Mario is missing is a dark and horrible memory of a failed experiment.

Excellent. I don't want to be educated, I want to rot my brain!

Could you explain please?

It it's basically a 2D platformer starring Luigi?

...

...Works for me.

When I was a kid and saw Mario is Missing in a store, this was 100% what I assumed it was.  It's also what I wanted, as a younger brother who often had to play as Player 2.  Needless to say I was disappointed.  New Super Luigi U was a long time coming for some of us.

OP would have been my favorite game if Nintendo released it twenty years ago.

Oh gosh, buying Mario is Missing back then must have been a really big disappointment D: That and Mario's Time Machine sounded like they could have been really cool games, if done properly.

Oh yeah, I guess Partners in Time does cover the time travel part, though I've never played that game, so I don't know how it is.

I hear good things about it. I'll have to play it at some point in time.

I feel like the only one in the world that actually liked those two games. But I used to love games with educational value, especially if dealing with history, science, or geography.

While another platformer would have been cool, I think that those games are very important. They showed that Nintendo did not always make a great Mario game, and that they, like every other company, can make disappointing games. However, they are also unique from the other games at least, so they have a bit of personality separate from other Mario games.