Dr. Mario

So, The Avengers is worth all the hype the five films built up. Super fun, love Joss Whedon, great start to Summer '12. Glad that Brave looks fun, Prometheus looks phenomenal, and The Dark Knight Rises will obviously be fantastic.

On the drawing side of things, I'm slowly getting my sketches to be presentable. Helps that I'm running through Avatar: The Last Airbender again so I can appreciate The Legend of Korra (and move beyond the two episodes I've seen, which were good) and have more inspiration to actually draw stuff. Nothing like American/Korean animation, right? That reminds me: Nintendo needs to get on announcing Golden Sun: Mourning Moon for 3DS already. I needs me a new old-fashioned RPG!

Now for one of my favorite puzzle series:

Heh, medical humor.

Dr. Mario is one of those puzzle games that has a lot to do with the success of nigh-perfect game Tetris. Oh, who am I kidding - every falling puzzle game owes its existence to Tetris. But I digress.

This Mario spin off is indeed a puzzler in which, as Dr. Mario, you aim to clear the playing field of viruses using capsules. There are three colors -red (Fever), yellow (Weird) and blue (Chill)- that are spread randomly that dissipate when four colors in a row, horizontally or vertically, are placed together, in which case gravity will bring the remaining pills towards the bottom of the field. Capsules come in two, for a combination of six variants, and the remaining sections can fall to create chains and extra points (or get thrown to an opponent in a multiplayer game). Game ends when the viruses are all cleared or the falling capsules have no room to fall.

Dr. Mario 64 has so much variety, it even has a Story Mode.
Yeah, I thought so too.

Simple enough to play, but I find most gravity-based puzzlers addicting as a time-sink. They usually get to the point where the Tetris effect will linger in my head for a good week or two.

Look it up!

Not really much to say about the game other than I enjoy it and that the soundtrack rocks. I know these games aren't everyone's cup of tea, but I can respect that. The music is catchy, as Fever and Chill are as infectious to me as Type A and Type B are to most every gamer in the world.

I'd imagine those giant capsules hurt.

To drag this out a bit via a rant of sorts, Dr. Mario was an alternate for Mario players in Super Smash Bros. Melee. He was slower on the ground but faster in the air and more powerful, using his Megavitamins instead of regular fireballs and an awesome electric Smash instead of Mario's spontaneous-combustion. He was interesting to play as, though the clones are an interesting subject in the 'serious' fandom of Smash, but that's a completely different conversation. All I'll say is I enjoyed his inclusion, even if the option for such clones should be an alternate variant, similar to Samus/Zero-Suit and Zelda/Shiek for such decisions, but what do I know? Bring on Smash 4, Sakurai! I'd love to enter the fray as a Doctor again.

This being a series overview, I really can't recommend any specific version of the game, for they're basically identical or with very minor differences. I do enjoy the basic game, as I have it for Wii as WiiWare, though my family and I rather enjoyed Dr. Mario 64 immensely, with its four person multiplayer setting the stage for puzzle-minded peoples. Not easy to find these days, but any version will do really.

Who'd've thunk: Princess Toadstool is better at Dr. Mario than Dr. Mario!

No ranking! It's Dr. Mario: you really have to decide for yourself if it's your thing, for my own opinions can only do so much. Tetris has more variety overall in more forms, but I'll not compare similar-yet-different puzzle games, thank you. Sometimes I'm in a Tetris moood, othertimes the perscription's for Dr. Mario. I'm so sorry...

While I could rank each version of the series, they're BASICALLY the same exact game with varying game modes. That affects prices, availability and overall value of the title, which then determines the ultimate satisfaction of the game in question. So while I'm technically not doing a good job at ranking this per se, if you care enough you already have an opinion on the core game itself and you don't need some random person's opinion on the Internet to help you decide this. You instead came for the ramblings centered roughly around the series, in which case: congratulations! You'd be the first, I'm certain.

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For the record, I do have the Tetris effect right now. It's also both from Tetris and Dr. Mario.

Suffice it to say, confusion ensues in my head.