The older of those among you may remember the period where Mario and Luigi appeared in several educational titles. There was Mario Teaches Typing, Mario in Time, Mario Teaches Milk, and the subject of today's discussion, Mario is Missing. These games share one thing in common, which is that

1.) They all stunk and
2.) I played them all.

I didn't learn much, aside from the fact that I perfer watching Murphy Brown to any educational Mario game. Unless it's the later episodes after Miles left. Or that painter. Sheldon or Sherman or whatever. I want my own painter, actually. I could have him paint the cat. Or paint my ceiling. Right now, it's white, and with my blue walls, I feel like I'm underwater. The Hello Kitty head on my lamp dosn't help. DON'T YOU KNOW IT'S DANGEROUS UNDER HERE, HELLO KITTY?! GET BACK TO WHERE YOU BELONG, LAND-LUBBER! Actually, I'd never say that. She's far, far too creepy.

Anyhow, where was I? Right - Mario is Missing. Mario is Missing is a game where you control Luigi as he tries to rescue Mario. I don't know about you, but I'd leave that bitch tied up so I got to be the star. He dosn't even bake you a cake when you rescue him. I mean, is that too much to ask? Even PaRappa can bake a cake, and he's a fucking rapping dog. You'd think a star like Mario could at least buy one or something, but no.

Luigi, though, goes out to save him anyway, unaware of the complete lack of baked goods that awaits him. The way you do this is basically by going to cities, recovering stolen items, and then leaving. How this rescues Mario I don't know. Every six cities or so, one of the Koopa kids from Mario 3 comes out and you stomp thier turtle asses. That's about it.

Simple as that sounds, there are a lot of questionable things going on in this game. I'll detail them in order here, because it's that or have WrexSoul punk me out. He already thinks the beginning of this is "cryptic", and I only managed to sneak that Hello Kitty picture in there because he's busy using Flash to make the 21st Century Fox logo say "21ST CENTURY COCKS".

1. Wrong geography.

Actually, the first two sections of this turned out really, shall we say, not funny. So, for your conveniance, I took all the boring parts and compressed it into one graphic image. Look at it and then we'll move on to the craziness.

...the Koopas and the cops are part of a conspiracy to turn Paris into Bowser's new base. Think about it: He must get freezingly cold down at the south pole. What better place than Paris for a new base? From there, he can send his turtles all over Europe. Don't belive me? Think that non-arrest was just a random act? Well, my friend, I have evidance from the chilling future:

You did know Bowser is a nazi, didn't you?

3. They stole WHAT?!

The Koopa Troopers actually do a small amount of pillaging, in that they steal historic items. Since they're small turtles, you'd think they'd steal, I don't know, the crown jewels or something, but as it turns out, they steal really, shall we say, large things.

And, of course, to get it back, you stomp the Koopa carrying it around, and he drops what appears to be a gargolye foot that's all of an inch high. And it's the Sistine Chapel.
That's bad enough, but then it gets even siller.

Because you can't just go to a surf shop and BUY A FUCKING SURFBOARD. Then again, maybe you can't. You don't collect gold coins in this game, and I'm willing to bet Luigi hasn't fixed an actual toilet in forever. Maybe that's why Luigi is rescuing Mario. He's got to get him to pay the cable bill before they cut him off.
But it gets EVEN SILLIER.

It only gets worse when you return with the item.

And is that all? I'm afraid not. Next we come to...

4. Stupid people.

When walking around, you have to find out what city you're in so Yoshi can show up and you can ride him. What the point of this is I'm not really sure, since the only diffrence it makes is that Luigi gets on Yoshi and looks far too fat to ride him.
But will people just walking around just tell you where you are? If someone asked me what city they were in, I'd probably tell them "East Crackton", but I can assure you I'd never say this:

Not only do they give you just a hint, but a rhyming hint. On the other hand, at least he's not rapping. I'm glad the Mario educational series died out before we got to Mario Teaches Rapping, Mario Teaches Going "Uhhh" Over A Song And Calling It a Remix and of course Mario Teaches Incorrect Spelling. Weeeeeeeeeerd, holmes.
But of course, that's not the only crime going on here. If we've learned anything by this point, it should be that I hate peeing all the time. I mean, it's a big inconveniance. Take right now, for example. I have to pee. But I just peed like two hours ago. That's not right at all. And if I hold it in I have to constantly pump my right leg. And that's just distracting. It's even worse when my cat is sitting on me with her heat and pressure on my poor bladder.

Ah, I'm back. Well, that was a pointless digression, wasn't it? Maybe we'll clean that up in editing. But I doubt it, because WrexSoul hates it when there's a bunch of screenshots with no text. "IT'S JUST PICTURES!!" he'll shout, standing behind me. "IT'S JUST -PICTURES- ON A -SCREEN-!!!!!!!!!AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!". Once he got so mad he did Exploder, and let me tell you, that fucking HURTS. And I wasn't even a blue mage at the time, so I didn't get to learn it. But that's not really a big loss. Exploder is one of those things that works great for the disposeable enemy, but not so well for you. OH! I CAN DO A WHOPPING 6000 DAMAGE AND DIE! LET ME SIGN UP! Since Exploder kills an enemy and you no matter who does it, what's the point? I say there is none. Give me Pandora's Box and White Wind and Trine and Beta any day of the week. Well, maybe not Trine. That gets sort of weak later on. And Frog Song sort of stinks. But at least the frogs are

STOP IT! I CAN'T TAKE THIS POINTLESS RAMBLING ANYMORE! NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT BLUE MAGIC OR URINE OR FROGS! GET BACK TO THE SUBJECT!

BUT NOTHING!!! Show the next screenshot! Do it or I'll chew your balls off!

As you can see, they also love stupid puns. IS this a pun? I hate asking that, because WrexSoul will read this and then either go "Yes" or "No" and then take it out. Well, fine. The fact remains: They like using stupid probable puns like this. Just to show how down they are. The Czar one, while nonsensical, dosn't quite evoke the same groan as this one:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHH!!!!!!!. Sometimes I hate doing this stuff. I should be listening to "Save our Ship" over and over again and downloading Star Trek, not this. So let's try and get this over with before this review gets even longer. What other stupid people do we have?

This is like asking "Did you expect to go to America and not have any dollar?". The correct answer is: I have plenty of dollars from RENTING OUT YOUR MOTHER'S GENTIALS TO PASSING STRANGERS ON THE BUS. I'm all like, "You can go do it with her in the bus bathroom", and they're like "No way, it's nasty in there" and I'm like "Then do it in front of everyone, 'cuz YOU the nasty one! Dayom!". True story.
One more? Why not.

This is New York. I don't know if you've ever been to New York City, but let me tell you, there are definitly no fucking buffalo roaming about, unless you count fat people. In that case, I guess you could say there are, but they're not so much roaming as they are squashing me on the subway. WrexSoul, by the way, drank a bum's piss when we were in New York City. No, really. I didn't even have to dare him. See, at first he was amazed to be there ("So this is Neew Yowrk Ceety!") but once his wits returned, he tightened his big belt buckle, adjusted his cowboy hat, spit out some tobacco juice, and was fine until he mistook the bum for a still and the urine for some moonshine. It was all downhill from there. That's all for this section, folks! Please tip your server!

5. The rapid transformation of urban life.

I'm going to go ahead and guess that whoever did the graphic design for this game hasn't been out of wherever they live in a long time. My evidance?

This is New York City, and it is just wrong. where's the crowds of people? Where's the subway? Where's the terrorists? Any part of New York City that looks this crappy is always full of people - usually loud, shirtless people and one or two Allah-hailing people with suitcases.
OK, look - you try making a joke about that. I'm waiting. Yeah - that's RIGHT. Next!

Big Brother is watching Channel 200!

Is this the moon? The future? My anus? No, it's Tokyo circa 1993. I'm just as confused as you are, people. Obligatory drug joke aborted. What's next?

6. Stupid shit on the mini-map.

I think this one speaks for itself.

See it?

Not quite suggestive enough?

And on that quality note, we're almost done. Here's the last section.

7. Alternate titles.

Sure, "Mario is Missing" gets the job done, but what else could we have seen?

There's a little more I could mention, but it'd just be an excuse to say "I guess nobody builds a national museum about your country getting ass-stomped", so let's stop here.
Anything to add, Jesus?

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Written by Evk and posted on 06-29-02.
This article is ©2000 Evk Damascus.
Evk@salamando.net