So today I was minding my own business reading This Week in Business on Kotaku when I saw a particular quote that really rustled my jimmies.
"Nintendo has to let Mario games on non-Nintendo devices."—Nanako Imazu, Tokyo stock analyst, talking about what Nintendo has to do to reverse its massive loss for last year.
Now anybody who's know anything about Nintendo's practices knows this guy is a total idiot. Not only has Nintendo said that the day Nintendo games show up on other devices is the day Nintendo ceases to be Nintendo, there are a few Mario games that aren't on a Nintendo system and boy are they terrible.
#5 Mario's Game Gallery/ Mario's FUNdamentals
The first in our series is Mario's Game Gallery (or Mario's FUNdamentals depending on who published it) is a PC game that let's you play a variety of classic card/board games with everyone's favorite mustached plumber. There's Go Fish, Dominoes, Checkers, Backgammon, and Yacht, which is apparently what they call Yahtzee in the Mushroom Kingdom. The games are functional and play like they should, but who has ever said, "Boy I wish I could play Backgammon with Super Mario!" It's kind of a poor use of the franchise. The only really redeeming part of this game (and a neat piece of Mario trivia in and of itself) is that this game is the first time Charles Martinet ever provided the voice for Mario, and has ever since. The downside of the voice acting? The kid that says "Mario, go fish!" sounds totally creepy. The reason this game is only #5? It's actually possible to squeeze a tiny bit of actual fun from this game, if you don't have any real people to play checkers or backgammon with.
#4 Mario is Missing
Thought Luigi's Mansion was the green plumber bro's first solo adventure? Think again! This PC game (which was also released on SNES and NES, but the PC version has more features) is a total bomb. It's an educational game, mainly about geography, where Luigi must globe-trot (on Earth) to recover artifacts Bowser has stolen fron landmarks in order to fund his operation to melt the polar ice caps with hair dryers. That's right, not only is Luigi out to rescue Mario, but he has to stop the Koopa King from single-handedly causing global warming. Where's Princess Peach? Who knows, who cares, Bowser's gonna flood the Earth! The game was developed by The Software Toolworks, and its non-Ninteno-ness shows. Gameplay consists of moving around side scrolling cities (that contain no platforming challenges of any kind) and clicking on Koopas to obtain the stolen goods. Then you go return them to their appropriate landmarks and answer questions from a Toad with a really weird voice who keeps calling Luigi "Mr.Luigi". On top of that, you have to find out where on Earth you are by talking to citizens and receiving bizarrely cryptic answers ("You're in a boot shaped peninsula in Southern Europe!" Can't you just say Itay!? Who talks like that?) then move Yoshi to that area on a world map, just to you can leave. It's an edutainment formula that would of worked if they would have put a little more 'tainment in there. Why can't the cities be full of fun Mario hazards and platforming gameplay? It could of still retained it's educational bits, then the game could of been fun and would of not ended up on this list. The way it is now though, it's just a Carmen Sandiego knock-off that's not as fun or funny and has Mario characters slapped in. At least, though, Mario is Missing did bring us everyone's favorite Mario related meme, Weegee, who is actually a vector traced Luigi from the PC version of this game.
[caption id="attachment_1881" align="aligncenter" width="242" caption="He stares into your soul."]
[/caption]#3 Mario's Time Machine
The spiritual sequel to Mario is Missing, it's also by The Software Toolworks. This time though, there's even less Mario gameplay and an even more nonsensical plot. Bowser has constructed a time machine (dubbed a "Timulator") and stolen various important items from various points in human history for his own personal museum. Why? Who knows. Apparently Bowser is a serious history buff and wants his own museum. Of course without these items the timeline will go haywire, so Mario now has to use the Timulator to travel to the appropriate time periods and return everything to its proper owners. The gameplay consists of pointing, clicking, reading, and answering fill in the blank questions about history. Also there's a surfing mini-game (because, you know, Mario is always surfing) where you must collect mushrooms to power the time machine. This is the only real "entertainment" portion of this edutainment title, and I use that term lightly, because it is not fun at all. It somehow manages to be more dull than Mario is Missing, and really seems to have no redeeming value whatsoever. I guess there's the educational value, but there's plenty more (and more entertaining) ways to learn history than slog through this garbage.
#2 Super Mario Bros. & Friends: When I Grow Up
Yeah, this sounds like another edutainment game, but it's really more of an electronic coloring book for PC. With Super Mario Bros. & Friends: When I Grow Up, you can color Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach (then Toadstool), and even Link from Zelda! It's too bad the graphics are kinda crap (even for 1992), the colors are eye-rapingly bright, and the game has a bad habit of automatically coloring the pictures on its own with the most awful color combinations when you turn the virtual pages. It's barely a real "game" by any means and doesn't even come close to matching the fun of, you know, an actual real life coloring book. There's a reason they still make coloring books-- because electronic ones are lame. To be completely honest though, I did have this game when I was a kid and spent many an hour coloring Mario and friends in their various jobs, so I suppose for younger kids it's not a complete loss. No, the worst offender and worst non-Nintendo Mario game is the one and only....
#1 Hotel Mario
I feel bad about picking this one because it's rather predictable, but you know what, Hotel Mario really is that bad. Developed by Phillips for their ill-fated CDi system (thanks to some poor business decisions from Nintendo), from the gameplay, to the controls, to the awful fully animated and voiced cutscenes, everything about this game is pure unadulterated garbage. It literally has no redeemable or positive qualities whatsoever. The plot (if you could call it that) goes something like this: Bowser built a bunch of hotels, put his kids in'em, and kidnapped Peach. Now Mario (and Luigi if you're putting a friend through this waking nightmare as well) must go through all the hotels, beat the Koopa Kids who control each one, beat Bowser and rescue the princess. Sounds like it could be a decent Mario platformer with a bizarre and unnecessary hotel theme, right? No, these hotels are one screen affairs where the entirety of the game's gameplay consists of hopping on baddies and closing doors. Phillips' in house developers Fantasy Factory had the Mario license and could make any kind of Mario Bros. adventre they wanted, and they decided to make a game about hotel doors. What in the hell!? Your rewards, of course, for completing each Koopa Hotel is one of the aforementioned fully voiced and animated cutscenes. They look like they were animated by a class of second graders and voiced by the first homeless crack addict they could find on the street. Mario's voice is so crazy deep it sounds like he's been smoking 5 packs a day since 1985! On top of that, most of them tend to just not make any sense. Here, just watch them yourself:
What's with the toasters, man!? As you can see, this game is truly awful and deserves its #1 spot on the list.
So after viewing these five abombinations, it should be clear to you and any stupid, smelly, stock market investor that Mario games need to stay in-house and on Nintendo systems. Otherwise you ended up with poorly voiced edutainment nightmares, or weird hotel-related puzzle platformers that make no sense. Thank God New Super Mario Bros. 2 is on the way to help us forget about all these shames on Mario's otherwise spotless track record.
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