When I first saw Mario’s Time Machine on the shelf my imagination ran wild. Nintendo’s mascot hopping and bopping through different periods in history sounded like a dream game. As soon as I could I rented the title, and I fully expected to be completely blown away. Only I wasn’t. Disappointment immediately overwhelmed me. This was not your traditional Mario game. It was an educational title with almost none of the elements that made the franchise great. This isn’t even the first time they did this. Mario is Missing was also an educational title, but I found some enjoyment in that one. Mario’s Time Machine though? It felt like doing homework. The plumber’s time traveling adventure still crosses my mind every now and then, and I decided today to see how it holds up. Unfortunately it’s still as much a chore as it was back in the 90s.
The best part of Mario’s Time Machine is the story introduction at the beginning. It’s surprisingly well done. The adventure starts with Bowser and his minions creating a time machine. They decide to travel throughout history and steal the worlds most important artifacts. Why? To create a museum in Bowser’s castle, of course. Mario ventures into the castle to retrieve the artifacts, and travel back in time to return them to their rightful place. This is all told through still images and scrolling text. If I’m being honest this is more effort than Nintendo usually puts into their own Mario games. Heck, even the drawings of Bowser and co are pretty well done. Unfortunately I’ve already run out of praises to sing about this game.
You are thrown right into Bowser’s castle at the start. There are no enemies. It’s just Mario and the artifacts. Our hero can walk, run and jump but there are no platforms. His abilities are essentially useless. Each floor has a different set of these items. Upon returning each to their rightful time period you move up to a new floor and start the process all over again. You are only allowed to pick up one of these at a time. After snagging one you can summon the time machine with the L button, and must select the proper location and year relevant to the artifact. The interface for this is kind of neat with a steampunk looking machine with dials.
Upon doing so the game takes an unexpected twist. Suddenly Mario is surfing in a mode-7 rendered ocean (with no waves for some reason) and must collect mushrooms in this 3D space. A meter at the top of the screen indicates how many you have, and how many more you need. After collecting enough you can enter a whirlpool and voila! You’ve successfully traveled through time. Each time period generally consists of a single area with multiple buildings. You can interact with the people here and ask questions. They’ll provide hints as to the artifact and person you’re supposed to return it to. The historical figure you’re supposed to bring the item to is always on a separate screen. At first they won’t really interact with you though.
Mario comes equipped with a history book you can pull up by pressing the R button. It has fill in the blank spaces in the middle of several sentences, and highlighting these and pressing X brings up a menu wherein you can select from answers. If you get it correct the answer remains there permanently. Each level has two different pages. Your ultimate goal is to fill in the missing words/phrases on both of them. When this is completed you can finally return the artifact to the historical figure. From here you summon the time machine with the L button which allows you to return to Bowser’s Castle in the modern era. Rinse, lather, and repeat.
As I mentioned earlier playing Mario’s Time Machine feels like you’re doing homework. That’s not exactly what I would call a good time. The fact that you have to interact with characters, and bring up Mario’s book to fill in answers is tedious. Many of them are obvious for anyone that went to school, but often times the words you’re filling in are obscure historical references. For example, how am I supposed to remember what Joan of Arc’s sword was named? You learn the information you need to progress from NPCs. The main problem I have is that if you miss what they said they don’t often repeat it. What purpose does it serve to make an educational game aimed at kids so unforgiving?
Speaking of that I have another beef with the game. If you get the date wrong when you’re entering it into the time machine there’s no indication that it’s incorrect. You participate in the same surfing challenge like you always would, but upon completion you are sent back to Bowser’s castle. This is true even if you’re off by one digit. Kids don’t want to remember historical dates and enter them into a video game. Not even in an educational one. Some of the design choices here will leave any reasonable person scratching their head. Mario’s Time Machine demands accuracy. This is a kid’s game. Come on, read the room here guys.
On the plus side there’s a decent selection of locations and time periods that you’ll visit. Mario’s Time Machine takes the plumber to a number of different centuries and most of the continents in the world. Unfortunately none of these locations in-game are even remotely interesting. The scenery looks like it could have been drawn in Microsoft Paint, and the fact that each area is almost a single screen large is really disappointing. Honestly I don’t even know why Nintendo included the ability for Mario to jump here considering the fact that it’s never required. The basic gameplay just has you walking around interacting with NPCs. Throwing in some goombas or other enemies would have gone a long way. Mario’s Time Machine needed something, anything, to make it more interesting to play.
The dialogue is also pretty laughable. The NPCs are fine, and the writing there is decent. It’s the historical figures that are written very strangely. For some reason they’re all unreasonably angry with Mario if you try to speak with them before completing the history book. After finishing this the dialogue is borderline strange. For one thing people seem to know who Mario is, that he’s a plumber, and in some instances the characters know he’s Italian. These interactions are kind of offputting in my opinion. In some situations the writers just seem detached from reality. The moments when you’re speaking to Mozart for example, who states that he’s ‘hard of hearing.’ Yeah, I’ll say. Mario’s Time Machine can be unintentionally bizarre at times.
The game’s graphics are pretty underwhelming. Mario’s model is ripped straight out of Super Mario World. He even has some new sprites. It’s a stark contrast. The new drawings of Mario look pretty bad. The developers shouldn’t have even tried. The surfing mini-game is the high point graphically but it always looks exactly the same, there are no waves, and the environment is really barren. The various time periods look really bad. I wasn’t exaggerating earlier when I said that the environments look like something that could have been drawn in the paint app. The soundtrack fares a little bit better. There are some classic Mario remixes here. Some of the era music also has some traditional Mario notes to it. It’s okay, but this soundtrack isn’t one I’d listen to outside of the game.
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