#397 - Mario's Time Machine

Mario blissfully ignores Abraham Lincoln's cries to turn the time machine around and pretend this game never existed.

                Ugh. They couldn't even get the original Mario Bros. layout correct.

Less than a year after Mario's disappearance, Software Toolworks and Radical Entertainment teamed up once again to deliver Mario's Time Machine. This time, it's Yoshi who's been kidnapped by Bowser, and the only way to get him back is to return historical relics to their place in the space/time continuum. Or something. It's an excuse to learn about history, while pretending you're having fun because you're playing a "Mario game." Basic premise: Mario explores a series of doors in Boswer's castle. Behind each door lies Koopa Troopas (in a layout ripped straight from the original Mario Bros.) and a time machine. Mario must hit and destroy three Koopa Troopas, grab the historical item, jump into the time machine (essentially a microwave with a pipe sticking out), select the time period where the item belongs (i.e. Isaac Newton's apple – 1687), then return the item in levels that can only be described as the shortest, most inane, worthless stages Mario's ever been forced to frequent. The levels are literally about two screens long, filled with randomly placed blocks and enemies that, try their hardest, can never hurt Mario. I wouldn't doubt that the children this game supposedly caters to can craft better Mario levels out of their Duplo blocks. Worse yet, if you fail to put the historical relic in the historically appropriate place, the game will scold you and send a bird to take the item away. This means you have to go all the way back and hit the Koopas again to get the item (much more frustrating than one would think). Despite trying to mix an educational Mario game with side-scrolling elements, Mario's Time Machineactually ends up worse than Mario is Missing. Everyone involved in this atrocity should have known better.

F

#396 - Mario is Missing

This cover makes Luigi look like an absolute idiot. HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU LUIGI!

              "What is this?" An admirable question when one plays Mario is Missing.

Mario is missing, alright, along with the typical ingenuity, creativity, and good taste that define an average Mario game. Software Toolworks and Radical Entertainment are the parties predominantly responsible for Mario is Missing, but it's certainly alright to blame Nintendo. For whatever reason, back in the early-to-mid 90s, Nintendo licensed their most beloved character out to third-party companies eager to use Mario's visage to sell their crappy "edutainment." Most children weren't fooled, but parents were, which is why sales of Mario is Missing were strong enough to justify Mario's Time Machine, and a triumvirate of crappy teaching games, all titled Mario's Early Years! (exclamation point added by Software Toolworks in a poor attempt to excite preschoolers).

Admittedly, unlike the other aforementioned games, Mario is Missing has a brilliant hook: Mario is kidnapped and Luigi must rescue him. Not only does it thrust Luigi into the spotlight for the first time ever, it sounds like a promising adventure. Instead of capitalizing on Mario's absence, the game forces Luigi to travel around the world and rescue artifacts stolen by Koopa Troopas. I'm still not exactly sure how returning the world's artifacts to their respective locations allows Luigi to find Mario, but Software Toolworks doesn't seem concerned with a clear story. Getting the artifacts back requires nothing more than approaching Koopa Troopas and stepping on them (the buggers don't even hurt you when you touch them), then collecting the bag they leave behind. Once Luigi's collected the three artifacts in a given location, you find the information booths in the city. The women (?) behind the booths ask you historical questions (the only "educational" part of the game). Answer the questions, drop off the artifacts, and Luigi's done with that city. In order to beat the game, you have to do this exact same task for fourteen cities around the world. At first it seems doable, but by the third or fourth city, your soul will grow weary and yearn for freedom.

But wait, there's more to complain about! You can't just walk up to people – who look like misshapen acid rain victims, by the way - and talk to them. You have to select the ? Mark panel, which shows up at the top of the screen, then while you're standing next to them, press 'Start.' It's clunky and needlessly complicated. Yoshi has a supporting role in this game, but for no apparent reason, every time you enter a new city, you're separated from him. In order to get Yoshi back to Luigi, you have to enter a separate world map, guide Yoshi to the city Luigi's in, and Luigi will be reunited with him. Luigi needsYoshi to talk to the woman at the information counter. Otherwise, he'll be too short to talk with her. Yes, that's right: Luigi can approach the information counter as many times as he likes by himself, but without Yoshi acting as his booster chair, he won't be able to speak to the woman and advance the game. In Mario is Missing, Yoshi's only role is to act as a booster chair for Luigi. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The only thing Mario is Missing taught me as a young boy was to avoid any Mario-themed games not made by Nintendo. Until today, I had never played the NES version, but had wrangled with the SNES version. Outside of better graphics and slightly less complicated controls, they're almost the same games. A definite miss.

D-

#395 - Mario Bros.

I still don't understand Nintendo of America's need to replace the original goofy Mario Bros. Mario with the Super Mario Bros. Mario sprite. Continuity, sure, but it's cooler to see how the character evolves.

                                       This is more like it. Ah, sweet Famicom covers.

                                                     When sewers strike back...

They're the Mario Brothers, and plumbing's their game. Certainly in 1983, before there was any mention of Princess Toadstool or the Mushroom Kingdom or Koopa, the Mario Bros. were two regular joes just trying to earn a living, and Mario Bros. reflects just how low-income said living was. Both brothers run around in an underground, pipe-ridden world, stopping turtles, crabs, flies, and ice from gumming up the sewers. The creatures can only be hit from the bottom up. Once hit, they turn over on their back and can be done away with (crabs take two hits - one hit only makes them crazy and demon-possessed). Coins can be collected for points. Fireballs will pop up if you've been on a platform for too long. Once you complete eleven stages of pest control, the stages start to repeat ad infinitum. Eventually, Mario and Luigi realize that their lives are meaningless. They could try to keep the sewers pest-free until they die, but it wouldn't matter because the sewers, by definition, can never be clean. They discuss amongst themselves what actions they could take. Should they enroll at the community college, take some business courses, and try to seek out a better life for themselves? Surely if they could open their own plumbing business after the whole Donkey Kong debacle (thank God the courts didn't officially recognize him as "Mario"), they could make headway into more lucrative ventures. Real estate, capital investment, international banking – careers where the money would flow as quickly as the five o'clock sewer tide. After twelve grueling hours of head-busting, neck-cracking, blue-collar madness, the Mario Bros. come to a decision. They pick up sewer mushrooms and eat them together. The rest is hallucinatory history. 

B-

FUN FACTS ABOUT MARIO BROS.

• This is the introduction of Luigi into the Mario canon. Sure, in Mario Bros. Luigi's just a green palette swap of Mario, but it wouldn't take long before Luigi was typecast as the lanky, wussy younger brother.
• Many elements of Mario Bros. made their way into Super Mario Bros. and beyond. The fireballs that pop up out of nowhere became the fireballs Mario can shoot, with the help of the fire flower. Coins that you can collect from the pipes have been featured in almost every Mario game. The turtles in Mario Bros would eventually become the Koopa Troopas.
• There are three pseudo-followups to the original Mario Bros.: Mario Bros. Special, which involved getting to the top of the level instead of killing every enemy; Punch Ball Mario Bros., which was the original Mario Bros., but with a weapon called a Punch Ball that you could throw at enemies; and Mario Clash, a "sequel" for the Virtual Boy that contained similar gameplay, while making use of the Virtual Boy's ability to have a foreground and background. Mario Bros. Special and Punch Ball Mario Bros. were licensed to Hudson Soft and only released in Japan for the NEC PC-8801, FM-7, and Sharp X1.

#182 - Donkey Kong

I think it's kinda lame that Nintendo put an image of Mario circa Mario Bros. 1, as opposed to the original Jumpman image featured below. Other than that, it's classic black-box, baby.

Yeah, that's the gangsta I know and love, holdin' a hammer like it's 1985 or some sh** (thanks to donkeykongmuseum.com for the gif)

                                  This is my favorite level in the original.

I don't know if one can overestimate the impact the original Donkey Kong has had on games. Here's a few facts that most everybody already knows:

• Donkey Kong introduced Mario (known at the time as "Jumpman"), Donkey Kong, and the concept of saving a woman to video games. While Pauline is not Princess Toadstool, Daisy or Peach, she is definitely the prototype for the ladies that would later get rescued by Mario.

• Donkey Kong essentially created the platform genre, albeit in a very simplistic form. The original arcade game consisted of four entirely different levels, and involved avoiding or destroying enemies with a hammer, collecting items like hats and umbrellas for points, and going from one end of the stage to the other.

• Donkey Kong was Miyamoto's third game with Nintendo (the first two were Sheriff and Radar Scope and it was hugely successful in Japan and America.

• The success of Donkey Kong (the game made $280 million in two years... in early 1980's money) arguably paved the way for the release of the Famicom and the Nintendo Entertainment System.

So yeah, without Donkey Kong, Mario, platformers, and the console gaming scene as we know it today may have been postponed. I won't say these things would have never happened, as I believe it would have been inevitable, but the release and success of Donkey Kongmade them happen faster.

The game itself is still fun today, although it is very much a product of its time. Jumpman jumps and climbs and maneuvers his way around three very small levels (for whatever reason, the NES release omitted the cement factory level from the arcade game) to reach Pauline at the top. Once you beat these levels – and if you're any sort of gamer, they should only take you about five minutes – you play them again and again and again, with the momentum of the enemies increasing each playthrough. Despite Donkey Kongbeing one of the first examples of a platformer, its identity is still very much tied into the point system of late 70s, early 80s arcade games. The point is to, well, get points, not to reach the end of the game. The problem that I think Donkey Konghas now – and I think Nintendo tried to address by releasing Donkey Kong '94- is that it feels stuck in limbo between a platformer and a points-based game, and it doesn't really succeed well at one or the other. This is not to say that I think the game is bad or that its impact is lessened by this fact. Donkey Kongwas treading new ground and Miyamoto was ahead of his time by trying to throw an honest-to-God story in the game. But playing it thirty years (!) since its release in the arcades, it's very obvious that it's suffering from an identity crisis. Does Donkey Kongwant to be this new adventure-type game that's never been done before or does it want to uphold to the tried-and-true points based method of progression? Let me know in the comments section if you think I'm overstating this or if you think there's merit to my madness.

I'm grateful for the existence of Donkey Kong even if I don't feel that it has aged well. It put Nintendo on the map, and without Nintendo, many of my and millions of others' greatest gaming memories would not have been created. For that, I can only give the maddest of props.

Impact: A+

Actual game: B-

One of my favorite game sound effects of all time is Jumpman when he walks. Priceless.