Dr. Mario

"Nintendo's answer to the Tetris clone craze."

After Tetris was released on the Nintendo GameBoy in 1989, there was a huge rush of object-dropping puzzle games to hit the market, hoping to sell on the success of Tetris. There were tons of horrible games that failed as soon as they popped out, some nice attempts that didn't quite catch on (such as Yoshi for NES in 1991), and some really great games that could even rival Tetris as the greatest puzzle game of all time, like Puyo Puyo on the Famicom in 1993.

Sadly enough, one of the bad-to-mediocre games caught on because it had a popular, trusted character plastered on the front. This game was Dr. Mario.

Now, you're probably thinking that Dr. Mario can't be a bad game -- so many people love it! Well, a lot of people love the novelty of Dr. Mario. It had a quirky theme -- instead of just dropping blocks to clear things for no reason, now you were tossing pills into a jar to defeat some viral infection. Not only that, but the game featured catchy music, cute graphics, and everyone's favorite NES hero, Mario, now in white doctor attire and a stethoscope strapped to his face.

The premise of Dr. Mario is simple -- pills of two colors drop from the top of the screen. You can rotate them so the colors align horizontally or vertically, and in whichever order you need them. You need to line up four or more matching colors in a row; these can consist of pill-halves or virus creatures. When this happens, the set will disappear. Clear all of the germs from the play field and you've completed the stage.

It sounds like a great idea, but the gameplay wasn't so simple and had many flaws. These creatures that you had to defeat were randomly located all over the play area. When you set a pill down, the other half didn't break off if it was over an open space, it would just stick out of the side. You could place another sticking out of that same side, and then again, and create a stair-step like pattern. When you finally did clear a half of a pill, that entire mass would break off and start to fall. This could be used to create a chain effect; however, because of the nature of the pills, this was near impossible to perform well. You'd either have to come across the exact same combination of pill colors four times without having to stack anything else on or around your chain setup, or you'd have to stack with so many things sticking out of the sides that the falling garbage would be more detrimental to your game than the chain you created. I suppose if you were extremely lucky and got only the most perfect pills to drop, you could create a perfect chain, but I can't see this ever happening in a real game of Dr. Mario.

Another flaw was the design of the stages to clear. The viruses appear randomly in space, right? Well, your goal is to line up four colors horizontally or vertically to clear them. This means you can line up your pills to the left or right of the viruses, or maybe above or below them -- whichever you need, correct? Wrong. Because there is open space everywhere, the pill can't rest there. You can only really rest your pill on top of a virus, especially in the earlier stages where there are not many enemies to defeat. After completing many, many stages of just stacking pills upward until the viruses clear, not bothering with chains or strategy since there isn't much on the screen yet, you will finally get to where there are so many viruses that you can stack a pill and it will be beside or under a virus. Sounds like the strategy could pick up, right? Wrong again. Because of the other viruses, stacking to the sides means stacking on
top of another virus. This means you're blocking the way to clearing that virus -- and with the way they are set up, probably the only way. So you're sacrificing that virus until you clear the one you're working on. If you are inhumanly lucky, you will be able to find the perfect pill matches so that all three viruses to the left or right of the one you're trying to destroy will have the alternate color matching the virus below. Chances are this isn't going to happen, and you're just going to be stacking upward on these mismatched colors to clear them so you can again stack upward on top of the blocked virus to defeat it.

No matter what you do, which difficulty the game is on, the game consists of only one type of gameplay: stacking upward on a few viruses until they clear, then switching to other viruses, maybe stacking upward on junk instead of viruses, because all the junk from your old stacks fell down. There is very little strategy involved -- just keep the spare side of the pill tipped to the side where it won't fall on a virus of an opposing color. And stack up.

Outside of the poorly-planned gameplay, Dr. Mario does have a few good points. The graphics and sound are great for an NES game. The game is very cute and has an appealing theme -- though it may not exactly feel like a game about a Doctor -- it does create a good atmosphere, especially when combined with the quirky and catchy sounds. This is where Dr. Mario really shines, and what saves it from getting a review of higher than a 1. The music on Dr. Mario is entertaining, energetic, and memorable. It also is some of the best music you will hear out of the NES. Since puzzle games are filled with repetitive gameplay and not a lot of action and things, they need good music that is fun, but also won't get annoying. Dr. Mario's music fills this well, and the sound effects fit right along with the music. The sound effect for clearing a set of matching colors is not only satisfying, but it blends in with the style given by the music and graphics.

Music and graphics aren't what make or break a game, though -- especially a puzzle game. The main point of any game is the gameplay, and Dr. Mario is one of the worst games as far as gameplay goes. The game engine was designed with the idea that "Falling blocks are cool, like Tetris" in mind rather than "How can we create a fun, brain-exercising puzzle experience?"

If you haven't played Dr. Mario, go play it. The graphics and sound are reason enough to give it a look. But don't waste time and money finding and buying a working copy of this game, and don't even bother thinking about buying one of the many remakes that have spawned from this puzzle disaster.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/21/06