Mario Is Missing!

Mario Is Missing! is an educational video game released in 1993 by The Software Toolworks in North America, and Mindscape in Europe for MS-DOS, mh:awesomegames:Nintendo Entertainment System and mh:awesomegames:Super Nintendo Entertainment System, while the Macintosh version was released in June 1994. The NES version was developed by Radical Entertainment. It is a sequel to Mario's Time Machine.

Plot
Bowser plots on stealing hairdryers to melt Antarctica and thus flood the Earth. When Mario is kidnapped by Bowser to prevent his interference, it falls upon Luigi to travel around the Earth to foil Bowser's schemes and save his brother.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) For the NES and SNES versions, the sprites are recolored from mh:awesomegames: Super Mario World, just like Mario's Time Machine, proving the developers were too lazy to make the actual sprites for the game.
 * 2) * Bowser's NES sprite doesn't even remotely look like the Koopa King himself, but rather an orange Koopa-like creature with horns.
 * 3) The title is not what you would expect from a Mario game. Mario gets captured instead of Princess Peach, and Luigi has to save Mario in this game.
 * 4) Plot Hole: Bowser intends to melt Antarctica using hairdryers, but realistically speaking, it would take ages to melt Antarctica using them.
 * 5) *Also, why would Bowser even use hairdryers to melt Antarctica when he has the ability to breathe fire?!
 * 6) Even though this game tries to be educational, there exist a lot of errors and mistakes regarding the countries and landmarks.
 * 7) *The various cities have inaccuracies regarding their names, such as the DOS and SNES versions including Yugoslavia which had dissolved into several countries starting in late June 1991, including Slovenia, Croatia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was renamed to the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, which was dissolved in 2006 when Montenegro became independent, with Serbia succeeding the Union.
 * 8) You just walk in a boring town, which isn't Mario-related. A lot of Mario games take place in the Mushroom Kingdom, but Mario Is Missing! doesn't belong to that category at all.
 * 9) The controls are broken on the NES version. For example, sometimes when you go to a new screen the controls get stuck for a second. Even pressing them so hard won't make the controls respond. You have to wait until they will start responding.
 * 10) On the NES version, you are supposed to return King Kong to the Empire State Building, which makes no sense, as in the 1933 movie the planes were trying to shoot him down. This is confusing to the people who watched the King Kong movie.
 * 11) *This is ironic, considering that in 1982, Universal Studios sued Donkey Kong for being a ripoff of King Kong.
 * 12) (NES version) You can't talk to people when they are at the window unless you call Yoshi.
 * 13) There are no failure conditions whatsoever. For instance, touching the Koopas won't harm Luigi at all. This also applies to the boss fights.
 * 14) Going up the road on the NES version, you have to be standing right on the dotted line. If you're just a few pixels off, nothing happens.
 * 15) *In other ports, it's more sensible with Luigi and/or Yoshi having to be on the pedestrian crossing.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The music is good. The SNES and DOS versions are the best examples, as they have much better music (especially the time-traveling music), compared to the NES versions. Suffice to say, the SNES and DOS version would be the most optimal just to listen to the music.
 * 2) Despite being directly taken from that game, it is nice to see Mario and Luigi's sprites from Super Mario World thrown into the NES version. They decently fit the console's standards.
 * 3) The DOS version at least has voice acting, one of the earliest Mario games to have this feature.

Reception
Mario Is Missing! received mixed reviews. It received a 5/10 rating from GameSpot, SNES Force gave the SNES version 42/100, Total! gave the NES version 83/100 rating. The SNES version received 5.75/100 from EGM.

Trivia

 * This is the second game where Luigi becomes the main protagonist instead of Mario, 9 years before Luigi's Mansion.
 * The sprites of Mario and Luigi in the computer versions (MS-DOS and Mac) spawned the "Malleo" and "Weegee" memes respectively (especially the latter), due to their unsettling designs, especially when depixelated.

Videos
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