Dr. Mario is a delightful puzzle game to which I was reintroduced thanks Ultimate NES Remix. I rented it once as a kid, but never owned it, so I had completely forgotten about it. Luckily, I had grabbed a cart in a lot off craigslist this year, so I had a copy sitting at the house that I started to play once I had finished up with the genre bending remix.
Dr. Mario is, as I mentioned earlier, a puzzle game that is probably most similar to games in the Puyo Puyo (probably best known in the U.S. for its Genesis version titled Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine) franchise, although Dr. Mario came first. My puzzle game history isn't great, but I know that Tetris is obviously before Dr. Mario, but Dr. Mario definitely takes a different approach from Tetris in that rather than setting up lines of blocks of different shapes, Dr. Mario has you dropping different colored pieces on different colored viruses, and the viruses only disappear once you have four of the same color in a row. Dr. Mario is definitely a bit more basic than Puyo Puyo, in that you can't do some of the crazy things like snapping pieces in half or clearing colors by having shapes other than straight lines, and setting up multiple clears of pieces in one turn results in fairly pedestrian drops on your opponent, and nothing for clearing them in single player mode.
The gameplay is pretty simple to both learn and master, and the primary challenge comes from increasing levels, which increases the number of viruses on the screen. By the end of the game (there's no technical end, as far as I could tell, but the game only lets you manually increase the difficulty to 20, with increased difficulties coming by consecutively beating levels from 20 and up) pretty much the entire screen, save for 3 or 4 rows at the top, will be completely filled with viruses. You can also change speeds from low to medium to high, increasing the challenge of managing your new pieces while also whittling away at the viruses.
The single player mode is fun at first, but definitely grows dull after a while. The challenge of the game only grows marginally, and then basically becomes impossible after level 20 without a very favorable setup of pieces at the end (I beat level 21, but the board was just too packed after that, so I'm counting this one as beaten, especially since level 20 is the highest level you can select). The single player also lacks part of the challenge of the game, which is attempting to chain together multiple clears on one play to dump new and unwanted pieces on your opponent. This is the big gap between Dr. Mario and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, in which you are always playing against an increasingly difficult AI who is constantly trying to dump pieces on you, which means you have to play very skillfully and swiftly to prevent the onslaught. The other improvement which the Genesis game has over Dr. Mario is that the speed gradually increases at a very fast rate in the Genesis game, which means that you really have to win quickly, increasing the challenge of the game.
But the two player mode of Dr. Mario is where the game really shines. My wife and I spent several happy evenings together playing the game against each other for hours, and it never really got dull. Facing off against each other is made fun by the ability to customize difficulties for each player, making it so that you can still have fun against people of different skills, and the gameplay itself is ratcheted up significantly due to the absolutely crushing disappointment of hearing the chime that your opponent has just made a multiple clear, and the sight of new pieces dropping on exactly the wrong spot of your board! My wife isn't a big gamer, but she now attests that Dr. Mario is now her favorite retro game, and even spent some time playing around with the challenges on Ultimate NES Remix, which we similarly love. I'll definitely be on the lookout for other games in the series to be able to play together, and that's what makes Dr. Mario such an exemplary experience, the competition you get to enjoy with other people. Nintendo has always been really good at this, and Dr. Mario is just another great example.
The music has two tracks, one of which is iconic and fantastic, and the other which is super weird. No matter how many times it looks, though, I still love to hear "Fever" playing in the game, and it adds nicely to the game.
The controls are excellent, and you'll only be beating yourself (or your opponent will), not be beaten by bad controls.
The graphics are very simple but appealing. The board is colorful, and the aim of the game is made really clear by the animations.
Dr. Mario is a must own for NES owners who enjoy playing games with friends. This one is a tremendous multiplayer experience, and grabbing a copy in a random lot resulted in a really fun week for myself and my wife, and I guarantee that we'll circle back around to play a few rounds here and there regularly. I'll give it a 9.4/10.
Up next for the home console addition is a game that I routinely got trashed in as a kid, and I'm happy to report that I'm closer to beating it than I ever thought possible! Now I just need to get past a few of the toughest battles in video game history!
-TRO
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