Dr. Mario Review (Game Boy, 1990)

To be completely honest I’m not entirely sure why Dr. Mario exists. Nintendo already had a huge puzzle title on the Game Boy and Nintendo. Why would they need another one? We would later discover that Nintendo had a real penchant for puzzle games. This is especially true when it came to the Game Boy with other hits like Yoshi and Yoshi’s Cookie, but I digress. Let’s get back to Dr. Mario. This game was released in tandem on the Game Boy and NES. Today we’ll be talking about the handheld iteration. I loved Dr. Mario on the NES, but how does the Game Boy version hold up? Pretty well actually. Let’s take a look.

Dr. Mario is a side view falling block puzzle game with some unique twists. Playing into the medical motif the action takes place inside a large medicine bottle. It is here that you’ll find several cute over the top viruses. Instead of simply eliminating all blocks your goal is to destroy these bugs. These are conveniently colored the same as your falling blocks. When you line up four of them either horizontally or vertically all of these are eliminated from play. Blocks and viruses alike. When you destroy each of the little guys the level is complete and you move on to the next.

The difficulty curve is basically determined by how many viruses are in any given stage. The later ones are almost completely filled with them giving you very little room for error. This mechanic actually changes gameplay in some fundamental ways. In Dr. Mario it’s often smart to ‘waste’ blocks if none of them match the viruses on-screen. Dropping them to the ground doesn’t really matter because destroying these isn’t your goal. It’s a neat twist and because of it I found myself using different strategies than in other puzzle titles. The blocks themselves are actually pills with two nodes. There are no other shapes of blocks. Each node can, and often is, a separate color. These can be rotated to be tall or flat and the nodes do not separate unless one of them is eliminated.

These changes are enough to elevate Dr. Mario to heights beyond just being a Tetris clone. Back when it first released I didn’t really get the need for so many puzzle games, but now I can appreciate the nuances. It’s also nice that virus placement is at random. The difficulty only determines how many of the little buggers are going to be in play. This means that every time you play you’re going to be seeing a different stage arrangement. It adds to the replay value beyond simply not knowing what kind of block is going to come next. That too is randomized here which further adds to Dr. Mario being a dynamic experience each time you play.

When it comes down to it though Dr. Mario is just more leisurely to play than its contemporaries. The fact that you have a specific goal and can control the speed is really nice. Tetris is more based on reflexes than anything while Dr. Mario leans more toward careful planning. In this sense I’d be inclined to say Dr. Mario is more of a true puzzle game than Tetris. That could be either a good or a bad thing depending on what you’re looking for. The experience is highly customizable so you can pretty much play Dr. Mario as frantic or leisurely as you want. That’s one of the reasons I actually prefer this one.

One concern I had going in was that Dr. Mario would be more difficult to play on the Game Boy due to its black and white screen. Color is, after all, an important part of gameplay in the NES edition. Nintendo was able to circumvent this limitation pretty well. There are three different colors of blocks here. You have black, white, and dithered. I’m just thankful they didn’t try to use just plain gray because that would have made this experience a nightmare. The pill capsules are very easy to tell apart even without a backlit screen. Admittedly the limited color scheme is not as compelling as it was on the NES. I can forgive this considering what the developers were working with.

As I touched on earlier the experience here allows for quite a bit of customization. That’s one of Dr. Mario’s biggest strengths. From the start game screen you can change quite a few different settings. The first of these is the virus level. This determines how many of these little buggers you’ll be dealing with. You can move this scale from zero to twenty with the former having just a few and the latter featuring a screen nearly filled to the brim with viruses. On the highest setting there’s very little room for error because you have almost no room to work with. Personally I love the fact that I can start off at any ‘level’ I choose rather than starting from scratch each time.

You have other options to choose from as well. There are three different settings for speed. Those who want to have a more leisurely time can go with low. This was my preferred way to play because it makes Dr. Mario so much more methodical from a gameplay perspective. Medium is going to be the sweet spot for most players. Fast is for the Tetris fans out there. Unfortunately I didn’t really enjoy it. It’s too much like the later levels in Tetris here. I like to play Dr. Mario in a more methodical way rather than having it be reflex based. What’s neat is you can also select which music you would like to play. There are only three options (with one of them being to turn audio off) but the other choices are downright classic.

Supposedly there’s also a multiplayer mode. Truth be told I haven’t had a chance to test it out. After all finding someone else with an original Game Boy and copy of the cartridge is a tall order. Disregarding this Dr. Mario is a bit light on content. That’s par for the course with these puzzle games though. Besides multiplayer there are no other modes of play. You have the aforementioned options to keep the experience fresh though. Plus, the game is highly replayable. Dr. Mario is best played in short bursts. The pick up and play nature of the game makes it perfect for the handheld format. While some other gameplay modes would have been nice, or even additional options, I think Dr. Mario is a perfectly fleshed out experience because of how dynamic gameplay is.

In terms of graphics it’s decent, but not amazing by any means. Dr. Mario lacks details and visual nuances from its console counterpart. This is just a concession that gamers had to make when moving to the Game Boy. I can’t confirm this but it feels like the play field within the medicine bottle is also a little smaller in scale. Like there’s less space to play in. The gray background (as opposed to the black one in the NES version) makes everything just a little more difficult to see. It was pretty common for developers to lighten their Game Boy games in this way but I would have preferred pure black. Regardless it’s pretty good looking for an 8-bit puzzler. The two song soundtrack is also really catchy and I liked both of the options.