Side note:

I played Mario odyssey this weekend for the first time. Didn't grip me. I'd give it a 3.

Some final thoughts on SMB2:

Destor brought up the original Mario Bros. game before the first SMB, and it got me to thinking how he started as just a humble protagonist in Donkey Kong, not even called Mario, but rather Jump Man, and how if it wasn’t for its success, there may never have been MB, and thus no other games, and Mario never becomes Mario. And at that point, who knows if the video game industry ever recovers if Nintendo can‘t act as it’s savior. Sega, with it’s Master System, was a distant second and didn’t have a mascot that they could put into a game that would’ve been a smash hit, and if they couldn’t develop one, video games may well have gone the way of the dodo not even 40 years after the development of the very first primitive one of the late 1940s. Certainly a dark alternate timeline that could’ve played out (no pun intended). We all owe Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto and the N.E.S./Famicom a huge debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.

On the other hand, you have the horrendous educational Mario games, like Mario is Missing! that nearly sank his whole reputation as Nintendo’s mascot. It’s like MiM! was trying to be a competitor to the Carmen San Diego PC games. And we all probably know of, if not remember, the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing educational game. Yep, there unfortunately also exists Mario Teaches Typing. I think we should all be grateful those kinds of titles didn’t get the same kind of attention as Super Mario World and Super Mario 64, or who knows what Nintendo would look like today, or if they would even still be in business.

There was a game on Coleco Vision called Jumpman Jr.

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I absolutely cannot express the severity of my disgust and disappointment when I found out Mario is Missing! was a fucking educational game, and a poorly executed one at that. It was one of those products that got dumped out at a time when parents were applying the heat to developers and the rest of us had to pay the price. It wasn't like Nintendo couldn't put out a product with some learning value as Mario Paint would go on to demonstrate. But to put out a concept as interesting (at the time) as putting Luigi front and center as the sole protagonist and then pull back the curtain revealing the pearl-clutching mothers at the controls was too cruel. Thankfully Nintendo has more Super Mario World and Wii successes under its belt than Virtual Boy and edu-tainment failures.

I enjoyed Mario is Missing. I'd give it a 4.

I remember Mario's Time Machine. I remember being very confused.

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Mario's take on sex education, The True Liberation of One Princess Peach: An Erotic Royal Adventure, could've been handled better by the developers if they had included information on homosexual relationships. I mean, you have Princess Daisy right there for crying out loud.

Like I said, I’m pretty sure they saw what a hit Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, both the PC games and the 2 PBS TV series were, and CTRL+C, CTRL+V’d them both.

Also, I don’t know if I had outgrown kids’ shows by the time it premiered, but I absolutely could not stand the animated series Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?.

Yeah but WITWICS was actually fun.

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The live-action game show was the fucking shit. The animated series was fine other than the Chief being annoying as dicks, in my opinion. Overall, Carmen Sandiego was a franchise that did edu-tainment right and is one of the few nostalgic properties that I can credit for not treating kids like idiots.

I think the host of the game show was the DJ in "The Warriors"

Love all the puns in the song:



Well she sneaks around the world from Kiev to Carolina
She's a sticky-fingered filcher from Berlin down to Belize
She'll take you for a ride on a slow boat to China
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

Steal their Seoul in South Korea, make Antarctica cry Uncle
From the Red Sea to Greenland they'll be singing the blues
Well they never Arkansas her steal the Mekong from the jungle
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

She go from Nashville to Norway, Bonaire to Zimbabwe
Chicago to Czechoslovakia and back!

Well she'll ransack Pakistan and run a scam in Scandinavia
Then she'll stick 'em up Down Under and go pick-pocket Perth
She put the Miss in misdemeanor when she stole the beans from Lima
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

Oh tell me where in the world is... Oh tell me where can she be?
Ooh, Botswana to Thailand, Milan via Amsterdam,
Mali to Bali, Ohio, Oahu...!

Well she glides around the globe and she'll flimflam every nation
She's a double-dealing diva with a taste for thievery
Her itinerary's loaded up with moving violations
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

Exactly. Probably because unlike Nintendo, Brøderbund wasn’t a bunch of stuffy suits sitting in some office scheming ways to milk every last penny from their fans. I remember especially enjoying the system of gaining a promotion for every 𝑥 cases solved. THAT’S how you incentivize people to want to keep playing your game. Not with confusing gameplay that finally leads to frustration and rage quitting.

Just so we're clear the icon for emulation if a person wants to keep customers engaged longterm is the company thats defunct and not the one thats grown to the size of disney?

Also lol at the idea edutainment could ever be a cash grab. Kids dont want that their parents force it on them

I recall playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego on my Master System :O

The Chief yup.

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OK, I'm officially an idiot because I'm pretty sure I was confusing this with Super Mario 3D World. You know, the one where you could get a cat suit.

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Was playing a round of Trivial Pursuit Live with some friends and one of the questions asked us to pick all of the answers that were actual Super Mario games. The choices that were wrong were particularly hilarious, specifically the one called Super Mario: Black Ops, which I would absolutely play.

I remember back in the day e-mailing (and totally not expecting any kind of reply) one of the members of Rockapella asking if they were the one who portrayed “Mrs. Punpkinklanger”, a curmudgeonly old woman who lived in an upstairs apartment across the alleyway from where the first round was played, and would yell at Greg and the gumshoes to keep it down. I actually received a response confirming that it was in fact him, and that it was a tribute to his late aunt. Pretty cool stuff.