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Category: Games
Sub-Category: Puzzle
Platform: Nintenod NAS/Game Boy/SNES/Game Boy Advance, Arcade
License: Proprietary
Interface: GUI
Wikipedia: Dr. Mario
First release: 1990
Dr. Mario (Japanese: ドクターマリオ) – a puzzle video game developed by Nintendo and released in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Game Boy.
The game’s soundtrack was composed by Hirokazu Tanaka. A spin-off of the game, titled Dr. Luigi, was released for the Wii U in 2013 as part of the Year of Luigi.
Dr. Mario features a multiplayer mode for two players, where players compete against each other on separate boards. In this mode, the player’s task is to clear their board of viruses before their opponent does. The first player to win three rounds wins.
Dr. Mario is a logic puzzle similar to Tetris in terms of game mechanics. The player’s task is to arrange two-colored pills thrown by Mario into a bottle, which is the game board. The falling pill can be moved left and right and rotated. Viruses are placed on the board, which come in three varieties differing in color: blue, red and yellow. Arranging four or more halves of pills and viruses of the same color in a horizontal or vertical line removes them from the board. After clearing the bottle of all viruses in this way, the player moves on to the next level, each one containing more viruses. The game ends in failure when the pills fill the bottle in such a way that its neck is blocked, preventing further pills from being thrown in.
At the beginning of the game, the player can choose the difficulty level they want to start with, the level of the pills’ fall, and one of two background musics or turn it off. Dr. Mario has 21 difficulty levels (from 0 to 20) differing in the number of viruses. After passing the twentieth level, the number of viruses stops increasing, and the player can continue playing to gain a higher score. Points in the game are awarded only for eliminating viruses, and their number is affected by the level of speed of the pills falling. There are three of these levels, the faster the more points received for the virus.
