Mario's Early Years! Preschool Fun

'Mario's Early Years! Preschool Fun, released in Europe as Mario's Playschool',  is an educational Mario game released in North America in 1994 for the MS-DOS and SNES developed for children under six years of age. The game is set around a group of islands, where each island teaches a different subject to the players. The overall design of the game is based of Super Mario World, where the character graphics are taken from it while the music features rearrangements of various tracks.

This was the last of three educational games to be released in the Mario's Early Years! series, the others being Mario's Early Years! Fun with Letters and Mario's Early Years! Fun with Numbers; as such, the game is very similar to the first two games of the series. The main difference between this entry is that the subjects in the islands cover a more general learning, such as learning opposites, colors, and animals. The game, alongside the other two Mario's Early Years! titles was re-released under Mario's Early Years! CD-ROM Collection in 1995.

Gameplay
''Mario's Early Years! Preschool Fun is a point-and-click game, similar to other edutainment titles and the first two games of the Mario's Early Years!'' series. Players control the mouse cursor with the mouse in the MS-DOS version of the game, and the SNES version uses the controller that imitates mouse functions; the SNES Mouse is compatible with this game. In each of game's worlds, when they are clicked, children's voice overs instruct players how to proceed, and remind players to wake Luigi up before playing a game. In worlds where players need to pick objects to proceed, the character moves and jumps according to a clicked location. If an item is clicked on, the character runs and jumps, hitting the item as if it were a block. Clicking on the various Warp Pipes takes players to further parts of the level, while clicking on Warp Pipes with an arrow pointing at them (yellow in the MS-DOS version, green in the SNES version) takes player back to the main menu.

Playable characters
The playable characters are the same across all three Mario's Early Years! titles. Players can pick their character by clicking on them in the main menu screen. In the MS-DOS version of the game, Mario and Princess Toadstool are the playable characters. In the SNES version of the game, Yoshi is added as a playable character.

Background characters
These characters congratulate players if they made the correct choices in the stages. Subtitles are present in the SNES version of the game.

Worlds
''Mario's Early Years! Preschool Fun'' contains seven worlds in the DOS version of the game, six worlds in the SNES version of the game, and eight worlds in the CD-ROM collection version of the game. When the worlds are completed, players are automatically taken back to the main menu, which also acts as the world selection.

Console differences
The SNES version of the game is largely the same as the PC edition, but with some differences due to reduced space.


 * The main menu of the DOS version of the game uses a rearrangement of the map theme for Donut Plains while the SNES version uses the title screen theme. The icons are also in slightly different places.
 * Options to turn off music/sounds/voice clips, randomize the questions, and show text in worlds that have it were removed.
 * The help screen with tips on how to continue learning outside of the program was removed.
 * Yoshi was added as a third playable character.
 * Various background graphic differences.
 * Like its predecessors, Sing Song World was removed.

Screenshots

 * MS-DOS

Sprites

 * MS-DOS

Quotes
Some quotes from children instructing players are compiled from separate sound bytes.


 * That works for me!
 * Mario likes you.
 * Wow, you did it.
 * Good choice.
 * You did well.
 * I like your choice.
 * I know that's right.
 * Well done.
 * You are good!
 * Great!
 * Good for you.
 * You found it!