Not only did Mario go missing, so did all of the game's artistic direction.
(Just a heads up -- I had to record audio and video seperately for this walkthrough, so if the audio sync seems off at certain places, my apologies about it -- I did the best I could and I think I came quite close in every case but hopefully it's not too big a problem)
One of the weirdest things to ever come out of the Mario franchise's history, this is an edutainment game by The Software Toolworks starring...Mario? On the computer? How in the world?
Reportedly this game existed mostly as an effort to capitalize on the edutainment market during its height. I also want to bet Nintendo contracted it under parental pressure that their games were rotting their kids' minds. The result is this absolutely bizarre piece of software that doesn't exactly have the best reputation. This version in particular is famous for the visual design that falls straight into the uncanny valley and gave birth to the once-popular "Weegee" meme of the late 2000s. Funnily enough, most people only know the game for that and absolutely nothing else -- and if they are able to describe the gameplay, they almost always refer to the far more well-known (and even worse) NES and SNES adaptations.
In addition, this is of the updated "Deluxe" version, which as of this posting has never had a full walkthrough on KZfaq before. It's mostly the same as the original floppy disk version, with the major exceptions being the inclusion of real-life photos and videos from the locations you visit and, most importantly, voice acting. AWFUL voice acting. It's only natural, given this came out in the early 90s when voice acting was treated as an afterthought and usually done by the development team. It doesn't help either that a lot of the dialogue is corny as can be with cringe-worthy rhymes to describe places and things. Of course, it ends up unintentionally giving the game a lot more charm so there is that.
Speaking as someone who loves edutainment games and knows a good one when I see one, I can assure you this isn't one of them. While it's undoubtedly better than the console versions (which is quite an achievement considering those don't have eye-gouging artwork), it fails both as an entertaining game and as an educational one. The gameplay is monotonous beyond description -- you go to random unknown locations around the world, ask around about where you are and attempt to pinpoint which city you're in to bring Yoshi there so you can open the exit, and then spend time hunting down Koopas to retrieve stolen landmarks and return them to their kiosks. When returning them, you are asked a few questions about the landmark and need to answer them correctly, which is done by reading a brochure and attempting to recall specific details mentioned in them. Repeat this process two to four more times per landmark, and then do this again...24 MORE TIMES. Yikes.
And as an eductaional game? Well...it tries, but falls flat. Finding the location is way too easy to do, as oftentimes the townspeople will just say the city name straight away. Having a little bit of geographical knowledge will definitely help speed that up, but it's not really that challenging regardless and the artifact returning is poorly thought out. There is no way a kid is going to recall any of this information once they don't need it anymore, as it's just a quick memorization game before you move on to the next thing. Honestly, if you want a good geography game, just play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and skip this one. That said, the background art is serviceable and I think the soundtrack is quite good, featuring decent reworkings of tunes from Super Mario World. There is obvious effort that went into the product here, and honestly I don't think anyone would have given it anywhere near as hard of a time had it not had the Mario name attached to it.
This walkthrough is heavily condensed down. I did what I could to edit out mistakes, agonizing over answers, and general clumsiness. This is why the "time remaining" jumps downward a lot, if you have a careful eye. I also had to redo part of the game due to it crashing which is why the save file suddenly appears and why I so liberally save after every door following the fifth. How I got through this without directly injecting caffeine in my blood stream is a mystery...well, okay, it's not, I did it because of my passion for making these videos, but you get the picture. Oh yeah, the game also switches resolutions every time you go to the world map, so get used to seeing the resolution display indicator that my VGA-to-HDMI adapter shows every time that happens.
I should mention that one thing I did not show during this is the picture slideshow and video clip show for each location you unlock after clearing it -- I may potentially do that as a separate video, since there's not a whole lot to it and I didn't want it clogging up this video.
Hope you enjoy!