Waxing Nostalgic are posts where I talk about my personal experiences with the NES games I had growing up. Dr. Mario is one of those, and one that I finished prior to taking up the challenge to beat every game for the NES for the sake of this blog. Rather than replay it and critically review the thing, I’ll just nostalgically ramble about it instead. I hope you enjoy!
There were a few cartridges in my childhood pile of NES games that I didn’t play much, collecting dust at the bottom of a drawer while the likes of Super Mario Bros 3 and Legend of Zelda stayed plugged in for days on end. We all had one or two games like that growing up, didn’t we? Tecmo Super Bowl was one, but only because I didn’t understand how American football was supposed to be played. Another was Dr. Mario.
Though neglect was my lead-in, I actually put a lot of time into Dr. Mario for a brief period. There was a stretch of time where I would get home from school, settle in with a glass of juice and pay a visit to the doctor’s. I’d chip away at Dr. Mario for half an hour (which was like 3 hours in kid time), then go off to watch cartoons, or draw a picture, or whatever. Was I just trying to get better at one of the few games I owned? Trying to see if it had an ending? Simply wanting to bop along to the Chill theme? I can’t remember the logic behind it now. Who knows how a child’s mind works?
Around this time I got a Game Boy, and Tetris opened my eyes to the truly addictive nature of puzzlers. Even now, I looove puzzle games; easily one of my top 3 favourite game genres. You have to keep me away from Puzzle League and Picross, because they’re my biggest gaming vices. Don’t even get me STARTED on puzzle platformers, oh my god. Captain Toad was pretty much the only use I had for a Wii U.
I wanted to illustrate two things with this: that A) I’m a mega fan of puzzlers, and B) I have a lot of experience with Dr. Mario in particular.
So now that you know the score, it’s time to confess my Nintendo sins.
I don’t like Dr. Mario. I’ve tried and I’ve tried over several decades, but damn dude, I really don’t.
Let me explain.
See, in most “falling block” puzzle games, unwanted pieces are an obstacle to tackle. Where you place an awkward block may make or break your current streak, in the long run. It’s an integral part of game design in this genre; a puzzle in an of itself for the player to solve and overcome.
In Dr. Mario, though? All you get are unwanted pieces. But instead of being a challenge for the player, you just plonk them down at the bottom of the screen, navigating the pills through an awkward wall of viruses (which takes tedious seconds of your time). And there’s a damn good chance you’ll have to do the very same thing with the next pill, and the next one…it often feels like a pharmacy inventory overstock simulator rather than a fun game about busting viruses. At slow speeds it’s a chore, and at higher speeds it becomes a bit too precise to be fun.
Hell, even pills that have a helpful half oftentimes come with a caveat. Place them horizontally and one half of the pill will, more often than not, overlap onto a virus of a mismatched colour in an unfortunate case of overhang. Place the pill vertically and, unless that placement 1) killed the virus and 2) had no other viruses beneath it, you’ve got some more overhang to slog through. Which will make even more overhang, in most cases. This is not a challenge. This is busywork.
I genuinely believe that if Dr. Mario was the exact same game in terms of gameplay, but missing Nintendo’s golden boy on the front cover, nobody would care about it. It would be viewed as a passable, if not subpar puzzle game by the masses. And they knew it, too. That’s why it wasn’t titled Dr. Buster (meh) or Pill Pushin’ (ooh) or License to Chill, PhD (do you need help titling your indie Dr Mario tribute game? contact me) instead. This game wouldn’t have sold on its own merits, so they slapped Mario’s face on it and called it a day. Damn those marketing geniuses over at Nintendo!
In its paper thin defense, word is that Dr. Mario really shines in two-player mode. But that begs the question: why wasn’t the one player mode simply the two player mode versus a CPU? Evil scientist Koopalings working in a lab to genetically modify killer viruses and throw ’em at Mario’s face is a sight many would pay to see. It’s not as if the puzzle genre hadn’t come up with the single player ‘versus’ format yet, either; Palamedes (also an 1990 NES puzzle game) featured it, and I’m sure that obscure game wasn’t the first to do so.
This mild disdain is a secret I’ve been harbouring for the better part of my life, so it feels kinda good to get it off my chest. Do you know how many times I had to grin and bear it when my friends all wanted to play that infernal online Dr. Mario Express game back in the Nintendo DS era? I just–
Wait hold on a second. I didn’t realize it until I was in the middle of typing that sentence, but I was actually playing a lot of two player Dr. Mario back then, and I still didn’t like it. So that whole yarn I was spinning about versus mode being better isn’t even true. It was still the same dull puzzler it always was! Ugh!!
Alright, I’m getting sidetracked here so let’s wrap this up. Dr. Mario. Don’t like it. Haven’t for nearly three decades of my life now, and I doubt I ever will. I could never put my finger on why it never clicked with me as a kid, so being able to articulate on the subject as a puzzle game loving adult feels quite good. Of the Nintendo developed NES games I’ve covered so far, the only ones I’d say I actively dislike are Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Urban Champion, and this one. More power to you if you enjoy it, though. I wish I did.
NESJunk 