Mario's Time Machine

Mario's Time Machine is an edutainment title that was released for the SNES and PC in December 1993 and on the NES in 1994. It is usually meant to teach younger players basic world history.

Story
In the year 1993, Bowser builds a time machine called the Timulator, which he uses to travel backwards to different points in human history and steals significant artifacts to place in his personal museum. Mario must take back the artifacts and return them to their proper places in time before history becomes irreversibly damaged.

In the NES version of the game, Yoshi joins Mario in his quest to stop Bowser's plot, but instead gets captured. In addition to fixing the timeline Mario must also rescue Yoshi from peril.

SNES
The central hub of Mario's Time Machine is the museum within Bowser's castle. The museum is three floors high, and on each floor lies five artifacts, giving Mario a total of fifteen periods of time to travel to. Mario must take an artifact from a pedestal, look at the date and location labeled on it, and then program that information into the Timulator and travel to that point in the timeline.

When the player arrives in the time period, he must explore and converse with the various residents that live there. In doing so, the player learns about the artifact, the time period, and the person associated with it. To get more information, the player must receive items that some residents possess and give them to others in order to satisfy their needs. For example, in Vienna one resident will complain about the heat until Mario retrieves a fan and hands it to the person, who will then continue to give information. After the player has talked to everyone, the player fills out a History answer sheet. The answer sheet consists of a two-page biography about the person associated with the artifact and the time period, with blanks replacing several words. The player must use the information he received to correctly fill in the blanks. If the player fills in the wrong answer more than twice, the player is forced back into the present. If he succeeds, Mario can return the artifact to its owner and return back to 1993.

A timer is used throughout the game. How long the player spends in each time period totals up: if the player spends too much time returning all the artifacts, history has already been fixed and Bowser escapes using the Timulator to "Paradise." The player must start over from the beginning, or to use a password to go back to a previous point.

After all the artifacts of a floor have been returned, Mario moves upward to the next floor.