After Mario captivated the world with his platforming adventures in Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3, the portly plumber started to branch out a bit, exploring new genres to show the world he could do more than just jump on turtles. Putting on a lab coat and head mirror, Mario showed that he wasn’t just capable of saving the Mushroom Kingdom from Bowser. As Dr. Mario, he could also save lives, busting viruses with his special Megavitamins in a new type of block-dropping puzzle game.

Dr. Mario is a color-matching puzzle game where your goal is to clear the pill bottle playing field of the three different types of colored viruses positioned around inside it. Upon picking which level you wish to start on and how fast you want the game to go, the pill bottle will be filled up with a certain amount of viruses you need to clear to move on to the next stage. To clear the viruses, you must match one with at least three objects of the same color horizontally or vertically, your means to do so dropping in from above automatically in the form of pills made up of two halves that count towards that goal. These pills can be split in any of the possible combinations of the game’s three colors, those being red, blue, and yellow, meaning that some pills will drop in entirely one color and others will be split between two different colors. By placing them horizontally or vertically on top of a virus, the bottom of the bottle, or on a previously placed pill part, the pill locks into place, the game determining whether or not you made a match before dropping in the next one. If you manage to clear one part of a pill but not the other half, the piece will break off and can free fall to the next solid object it can rest on.

Guiding the falling pills to the appropriately colored viruses in the playfield comes pretty naturally, and each level of Dr. Mario will place out the viruses differently so that even though you’re doing the same task across all of the game’s stages, the challenge can shift based on where the game put them. The split color pills are perhaps the main source of the game’s difficulty, as they require the player to think quickly about where to place a pill even though it might end up blocking the area around a virus that doesn’t match the pill’s color. If the player fills the pill bottle to the top, they lose and their current run of Dr. Mario will come to a close, although the game does let the player pick up from any stage up to the twentieth. After the twentieth stage, there are only four more recognized stages before the game loops on Level 24, but losing on most levels just means your score will be cut off and reset for your next run.

Dr. Mario offers the player two choices of how to go about gauging their progress, either letting them focus on the virus clearing process through defined levels or letting them see how high they can get the score while doing the virus busting. Difficulty increases at a proper pace to let a player become accustomed to the task and then grow in skill to handle with the increasingly cramped pill bottles of later levels, but the endgame virus placement can seem a touch lazy. Once you’re in the twenties for the hardest stages the game has to offer, most of the difficulty there comes from having to be able to anticipate how to place the first few pills and losing if you didn’t predict correctly, as the viruses are almost packed to the very top of the screen. You can only see the current pill you’re rotating and placing as well as the upcoming one, but the game does deliver them in a pattern that is guaranteed to beat the level if played perfectly, and if you can clear out those top viruses, you can start accommodating mistakes or placing pills with a little less concern that you might immediately doom yourself. No matter what you set your speed to at the start though, levels do speed up as the virus count dwindles, so having an almost empty screen can still become an issue if you get too careless.

For most of the game’s levels, Dr. Mario can be a relaxing bit of fun with some reaction based pill placement while a peppy tune backs the action. After every fifth level the game even congratulates you for making it that far, the viruses hanging out in a tree as an odd nonsense object or character moves across the sky. It’s a nice little breather, one that becomes more appreciated as the viruses increase in quantity over play. There’s no true end or final big congratulations screen due to the looping, but the gameplay feels like it fits its small stage limit well. Any further would have really stretched the limits of what just three colors of viruses could do, and there is already a small issue with how the game executes that. After clearing all of a certain colored virus from a stage, the same colored virus dancing on the left of the screen pops, signifying you are done with that color… but that doesn’t change the type of pills Dr. Mario throws into his pill bottle. Other puzzle games based on clearing colors will often stop giving you a color once its entirely gone from the playfield in order to speed up play and move you on to the next stage, but Dr. Mario is set in his ways, tossing in pointless pills that clutter the field and can turn your last few virus clears into a waiting game. This does make late game levels where screen real estate is at a premium more challenging, but the earlier levels aren’t quite as snappy as they should be because you have to drop useless pills to the side as you wait for what you actually need.

Dr. Mario isn’t solely a single player experience. In two-player mode, both players get their own pill bottle, able to customize which difficulty level they play on and how fast their pills drop down automatically. This level of asynchronicity is perfect for puzzle games, allowing players of different skill levels to still compete in a multiplayer challenge, and since Dr. Mario multiplayer is all about clearing the bottle before the other player can while not letting your bottle get filled to the top, players can feel out a sweet spot for the level of challenge they need to be on to ensure an even match. It isn’t just a race to clear all your viruses first though, as clearing viruses can cause pill halves to drop down into your opponent’s playfield, potentially sabotaging whatever matches they were trying to set up. Even if you and another player choose the same level and speed, the more skillful player is bound to come out on top due to their ability to match fast and deal with the unexpected results of their opponent’s play. The multiplayer mode is set up as a best of five with neither player’s level or speed advancing, so there is room for a comeback even if a player gets a round or two over you.

THE VERDICT: Dr. Mario’s design for a color matching puzzle game makes it an immediately accessible title that is easy to get involved in, easy to adjust to your skill level, and easy to come back to. The virus clearing goal makes it easy to gauge your progress as the play gradually grows more challenging, although the difficulty in the final stages relies on some initial unknown factors. With a multiplayer mode that you can adjust easily to make a more even match between players, Dr. Mario ensures that, while you might not be able to sink your teeth into its simple design for a long haul, it can still be enjoyed whenever you are hankering for a check-up with the doctor.

And so, I give Dr. Mario for the Nintendo Entertainment System…

A GREAT rating. As long as a block-dropping puzzle game can nail its core design, it can keep a player going on just the strength of that central mechanic. The pill-dropping color-matching of Dr. Mario assures its quality with virus placement that tests the player’s ability to place pills intelligently and requiring them to pull themselves out of the hole with unexpected pieces that can’t fit into an immediate plan for the layout before them. The shift between the satisfying elimination of one of the required viruses and accommodating moments where pills have no absolutely safe place to rest allows Dr. Mario to continuously engage the player’s mind and reflexes until the bottle is nearly empty.

The strength of the core design and a nice multiplayer supplement make the original Dr. Mario excellent even though it will be outdone by its sequels on other systems just by way of them having more content. The original NES title’s limited design is what kept it from completely succeeding, with its final levels coming too soon and not having the most exciting designs since they’re essentially just nearly full bottles. Introducing new colors, bigger playfields, or just some other way to engage the pill and virus formula could have kept it going longer without getting stale, but the game as it exists provides a safe breaking off point with its final “true” level that doesn’t ask the player for an overly long engagement that could wear down the formula’s effectiveness.

While it could be a heartier experience, Dr. Mario still provides a healthy amount of puzzling fun to please most of its players.