Lost Mario Browser Games for McDonalds Toy Promotion

I'm gonna be honest, I'm not sure if this is something that we'll be able to recover... It's unlikely the files were archived automatically or manually. I think this because the external swfs were only written INSIDE the actionscript code of the swf. Wayback doesn't typically archive external files connected to swfs unless they were linked in a text-based file. This was likely a Flash site that had everything within one base swf. This is a VERY common problem with Wayback, and it breaks so many Flash files that point to external files and links. It sucks. :'3
(i am not an expert with flash, wayback, or html, so please correct me if i'm wrong. i'm also bad at explaining things lol)

I don’t know if this is something you’ve already done, but have you tried registering on any Mario/Nintendo forums to ask about the games?

This seems like one of the more popular ones:

www.marioboards.com/

It’s pretty surprising how none of your posts so far on the Mario subreddit have seemed to garner much interest when this is a topic I feel that’d fascinate any Mario fan. I think this might just be a reddit problem with how threads tend to get buried, so you may have better luck posting about them on traditional forum sites for the visibility that’d hopefully lead to more engagement. Just my two cents.

All good points, I just thought the thrill of the hunt and it being a part of one of their favorite franchises would’ve encouraged more involvement from Mario fans but like you said they might not really “get” lost media and there really isn’t much at all to go off of with no footage, screenshots, etc, and seemingly the only mention of the games on the internet not made by you is that cheapassgamer thread from 2006.

Also like you brought up, the fact that these games were just part of a McDonalds happy meal promotion could inhibit the search with some possibly thinking “meh, why bother.”

I’m really looking forward to seeing if you get any replies on Marioboards. Who knows, maybe there’s someone on there who also remembers playing these games which would be great. But if nothing else, it’ll help spread the word.

That is interesting! I checked what promotion was going on April 20, 2007 to see if it was Nintendo related, and it was American Idol, so this must have been accidental.

I noticed another little oddity, there’s a capture for December 25, 2007, and instead of the usual error page that comes up there’s a message that says “Too many kids playing is usually a good thing, except when it prevents you from playing your favorite game. Right now the site is really crowded, please try again soon.”

web.archive.org/web/20071225204605/http://www.happymeal.com/mario/

Don’t really know if there’s any significance to this, but figured I’d mention it.

Hey there, Shishagumi (founder of the Lost Media Busters and runner of @lostmediabuster on X), I found this case of lost media to be particularly interesting, especially that Mario golf game!

I'll be posting about it on Thursday with a link to direct our followers to this thread, hopefully that helps!

I agree about the not-indexed webpages. Makes me wonder what other media we can find on these games. It'll just require a little more digging in the right places.

Regarding the videos, I don't recall watching any, and I'm not sure if they are available elsewhere, so they may also be lost media as well. Though, it's hard to say for sure. I have seen a few mentions of the videos in my research.

On this GoNintendo post, the author mentions a page of videos of "people performing the Mario theme song in various ways." He says his favorite is "a woman playing the Super Mario Bros. theme on a set of bagpipes."
On this VideoGamesBlogger post, the author mentions the site having "lots of videos." He mentions one of the videos is the "making of the Mario-themed Kids Meal commercial" which I assume he means it's a behind-the-scenes video for this commercial. He also mentions that the other videos "deal with people playing the Mario theme on guitar and whatnot." I think the commercial itself was also among the videos according to this forum post on TheMushroomKingdom.net.

I am curious about these videos. It seems like a lot of them are different covers of the original Mario theme. However, there are most likely tons of covers like that on YouTube these days, so it'd be hard to track down which ones were hosted on the site. I'm especially curious about the one that shows behind-the-scenes for the commercial as I've never seen that anywhere else.

To Shishagumi, I appreciate you bringing more attention to this topic! Having more eyes on these games should definitely help. I look forward to seeing your post.