Dr. Mario is an arcade-style puzzle game published in various versions by Nintendo on the Famicom, NES, Playchoice-10 , Vs. Unisystem and Dualsystem , Game Boy, Super Famicom, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance, Famicom Mini, the Japanese Game Cube, and as a standalone arcade console. (The Super Famicom version of the game was available for dowload on that console's modem add-on Satellaview.) The game's music was composed by Hirokazu 'Hip' Tanaka.

A puzzle game similar to Tetris, Dr. Mario features the much-franchised Nintendo character Mario dropping two-sided vitamins into an eight-block-by-16-block playfield populated by viruses of three colors. (The playfield in the Game Boy version instead measures eight blocks by 15 blocks.) The human player rotates and positions these pills on the viruses and other vitamins, attempting to eliminate the viruses by lining up four or more adjacent viruses or vitamin halves of the same color in a row or column. A player completes a level by eliminating all viruses. After completing a level (in single-player mode), a player moves to the next of the game's 25 levels (whose starting virus counts range from four at level zero to 84 at levels 21 and higher).

Features vary among games, but all include a two-player mode, in which each player is assigned a playfield with an identical virus distribution and competes to eliminate his viruses before his opponent does. If a player clears two or more groups of viruses and pills with the same vitamin (whether by clearing them simultaneously or with a "chain reaction"), two to four unconnected pill halves (depending on the number of cleared groups) of the colors of the groups fall into his opponent's playfield.

covers Dr. Mario, but as of 2004, Nintendo has not enforced it against amateur software developers.

Release history

• Dr. Mario (Famicom) 27 July 1990
• Dr. Mario (NES) October 1990
• Dr. Mario (Game Boy) 1 December 1990
• Tetris & Dr. Mario (Super Famicom, Super NES) December 1994 Introduced computer opponents of three difficulty levels.
• Dr. Mario (Super Famicom, Super NES) 1 June 1998
• Dr. Mario 64 (Nintendo 64) 9 April 2001 Included story mode; multiplayer mode supports up to four human or CPU competitors; Flash Mode (players must eliminate flashing viruses); Score Attack Mode (a point-scoring time trial). Priced as a budget game because it was introduced late in the Nintendo 64's cycle. Unlockable features include Super Hard Mode and the characters Metal Mario and Vampire Wario.
• Dr. Mario (Famicom Mini, Game Boy Advance) 21 May 2004 (Japan), 25 October 2004 (North America), 7 January 2005 (Europe) A re-release of the original NES game; part of the Classic NES Series.
• Nintendo Puzzle Collection (Game Cube - Japanese version) 7 February 2003 Slated for a 25 November 2005 release in Europe, this title also includes Yoshi's Cookie and Panel de Pon (also released as Tetris Attack).

Dr. Mario is also an unlockable character in the Game Cube title Super Smash Bros. Melee.

See Also

• Dr. Wario

External links

• Official description - Dr. Mario (Game Boy), Nintendo.
• Official description - Dr. Mario 64, Ibid.
• Official description - Dr. Mario (Game Boy Advance), Ibid.
• Dr. Mario Manual Write-Up, Starsky.