BS Dr. Mario

Dr. Mario is a falling block tile-matching video game. Mario assumes the role of a doctor, tossing two-colored medical capsules into a medicine bottle representing the playing field. This area is populated by viruses of three colors – red, yellow, and blue – which stay in their starting positions until removed.

In a style similar to Tetris, the player manipulates each capsule as it vertically falls, able to move it left or right and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise. When matching colors of capsule halves and viruses touch sequentially 4-in-a-row, they disappear. Any remaining half or whole capsules which are not supported will fall to the bottom of the playing field or until hitting another supported object, and any new 4-in-a-row alignments also disappear. The main objective is to eliminate all viruses from the playing field, finishing each level.

Dr. Mario was produced by Gunpei Yokoi, creator of the Game Boy and Game & Watch handheld systems. Takahiro Harada, who would later produce Wario Land: Shake It!, was its programmer. Its music was composed by Hirokazu Tanaka, and has been re-used and arranged such as in the Super Smash Bros. series.

Dr. Mario spawned several remakes and ports that were released on various Nintendo consoles. The original version's multiplayer portion was ported to two Nintendo arcade systems: the Nintendo VS. System (as Vs.

Dr. Mario received generally positive reviews, although some parents were critical of the premise of medicine in a children's game. The Game Boy version received positive reviews from Joystick and Zero magazines, the latter comparing it favorably with Tetris and Connect Four while stating it is "easy to play and impossible to master". ACE criticized the uninspiring graphics, repetitive play, and "plagiarism" while comparing it unfavorably with Tetris and Connect Four.

In the Japanese magazine Famicom Tsūshin, the four reviewers said that while the game is similar to Tetris, they still found it fun with one reviewer saying it was more fun to play as a two-player game. The same four reviewers also complimented the Game Boy version of the game, with one reviewer feeling that the game was slightly worse due to the lack of color on the Game Boy making it harder to decipher some gameplay elements.