RetroMo: Mario's Handheld History
Did you know that Mario starred in eight Game Boy and GBC games? Rediscover your roots inside...
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Dr. Mario
The second Mario game for the Game Boy was a little puzzle game that launched on the NES at the same time. The concept looked similar to
Tetris, so many players who enjoyed that gave it a try. The game did have a story to it: Mario after all his years of rescuing princesses had taken up medicinal research in the viral lab at Mushroom Kingdom Hospital. I do hope he washed his hands after all that plumbing work.
Dr. Mario plays rather differently than Tetris, though. Instead of matching up shapes, gamers match up types of pills to types of bacteria. A row of four of the same type would remove the randomly-placed bacteria from play. The play area is 8 blocks wide by 15 blocks tall, so theres not that much room for error. There are 24 levels of increasing difficulty, with the pills coming in faster and more bacteria to clear the farther you progress.
Just like
Tetris too there was a link cable versus game, where you and your opponent would do their best to chain bacterial eliminations into a combo which would cause the bacteria to flee to your opponents bottle, much to their dismay. A winner would be declared after 3 rounds. Overall Dr. Mario was a great addition to anyone's collection of mobile puzzles. It's what car journeys were invented for.
Welcome to Modojo, 
Written by Philip Jones on Thursday, August 10, 2006
posted September 26, 2006