Mario’s Time Machine. We have all heard of it. The game part of a series of mario games that Nintendo made to put education into video games. Too bad that most of the games ended up getting low scores and some fans just don’t want to acknowledge it at all. Yet when we were little, we ended up buying 2 of these mario learning games, Mario’s Missing and Mario’s Time Machine. I do remember running around in both for until I got bored of the game.
Mario’s Time Machine is different from the Princess is gone, UH OH GET HER, it’s about Bowser is in possession of a time machine. He went back in time to steal many artifacts from the past, and placed them in what he would consider “…the greatest museum of all time”. If the items aren’t returned soon, history will be changed permanently. It’s up to Mario to stop Bowser from completing his collection. That I gathered from Wikipedia directly.
Now, the gameplay is simple, grab an artifact, go back in time and play the GREATEST PART OF THE GAME. More about the greatest later. You arrive in the time period and the game asks you to fill out the general sentence and fill in the blanks. It’s multiple choice so you’ll scroll though a list of choices you gather from asking people in the time period or raw knowledge. If you do not know what anything is, you’ll find yourself flipping through 30 some what odd choices over and over again until you get it right. It does get kind of tedious and boring but it’s learning if you didn’t know it before.
The Idea that Nintendo was trying to get was smart. Video games back then were generally considered a waste of time, “You won’t get anywhere with these games” and whatever else Westwood college tells you that your mom was wrong about. Nintendo’s approach was to add learning elements to what kids are attracted to, Mario. Add them both together, then the kids will play, help out Mario and solve questions and such. If they cared, they’d learn about history.
Otherwise, the greatest part in the game, in my opinion would be the surfing minigame. No, seriously. It’s fun. It’s the SNES version that I’m talking about. NES took the surfing out and the DOS surfing is not as engaging and fun as the SNES edition’s. The music even goes right. Mode7 graphics, it’s all done very well. When I was a kid, I would enjoy just surfing collecting Mushrooms and listening to the music. Yes, the music is in my mp3 player, so what?
I give this game a 6/10. It’s a learning game, for kids. The surfing gave the score 3 extra points however. Yet, the surfing cannot save it completely, since it isn’t a surfing game. They need to make that part of the game independent someday. Oh well.
