Obscure Mario Games

LuigiFan24

LuigiFan24

#LuigiForLife
Just a place to chat about the weird Mario games Nintendo has seemingly forgotten about, but judging by the return of Virtual Boy, could be coming to Switch and Switch 2.

I'm talking about one-offs like Mario Pinball Land and Yoshi Topsy-turvy as well as edutainment and PC titles such as Mario's Early Years. None of these are necessarily bad in my opinion, but they are very bizarre.


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(This is the shock like the expressions Nintendo fans have when discovering these for the first time)
 
I've played Mario's Early Years: Preschool Fun, and it may be the only MS-DOS Mario game worth playing.
 
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There was an officially licensed Pong clone released on cable boxes in Italy titled "LEGO Super Mario Goal". It was a reskinned version of "Pongoal", a game made by the same company for other regions. It was removed around a year later.

I actually got to play Pongoal at a hotel, which is the closest I'll ever get to playing this game, unless the game files get leaked or something. The game sucked, like all the other games on their service, but at least it is better than playing a YouTuber branded game lmao
 
Out of all Mario related things, they picked the Lego sets to theme a Pong knockoff around?
 
Fizzle said:
I wouldn't be surprised if that was on Rokus before, just translated.
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Pongoal was released in 2020, and LSMG was on a cable box called "Skybox Italia", which I assume is Italy's Roku equivalent. So why was the Mario version an Italy exclusive? Even more baffling is that Play.Works also released a digital jigsaw puzzle based on LEGO Mario, and that was released in the US. I don't think there would've been much pushback in regards to LSMG getting localized.

But then again, documentation on Play.Works games is surprisingly poor, so there is a chance Pongoal got rebranded for that period of time in the US.

Edit: I found an announcement for the game that said it was exclusive to the Skybox Italia, so this was never localized for the US.
 
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Mario Teaches Typing is probably the most bizarre one out there. Nothing wrong with typing games, I mean, I played them when I was little, but the floating Mario head with no body is unsettling and there are weird pieces of dialogue like when Mario asks if he can have your computer 🤨
 
They used Mario's head from the 1991 Mario in Real Time event and put him into an educational typing game of all things. Mario's dialogue is also hilarious.
 
Fizzle said:
Nice computer you got there.

C A N I H A V E I T ?
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High in the sky like a big pizza pie, it's a moray! Get it, it's a moray eel? - Mario, Mario Teaches Typing, 1992.
 
LuigiFan24 said:
High in the sky like a big pizza pie, it's a moray! Get it, it's a moray eel? - Mario, Mario Teaches Typing, 1992.
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LOL
I think I remember like when he asked for something to eat and drink .
 
According to Switch Stop on YouTube, "While Mario Paint is considered to be one of the most obscure Mario games ever made, it actually got a titled sequel, Mario Artist, for the Nintendo 64 DD. However, neither the game nor the DD ever released outside of Japan due to the DD's poor sales performance." My question is though, was the DD really necessary if the GameCube was on the way?
 
I don't think it's necessary
 
Mario's Early Years games were more of an experiment in my opinion. It proved that Mario could exist in different forms, but on the other hand, it had a very niche audience considering a lot of toddlers probably weren't even interested in Mario. At least in my situation, I wasn't interested in the franchise till I was 12.

On a separate note, both this and Hotel Mario honestly sort of surprised me when I first learned of their existence, and honestly, I don't hate either. Sure, they're both cheesy but in a charming way lol 😂
 
It's been awhile since I used this thread but I just realized that one of the most obscure "Mario" games is Wario's Woods. This NES game's theming is weird enough, but the two playable Toads were actually fully voice acted despite the limited hardware. The funny thing is that no one knows who voiced these Toads. I also think Nintendo wants to forget this game existed lol.
 
LuigiFan24 said:
Mario's Early Years games were more of an experiment in my opinion. It proved that Mario could exist in different forms, but on the other hand, it had a very niche audience considering a lot of toddlers probably weren't even interested in Mario. At least in my situation, I wasn't interested in the franchise till I was 12.
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1990's had an Edutainment Boom, it's not surprising that Mario also jumped onboard it.
 
LuigiFan24 said:
According to Switch Stop on YouTube, "While Mario Paint is considered to be one of the most obscure Mario games ever made, it actually got a titled sequel, Mario Artist, for the Nintendo 64 DD. However, neither the game nor the DD ever released outside of Japan due to the DD's poor sales performance." My question is though, was the DD really necessary if the GameCube was on the way?
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I think they just wanted to not still be cartridge based, idk
 
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