Mario
The player-controlled hero who travels through history to recover Bowser's stolen artifacts.
Documented for this version
Control Pad | Move Mario and navigate menus |
|---|---|
A | Confirm selections and interact |
B | Cancel or return from a menu |
How it plays
Mario visits historical periods to locate stolen artifacts and restore them to their proper places. The game uses side-scrolling movement in some sections and menu-driven or conversational screens in others.
Players explore, collect or inspect objects, read historical information, and answer questions. Correct answers advance the lesson and story, while the available historical entries provide the main form of progression.
Plan your run
Read the historical entries carefully before attempting quizzes, since many answers depend on names, dates, and identifying details.
Inspect every available object and conversation in a period before leaving. If a quiz answer is uncertain, use the surrounding descriptions to eliminate choices rather than guessing immediately.
Meet the cast
The player-controlled hero who travels through history to recover Bowser's stolen artifacts.
The antagonist who takes historical artifacts and scatters them across time.
Before you begin
Use the information screens as study material; they contain clues needed for later questions.
Keep track of which artifact belongs to each historical period.
The game rewards careful reading more than fast movement.
Mario's Time Machine is an educational adventure game developed by The Software Toolworks and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Bowser has stolen artifacts from different periods of history, and Mario must travel through time to return them. The game combines light platforming and exploration with historical reading, object identification, and quiz sections. Its play style is slower and more instructional than a traditional Mario action game, with progress depending on learning and answering questions. Reception was mixed: its unusual educational format and historical material appealed to some younger players, while critics often found the pacing and limited action less engaging than the mainline series.
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