Mario is Missing! is a game in which Mario gets kidnapped while attempting to stop Bowser's plot to accelerate global warming with giant hairdryers, forcing Luigi to travel the world and set things right through the power of poorly researched geography and history lessons.
The game is notable for being one of the few officially licensed Mario titles on PC. Like the other few, however, it's become rather infamous in the community, and it's mostly brought up these days in regard to its amusingly off-model depictions of the characters, which gave birth to the "Weegee" and "Malleo" memes.
It is not, however, Luigi's first starring role (as opposed to co-star) - that honor goes to Luigi's Hammer Toss, a McDonald's promotional LCD watch game that was released two years earlier.
Seminars and lectures to rows of fools who couldn't begin to understand my systems. Colleagues. Colleagues laughing behind my back at the boy wonder and becoming famous building on my work. Building on my work.
An audio excerpt from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Ultimate Computer" appears in PAT.WAV, which is located in the VOICE folder. The file is interesting, as every other file is both located in sub-directories and is PCM encoded. The filename may be referring to Pat McCarthy, one of the programmers.
This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Try to find these voice lines.
Mario has two distinct voices in this game: an Italian one heard in the intro, and a New York rendition heard during in-game phone calls. There is an alternate take of most of his lines with each accent, so the programmers likely designated the wrong pair of files.
The game features five of the seven Koopalings. While Morton and Lemmy aren't present, they were at least considered enough to have voice lines recorded. It is unknown if they were intended to show up exclusively in the CD-ROM version before being scrapped.
You know, Luigi, a smart guy like you ought to join up with the winners. Here's a nice turtle shell you can wear. If you can't defeat us, you might as well join us.
LK00B
What's a nice plumber like you doing in a place like this? With your talent, you ought to be unclogging drains somewhere, not trying to embarrass yourself as a detective.
LK00C
So, you had a little trouble in the city. Not everyone's cut out to be a superhero. Take a job with us, Luigi - you can always dump our trash and maybe do a little cooking.
LK00D
On the level, Luigi. Put down that burning bloom, man, and let's talk reason. There's no reason to get all fired up.
LK00E
You're very strong and powerful, pal, but excuse me for not running. I mean, you don't have a Fire Flower, do you?
Mario:Thanks for all your hard work, Luigi. You went across the world for me, and I won't forget it. Let's go now, bro. I'm dying for a piece of good old New York pizza.
As mentioned above, the major change the later CD-ROM release made was added voice acting. Other changes include:
Loading screens replacing brief moments of darkness.
Live-action visuals and clips for most of the landmarks.
Other Mario-series characters (such as Peach, Toad, and Donkey Kong) replace certain NPCs on the phone. Although they all have different voices and phrases, the written dialogue did not change to reflect the character's speech.
You'd think a game about traveling the world would give you more ways to communicate.
The European release adds a language select screen when the player first boots up the game.
In the French release of the DOS edition and the European release of the CD-ROM edition, the mayors' sprites are randomized whenever the game is opened.
Re: Cracks. "Actually, Mario is Missing is shipping now, but it's more of an edutainment type of title instead of just a raw arcade game title."↩︎
CD-ROM Today Issue 1 (Summer 1993), p. 14. "Mario Is Missing, an educational game based on the exploits of the popular Nintendo character, will be released on CDROM (DOS) in July by The Software Toolworks."↩︎
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