Mario’s Time Machine isn’t the best use of time

destructoid.com:

Education is extremely important, but I hated school. I was never very good at it. I’m not very book smart. Then again, I’m not very street smart. What I’m getting at is: I’m not very smart in general, so school wasn’t right for me.

Self-deprecation aside, I think it’s just the academic system I don’t like. I don’t care about grades. How do you even make a child care about aptitude scores? Do you know what children do care about? Defeating Bowser. So in the early ‘90s, Nintendo loosened its grip on the Mario franchise long enough for a smattering of edutainment games to be produced. They’re not fondly remembered, which is funny because many adults still cling to the edutainment games of their youth.

Mario’s Time Machine on SNES is one that I didn’t play back in 1993 when it was released, so I’ve got no horse in this race. Aside from the fact that I own a copy, I mean. Which is reason enough for me to play it.

I did play Mario is Missing when I was a kid, but I was too young to understand geography. I played it mainly on the novelty that Luigi was the hero. Mario’s Time Machine is similar, but it focuses on history, making it impossible not to compare the two games to the Carmen Sandiego series. When you compare a game built around a license against one that comes from a love of teaching, it will never be favorable.

The story here is that Bowser has stolen important objects from across time for a museum or something. I don’t get the end goal here, but the result is that he’s disrupted time. Oh gosh, I’m thinking way too hard on this storyline. Narratives get pretty mucky when you bring time travel into them, but when the story isn’t the focus of your game, it just gets weirder. Wouldn’t disrupting time work out poorly for