Most Obscure Mario Games

[blackdrazon]

Lately, I've been playing Mario no Super Picross for the Super Famicom, and saw someone describing it as "one of the most obscure Mario games." Frankly, that struck me as incorrect. Mario's had so many games that a simple puzzle spinoff restricted to one region would hardly qualify as "most obscure," especially if you include a Japanese audience. Even in the realm of Japanese-only, Mario-themed Picross games, Mario no Super Picross has to contend with the Nintendo Power-exclusive Super Famicom game Picross NP vol 6, which was Mario 64-themed and released almost at the doorstop of the Gamecube.

Some other obscurities I can think of off the top of my head include the Hudson PC games (with the FM-7 probably being the most obscure versions in that set?), All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros, the Crazy Kong "port" of Donkey Kong, and of course the World Championship carts. There were also a few games that sound obscure today but weren't really all that obscure at the time, or that have at least become widely-documented today. Examples include the likes of VS Super Mario Bros, the BS Satellaview games, the Game & Watch games, and the Virtual Boy games.

For my money, the most obscure, official, Mario-themed game is Mario Artist on the 64DD. The add-on sold abysmally, add-ons sell less than systems to begin with, and coverage in the west was thin until very recently making it even harder for its games to be considered "well-documented" (though Japanese coverage might be the other way around!). If I had to pick one of the set, I'd go with the Mario Artist Communication Kit, which has been defunct for years, making it virtually impossible to experience in full. It was also fairly niche to begin with, meaning very few people ever played even when it was live. Of course, the actual answer is probably something even weirder than that, like the almost undisputed "most obscure Sonic game," the SegaSonic Popcorn Shop, but it's the most obscure thing I can think of off the top of my head!

Thoughts? What's your take for the most obscure official entry for gaming's most popular character?

[mainpatr]

Mario no Photopi.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_no_Photopi

Or Mario Family.

www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Family

But, if you are talking about actual games with Mario,nothing beats Gotlleib's Super Mario Mushroom World pinball machine.

www.mariowiki.com/Super_Mario_Bros._Mushroom_World

[windfisch]

Wow, these are very hard to top.

All I could come up with was the Hudson games, Mario is Missing and Hotel Mario. I'd consider those pretty obscure. But none of them come even close to the examples mentioned in previous posts - most of which I've never even heard of.

[jorpho]

I suppose Game & Watch aficionados would be all over that sort of thing, but I was surprised to learn of Mario's Bombs Away relatively recently. Mario! In the Army! The meme potential alone is staggering, but there's not even a Mario Odyssey costume.


My next vote would be for Yoshi no Cookie: Kuruppon Oven de Cookie. It's tricky even to find a video for that one where someone knows what they're doing.


I'm thinking even fewer might be unaware of the 5th-level prototype of the Coleco Adam port of Donkey Kong Junior, but if we start questioning the obscurity of certain parts of games, the list gets murky fast.

[kingmike]

Apr 30, 2019 19:24:53 GMT -5 windfisch said:

Wow, these are very hard to top.

All I could come up with was the Hudson games, Mario is Missing and Hotel Mario. I'd consider those pretty obscure. But none of them come even close to the examples mentioned in previous posts - most of which I've never even heard of.

Mario is Missing is actually pretty well-known, at least among those who grew up in that era, if because probably a lot of people rented (or bought!) the game back in the day expecting it to be the second Mario platformer on the SNES. It was definitely popular enough to inspire a SMW ROM hack or two, I think.

I think Mario's Time Machine (its sequel) would be much more obscure, since people had only months earlier been burned by its predecessor, and were more alert.

I know Mario had a few third-party edutainment games, mostly on PCs, but I think Missing was the first console edu game.

I think the PC version of MIM (or one of them, I here there were separate floppy and CD versions) also inspired the Weegee meme (reportedly it was from an FMV, so probably CD then).

Mario no Super Picross was released THREE times on Virtual Console in Europe and ZERO in North America. WTF, Nintendo? Not a big deal since the actual cartridge is dirt cheap last I knew but still odd.

I definitely remember the pinball machine. The pizza-arcade place had that when I was kid and it broke down and stole my coins like half the time. And maybe of half of those times, reporting it resulted in a refund. (I wonder if they eventually removed it because they couldn't fix it apparently.) I do recall hearing a line for dropping a ball as "ONE IN THE POTTY!"

mainpatr I don't know if Mario no Photopi is even still usable, or if it is dependent on a very old (and presumably long discontinued) format of memory card to load photos onto the cart. Some kind of Fujifilm? Fujitsu? card with like 2MB apparently was originally included. Up to a maximum of 16MB I think I read it supported. Even the first digital camera my mom had in the mid 2000s which we used with a 128MB card we bought feels super-outdated now.

[phediuk]

Punch Ball Mario Bros for the PC-88:

www.mariowiki.com/Punch_Ball_Mario_Bros.

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

Mario Artist is pretty well known, all things considered. It came out relatively recently, which probably helps, it's a sequel to a classic (more or less), and it's well known for being the origin of WarioWare.

My favorite obscurity is probably the EU exclusive NES Mario Bros. update based on Kaettekita Mario Bros. The Satellaview Mario x Excitebike crossover is also pretty cool.

But there's a ton of other random stuff that's more obscure. Some of it almost doesn't even really count IMO (there's a couple of random edutainment titles that aren't really games). Look up Bubu Mario or Mario Undoukai, two 1993 Banpresto arcade games that have almost no information available about them online. There's also a couple other arcade games nobody cares about.

If we're just sticking to Nintendo platforms to sort out the really, really pointlessly obscure things, many people have probably not heard of Kinopio Live.

You could probably find something even more obscure...

[jorpho]

Apr 30, 2019 23:58:09 GMT -5 kingmike said:

I definitely remember the pinball machine. The pizza-arcade place had that when I was kid and it broke down and stole my coins like half the time. And maybe of half of those times, reporting it resulted in a refund. (I wonder if they eventually removed it because they couldn't fix it apparently.) I do recall hearing a line for dropping a ball as "ONE IN THE POTTY!"

The "Mushroom World" game linked by M. Mainpatr seems to be a good deal more obscure than the original - only 519 units, according to the link.

[sogetsu]

Mario Teaches Typing is probably the most obscure Mario game I've ever played.

[surnshurn]

Mario Tennis for the virtual boy - not a bad game by any means, but man did that system suck.