Here's how I rediscovered what seems to be the first official in-browser game featuring Mario, or possibly any Nintendo IP at all. It was released in 1997 to promote the IBM AS/400 computer system, a once-popular midrange computer designed for businesses. It also had virtually zero documentation online and was found in a pretty unlikely place. Sorry if this post is a bit long, but I don't have much of a platform to tell this story and I figured this would be a good place for it.

One of my favorite websites growing up was themushroomkingdom.net, a Mario-themed fansite and informational resource started in 1997 that has gone virtually unchanged design-wise in over 20 years. It had news articles, forums, an ancestor to the Mario Wiki that existed before Wikipedia itself, you name it - all of which has been preserved as-is for modern viewing, and it's still getting updated to this day. Anyways, another aspect of the site that's existed since those early days is a "secret page", findable only through a very obscure link hidden somewhere in the massive website. I could never find it as a kid, but after randomly remembering its existence one day, I was able to find it as an adult. I used this hint posted by the site's administrator in 2003: "What once was lost, now is found. Or is it the other way around? Run to the end... Look to the sky... Don't try to jump, it's up way too high. Nine of us in all, unlocked by the sound."

Upon finding the secret page, it provides a few interesting bits of the website's history, including older homepage designs and very old photos of some of the site's administrators. It also had a link just called "Mario Net Quest", which upon loading will toss your browser a .DCR file (used for Shockwave games, not playable in-browser these days) and gives you a nearly-blank webpage with just this text: "Released 3/14/1997 as part of a contest promoting IBM AS/400 servers. Info page coming soon!"

There was no info page. In fact, all I could initially find on Google that mentioned a "Mario Net Quest" was a few ancient forum posts, all made by admins of themushroomkingdom. At this point, the earliest Flash or Shockwave browser games listed on the Mario Wiki were from 1998, so I knew what I had found was potentially historic, but I had a lot of trouble finding info about this game and getting the Shockwave file to actually play. The game was nowhere to be found in the Flashpoint archives, which has has preserved over 100,000 Flash, Shockwave, and other types of browser games, movies, and microsites. I really struggled in running the DCR file I had on my hands and gave up, but I submitted it in Flashpoint's curation request form anyways to see if anyone else could get it to work.

For a while I thought that all info about this game may have been completely lost, or it all was some kind of practical joke by the TMK administrators - but, not giving up, I realized how to better use archive.org to dig for anything at all related to Mario Net Quest. I was able to find an Italian newspaper from 1997 that featured an IBM ad with a big black-and-white render of Mario and a link to the "AS400" subdomain of the IBM website, and in that page's archive I at last found an actual link to the game! Not much info about the supposed contest, but I was happy to finally get somewhere.

It was also around this time that I snooped through the Flashpoint discord and saw that my curation request for Mario Net Quest was approved (seemingly cutting the line). I loaded the submission page for it and finally got to see some screenshots of the game itself. It featured a pre-rendered 3D Mario in a psuedo-3D room, definitely inspired by Mario 64's design but using a new model for Mario, from what I could tell. Also in that page was the proper launch commands to get the game to run, which I was able to do. It was a simple whack-a-mole type of game, nothing too crazy, but it was a bit more fun than the typical browser games you'd see in 1997.

I noticed soon that someone who I presume is within the Flashpoint team made an article on the Mario Wiki for Mario Net Quest, finally giving the game some proper online documentation after 26 years. One of the sources used was an old post I missed on an old computer-oriented forum, someone who had played the game in March 1997 - the only response to that forum post was "You are a waste". Some things never change. Feeling that there was still some more info to find out there, I figured out how to use Google's book search and proceeded to find a full-page breakdown of the game in the 1999 book "Interactive design 1 : The international collection of new media design" (page 167), which also solved the mystery of who actually made the game: "C3 Incorporated", an early Internet design and branding company, which was later merged into the company FutureBrand.

Mario Net Quest must have been one of the first major promotional browser games ever made, and if themushroomkingdom.net didn't randomly stash away a ripped copy of the game in a secret riddle-accessed webpage 20 years ago, kept in eternal digital amber, it seems like it would've been completely lost to time. There's still some interesting mysteries behind the development and disappearance of this game, but I'm happy to have uncovered it all and brought it back to light. I wonder if anyone out there still has one of the Mario hats given away as a prize in this contest - or if it actually inspired anyone to buy an IBM AS/400.

Newly created wiki page for the game: https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Net_Quest

Flashpoint submission page for Mario Net Quest (has the game's .DCR file and the settings needed to run it in Flashpoint Core): https://fpfss.unstable.life/web/submission/62866