Dr. Mario

"Doctors still make house calls, so long as they’re in video games"

There has never been a Mario game like it at the time. The star of the sensational Super Mario Bros. platform games, and Nintendo’s breakthrough Donkey Kong, Mario has been a golfer, a boxing referee, and even the starter in Nintendo’s Arkanoid clone Alleyway for the Gameboy. But puzzle game star, in a title that little needs his presence to work as a game? Such is Dr. Mario.

The threadbare plot is that Mario has been moonlighting as a doctor right at the time of a serious viral outbreak. He has a new mega-vitamin that he thinks could do the trick. While you could never build an RPG from this little gem, but for puzzle games this is high drama. Besides, the puzzle game that people play for plot and characterization is a rare thing, but there are a scant few out there that exist. This isn’t one of them, but that hardly matters.

So here’s how it goes. Viruses and vitamins are color coded in red, yellow and blue. Match up a combination of at least 4 of the same color in a row in the “bottle” playing field, and you eliminate them. The more viruses caught in the reaction, the more points you get. You can see little representatives of the viruses in a magnifying glass, and they’ll fall on their backs in pain when their kin die. Eliminate all of their brethren, and their leader vanishes. Get rid of all the little buggers, regardless of the number of vitamin parts, and you can advance to the next level. Do particularly well after a while, and you might be treated to a short intermission. If you block the bottle’s top, however, the game is over, and those viruses will laugh at you. Y’know, when even microorganisms are laughing at you, it’s just not good for your ego.

Like any really good puzzle game, it’s a simple concept which rewards clever application, especially in the two player mode. If you can create a chain reaction of two or more vitamin reactions, you’ll send vitamin parts to your opponent’s field. This could potentially help your opponent, but more often that not it’ll slow his progress. It’s in these same mechanics that Dr. Mario finds it’s greatest strength: it’s simple, yet challenging, and is great fun to boot.

The game controls intuitively. You can rotate the vitamins clockwise or counterclockwise through the A and B buttons, and at faster speeds and/or higher levels, the option can be a life saver. You can also opt to let the vitamin drop to it’s target at an accelerated rate by pressing down. At the start of the game, you can set the speed that vitamins drop, the level of difficulty (reflected by the number of viruses), and even the music from two choices: Chill and Fever.

Graphically, the viruses in the magnifying glass all have personality and flair, particularly the seemingly disco-dancing blue virus. Their actions under the magnifying glass are even reflected by their tiny counterparts in the bottle. Mario, meanwhile, is drawn well, but mostly is stationary. He’ll throw the vitamins, will shrug when you lose a round, and celebrates as you win. That’s it. Really, the game neither suffers nor benefits from his presence, except probably to generate sales from the fact that he’s in it.

Sound-wise, there’s some simple, unobtrusive bloops and bleeps, and a couple cute ditties that warn your opponent in the two player game he’s about to get some vitamin bits dumped on his play field. The viruses curse in what sounds like a language made of white noise, and will laugh in a rapid, high pitched garble as well. The music, however, is stellar. Chill is a nice tune, and is kind of what you’d expect from Mario coming to the world of puzzle games. Fever, however, is downright funky, and it’s real fun music to play this game to. Oddly, these two titles are switched around with regards to which song they represent in the Gameboy version. The reasoning behind that particular move I can only guess at.

Nintendo’s first “original” puzzle game was every bit as much a smash as their version of Tetris, and would lead to console puzzle games including Yoshi’s Cookie, Wario’s Woods, and others, all of varying success. It most recently appeared on the N64 in its last days with improved graphics and four player gameplay. To this day it’s one of Nintendo’s best puzzle game achievements, and it might not have gotten as much attention as it did if it wasn’t for a certain plumber-turned-pharmacist

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/28/02, Updated 09/28/02