I remember the surfing for mushrooms part but that's about it.
I have however played and beaten Mario is Missing for both SNES and PC. I actually liked that game. I can't remember if the SNES version had it since I played it more for PC but it had these fun little Newspaper stories every now and then about the penguins that got chased out of Anartica by Bowser who was using hairdryers to melt it and well anyway the penguins were trying to find a place to live elsewhere and kept on popping out of people's fridges.
I dunno, I thought it was cute, and the game itself was both educational and even though the bosses and any other forms of actual gameplay were insanely easy it was a pretty fun game. I think the only people who rip on it were those who were expecting a Luigi platformer or something.
Jam it back in, in the dark.