[Review] Dr. Mario

REVIEW # 00000000 00010010

Dr. Mario is coming, and he’s got the cure!

So it seems that our hero Mario worked hard during his days as a student, hard enough to graduate in medicine. Dr. Mario is one of the games I owned for my NES and I think the only game my mother  played better than me. After his adventures in the Mushrooms Kingdom, Mario hung up the wrench and the plunger and dressed the part of the doctor he never had the chance to be (too busy to try to save a trilion times the stupid Princess Peach) and tries to avoid the humanity to fall prey to a viruses trio.

Only Mario has the vaccine: pills of the lenght of an arm that he throws with surgical precision and eagle-eye skill into a galss flask where the viruses are growing and growing.

P. S. As promised, I would like to thank The Shameful Narcissist who (following the instructions of my previous post) was the fastest to reply to my too easy contest. I’d like to mention also Lightningnightnova and Nick the Gent for their try to be the firsts to comment and obviously all my readers. Thanks guys!

My heart says…

I’ve always thought my mom brought this game especially for her amusement; she always liked games like this or Tetris. But even if Dr. Mario is not in my top-3 I have to admit is an important piece of gaming history and one of the first (if not the first) title in which Mario is not crushing Goombas, kicking Koopa Troopa or hitting bricks just to collect money and points.

The only question now is: if Mario has a PhD why works as a plumber???

Splash screen

Accompanied by a silly simphony (sorry, I didn’t mean to break any copyright…) the main menu is essential and very easy to handle and we can only choose between a 1-player or 2-players game.

In the the second menu that appears after selecting the game mode, we can choose some additional options, like the starting level (1 to 20), the game speed and most important: THE GAME MUSIC!

Graphics

Nintendo has always been a key figure concerning the graphics. So put together their limitless skill in giving appeal to their products, the power of a console such as NES and the shiny palette that can be seen in during the game and you can understand the reason of this 10/10.

Narrative

There’s nothing to say about the plot. Even if I’m curious to know where Mario got his PhD…

Gameplay

Dr. Mario is a very simple game. The goal is to defeat all the viruses in the flask: to do so Mario has 6 different vitamin pills, each one divided in two parts that can be colored in different ways. Every color (blue, red and yellow) kills the corresponding virus.

This seems very easy but when the speed starts to increase it’s not a joke to impile three different capsules to kill the bad guys, even because there is always the possibility (and this is the hard part of the game) that a piece of a pill lands onto the wrong virus, making impossible to kill it, unless you don’t remove it using other pills that can cause the same problems. So, as it is for Tetris, you have to plan a bit of strategy before throwing vitamins randomly.

In Dr. Mario there are 21 starting levels, but you can go up to higher levels until the flask is so full that the game doesn’t change anymore: same amount of viruses and same speed, you will only race for the highest score.

The game offers also the 2-players game option with split screen.

Sound

There’s no need for words. Just relax and play the two videos below. Chill and Fever are two of the most perfect musics ever made not only for an 8-bit console game, but for any other kind of game in all history. Beside Chill and Fever, all of you guys who played Dr. Mario will surely remember also the opening theme. And of you don’t remember it is just because the two game musics are too famous that obscured every other music played in the game.

Longevity

This game is made to have a great replayability, since it’s almost impossible to play two times the same game. Obviously as in Tetris, which is the model for Dr. Mario, is possible you can gat bored after hours and hours to throw vitamins, but the problem won’t definitely be the longevity.

Final score 89/100

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Year: 1990

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre: Puzzle

Game Mode: Single Player, Double Player

Original Platform: NES

From the same developers/publishers:

• Donkey Kong (1981)
• Duck Hunt (1984)
• Super Mario Bros. (1985) e seguiti
• Metroid (1986) e seguiti

Inspired to:

• Mario Bros (1983)

If you liked it you can also try:

• Tetris (1989)

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