:



Fun! Note the blue circles with "i"s in them. These are famous landmarks.

And here's something random. The game designers actually tried to follow the layout of the real city (the Great Wall isn't a good example, but in later cities it's really well done).

Note the location of the Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven in the real Beijing, then look at the landmark logos. Also note the general street layout (zooming out will help for that). Fun!

A question for the audience: Is anyone unable to use Google Maps? Because that's going to be a pretty important part of this Let's Play after tonight.

The game never really spells out your task for you, but I suppose it's safe to assume people would head for the landmarks, where you find an information booth! It's probably not supposed to be Peach, but really. They didn't even edit out the crown.



Trying to talk to Not Peach (perhaps Pants? Are we still calling characters that?) only lets you ask why the landmark is closed, and gets you some basic information and a pamphlet about the problem, which is clearly not a pamphlet but a newspaper.

So that's great. Luigi's stuck on another continent and can't even see the landmarks. In frustration he decides to stomp on a Koopa that happens to be walking around.



And... there's a dirty sweatsock! Maybe!



Might as well bring this to one of the locals...



And get an answer.

"Why is the Forbidden City closed today?"

Because it's the Forbidden City. Duh!

This is the worst Carmen Sandiego game ever made. But I still finished it, back in the day.

Have fun!

Lather, rinse, repeat.



The majority of the Koopas simply explode when jumped upon, three have the dramatic deaths shown here (my favorite is the Wil E. Coyote style)



Heading to the start menu shows you which artifacts you have and which one is currently selected (the white outline).

Time to take the artifacts back! But what's this? They won't just accept a random item? You have to say you know something?

Time for research! Which simply means running around asking locals about the items.





Yes, this is totally authentic!



Upon returning the item, the booth opens up and Luigi gets to take a picture of the landmark.

Hey, remember Yoshi? Man, I bet he's pissed to still be in Antarctica!

Selecting the Globulator from the start menu lets you move Yoshi around the planet. Leave the window with Yoshi in the correct city and get a prize!







(The prize is Yoshi).

The remainder of the level is returning the other artifacts. You could, in theory, travel by pipe, but there's no indication of which pipes go where so it's sort of silly.



Also, there are some bizarre answers for the artifact questions:



The "Computer" option in the menu is a completely pointless checklist of who you've talked to and what about:



Anyway, we returned the other artifacts!

All three artifacts returned! Now to head back to the castle! Perhaps Yoshi gets to eat!



Or the creature is scared of Yoshi and runs away.



After a brief summary of your score with a level password Luigi and Yoshi are returned to the castle... except Yoshi is trapped behind a stone wall. Sorry dude.



Also, there's a Koopa kid ravenously clawing at the metal door.



Whew!

Hell of a first update, but I wanted to get all the mechanics stuff cleared out of the way.

Montage!











Yoshi looks bizarre from the front.

So what happens if you try to leave without returning the landmarks?

Two things, you get the second screen instead of one like the first, and you can't advance to the next Koopa Kid's floor until all cities are secured (I was going to get to it later to avoid spoiling this).

I didn't know Michael Jackson gave up being a reclusive child molester, moved to China, and became a teacher in a red suit. I've learned something already!

So, what the hell is the story about this game anyway? Mario is in the Mushroom Kingdom, falls through the ground, and then falls into snow, and then falls through the snow, and now he's missing? So Luigi goes to shoot pictures of landmarks now that his brother is dead? Or something?

So... the Gate of Heavenly Peace is worth less then $2000?

It almost doesn't seem worth stealing a national landmark for.

As a kid, what always boggled my mind about this game is how huge structures like the Tiananmen could just be "stolen." And then, when you get them back, they were in a little baggie being carried around by a Koopa Troopa.


Hahahaha! Oh, man. I never would have gotten that reference in 1993, but I'm glad it's there now.


Bowser somehow gets to the REAL WORLD and builds a castle in Antarctica. Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi go after him, but then Mario gets captured. Then: GEOGRAPHY.

They couldn't think of four different Chinese names?

Mario is Missing? Hooray!

I actually tried filling out the entire checklist for each city when I spited my way through this game. ...It took a while, I'll tell you that much.

Montresor!