Luigi's first solo story should have been called "Fun is Missing!"
I was actually somewhat surprised, really. This game is still from Radical Entertainment, subcontracted from Software Toolworks, and yet this game actually delivers on its objective far better than the game that Radical Entertainment would later go on to create.
The plot for this game, though, is literally bare-bones. On the title screen, we see a little bit of breaking the fourth wall, as Mario emerges… and sees the title: ‘Mario is Missing!’ Mario then seems to be throwing quite the fit – something tells me no one told Mario about this game being made.
Before Mario can go extract his vengeance by jumping on the game developers, some sort of mutated hunchback green Koopa Troopa (identified by the game as Roy Koopa) jumps up from behind Mario and throws a sack on top of him. Apparently, after all those years of losing to the Brooklyn plumber, the Koopas have finally found Mario’s weakness – because the already-closed sack somehow traps Mario inside it, and the mutated green hunchback drags Mario off. As this happens, Luigi leaps into action – chasing right after the mutated kidnapper, riding Yoshi.
Now, this brings up an interesting question… is this game the result of a plot formed by Luigi so he can get his own game for once? It would certainly explain why Luigi is so quick to save his brother.
In any case, Luigi and Yoshi chase the ‘villain’ off to his castle – where the game starts up. Luigi has seven doors to choose from, and any of the doors will present the player with the same room: two green pipes, one for the player to slide down. Once the player chooses a pipe, Luigi will be sent off to a random city in the world…
…so long as it’s one of 14 cities in the world. And the government has been expecting him, because Luigi receives a fax on his ‘Radical Pager’ from the mayor – declaring that ‘Kleptomaniac Koopas’ have stolen three landmarks from around the city. If Luigi wants to get back to the castle, he has to retrieve all three items (by finding and stomping on the Koopas), ask around the populace to find out where he is and where those items go and then giving them back to the right landmark locations.
And here’s where it gets odd – once Luigi has retrieved the items, he must answer a trivia question so the person in charge knows that it’s the item that was stolen. Yes, in order to realize that the massive clock face that Luigi is carrying is the massive stolen clock face that was stolen from Big Ben this morning, the idiot running the landmark forces Luigi to answer a trivia question about Big Ben.
After everything is returned, and the questions answered, Luigi is given a reward – which the game goes to every extent to shout is TAX FREE. Again, I get the feeling that this all has been orchestrated by Luigi so he can actually eat real food for once.
The player can also recruit Yoshi to join him – but the player has to correctly identify which city he’s in, and then guide Yoshi from the Antarctic to whatever city Luigi is Koopa hunting in.
However, Yoshi doesn’t make the player move faster. Nor does Yoshi’s tongue work in this game. Nor does Yoshi allow the player to carry more than one item. Yoshi is completely useless, but the player is apparently required to still bring him over. The irony, though, is that Luigi actually plays far better riding Yoshi than on his own.
In any case, once that’s all done, Luigi leaps back down the pipe (one of 4 or 5 scattered about the level), and the player is given a password – as well as their current amount of cash. Luigi then re-spawns back in the castle, and the player does it all over again.
When all 14 cities have been rescued, and Luigi no longer has a need to work again, Luigi is then allowed to move further into the castle…
…and Roy Koopa attacks!
Only now he’s no green, he’s brown. And he has horns. Maybe Roy’s been experimenting with nuclear waste the entire time?
In any case, this fight isn’t much better than the Bowser fight from ‘Mario’s Time Machine’ – Luigi can’t even be hit by the Koopa child as he runs back and forth about the screen! The player has to make Luigi jump on the Koopa kid’s head about 6 times, and then the child… much like his father would next year… turns into a giant key.
Triumphant, the original Super Mario Bros. theme plays as Luigi walks forward and unlocks the wall that kept Mario imprisoned. Mario and Luigi just stare at one another, and the screen fades to black – revealing a massive ‘THANK YOU!’ screen, with Mario and Luigi standing on the same background that the start screen used.
Unlike ‘Mario’s Time Machine,’ though, we don’t even get a simple credits sequence – apparently, the guys who made this game were so ashamed, they refused to have their names upon it.
I will admit, this game doesn’t look all that bad. The sprites used to move Mario, Luigi and Yoshi were all taken from Super Mario World, and are colored in quite nicely to take advantage of the far more limited color palate of the NES.
The backgrounds this time out also look decent – the towns built of buildings that do vary somewhat from town to town. The townspeople, though, could have used some work – looking like they were done in MS Paint rather than being made for the NES. But, compared to ‘Mario’s Time Machine,’ they look nice.
Sadly, while controlling Luigi and Yoshi is somewhat nicer than the other Edutainment-based Mario game, there is little reason to continue playing on. Each level is a repetitive droning of find the items, return the items. The player doesn’t even need to ask around to find out where they are, because so many of the landmarks are identifiable (or, in the case of China, the music being so stereotypical).
Speaking of music… it’s pretty bad. On the other hand, each level has unique music for the most part, and even multiple screens (item selection and the maps) have their own music. I gave it a point for being varied up for that long.
Really, this game is also pretty bad, and there’s just a little a reason to play this game as there is to play ‘Mario is Missing.’
On the other hand, the game is actually somewhat educational compared to the game with the Time Machine, because of the amount of geography packed into this game.
However, make no mistake, just because this game achieved its objective of being educational doesn’t make it fun – there is literally no fun to be found in a game that you can’t fail in, much less without the chance of being forced to repeat anything. The only reason this so-called ‘game’ scores higher than its so-called sequel ‘game’ is because…
…at the very least…
…this one is vaguely educational in the way it works.
Here’s hoping Nintendo doesn’t think to put this up on the Virtual Console…
Final Score:
1.9 Out of 10