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Bust-a-Pill

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: May 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Look at my rating of this game for a second. This game was pretty hard to rate (more of a 4.5) because it's not fun enough to merit 5 stars, but I don't see how a puzzle game can get five stars, so please look at this as a top-notch puzzle game.

First, let's get this straight: If you don't like puzzle games you won't enjoy Dr. Mario. And vice versa. Puzzlers are hard to get into because they really have no point besides wasting time. They really harken back to the old arcade days. Some might say this is less fun than other puzzle games because it has no storyline (as I think most others do).
Anyway, the game's concept consists of destroying viruses using special pills called Megavitamins. There are three different colors of viruses: blue, yellow, and red. The pills also are colored this way, only they are divided down the middle and have different colors on either side (well, sometimes they're the same). Your goal is to stack three pill halves onto one virus of the same color of the pill halves to destroy it. When this occurs, the other halves of the pills fall straight down. When four of the same color of pill halves are stacked vertically or horizontally, the matching halves will be eliminated as well and everything falls down. This sounds bad but it's not. When your bottle gets filled with pills, your Game is Over. This necessitates the creation of some interesting strategies, which I won't go over because describing the game is hard enough already.

The game's story is simple and readily disposable. Dr. Mario, an alternate form of Mario perhaps best represented in Super Smash Bros. Melee, runs the Mushroom Kingdom Hospital with his blonde assistant Nurse Toadstool. One day Peach drops a mixture of the Doc's and spreads a nasty virus. Dr. Mario is called upon to terminate the outbreak with his strange new pills, the Megavitamins.

I thought the graphics in the game were really very good, but hard to appreciate because there are basically four different screens: the Opening, the Options, the 1-Player, and the 2-Player. The colors are bright, the viruses on the left side of the screen in 1-Player are well detailed but the ones in the bottle aren't (although they're too small to be able to detail well). Odd robot things run the show in 2-Player Mode.

The sound in the game is AS GOOD as the gameplay. The best sounds are the "biddle-ung" that the pill halves make when they are destroyed (and no viruses are involved) and the "BWAIT" when all the viruses of one color are gone. Better, though, is the music. There are only five tracks of music in the game, and all of them are grand. The opening theme sounds lousy at first but if you listen to it for a while you appreciate it. Best, though, are the Fever and Chill modes available for playing when you're poppin' germs. The two tracks excel in the two most important aspects of making video game music: Fever, for its catchy tune, and Chill, for its odd "instruments" and style. These two tunes are probably one of the best for the NES and will live on in your memory.

The gameplay is a great load of fun and it gets a little addictive, thanks mainly to the inability to quit mid-game. The controls are as simple as they come: D-Pad moves the pill, A flips it sideways. Sounds easy, but the pills are chosen randomly (and there's a limitless supply) and they move downwards slowly so you have to flip them and move them quickly and accurately. The viruses also appear in great numbers as the game's levels proceed. These factors make the game experience so difficult I couldn't get past Lv. 5. All in all, Dr. Mario is a good time waster, but nothing to schedule into your "Beat this or that Game" routine.

NOTE: I have not beaten the final level of this game, 20, but I believe I have beaten 4.

Dr Mario

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is an excellent game and if you were looking for a version of Tetris that was more challenging, than DR MARIO was for you. This game is sometimes very tricky, but it's very fun as well.

The object of the game is to match the colors of the pills that are being dropped onto the viruses below and by doing this killing them off, one by one. I really don't carw what anyone says but this game rocked. In Tetris, the challenge was to clear lines that are at the bottom and they build up. In DR MARIO you had to play the boards as they were giben and in most cases, the viruses were all over the place so placing some of the pills in the wrong place could come back to haunt you.

Like I said, the challenge to this game is great and it never got tired. Really check out DR MARIO it's worth it!

A classic? No way!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 20
Date: May 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Dr. Mario is a sad excuse for a NES and arcade classic. This wanna be Tetris is terrible and brings dishoner to our console games. The concept of fighting strange viruses is weird (I'll give it to the creators, it's original.) The graphics are so-so and my least favorite format; on the virge of 8-bit and 16-bit. The music is catchy but the sound of it is an irritating screech. Those of you who like this, go for it. It is also too difficult for players and the worse part is that this is going to be in jewel cases! Whazup wit dat?

Dr. Sonic for Game Boy Advance

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 8
Date: November 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Dr. Sonic for Game Boy Advance is released on 2003 and 2004. It seen on 103 and 173 in 1 Game Paks.

Different from the NES versions:
Title Screen
* Black Ticket with Dr. Sonic, Blue Virus and Cursor
* White screen left of Dr. Sonic and Blue Virus with Black 1P/2P Game and 1996 Word
* 1996 appears intead of (c) 1990 Nintendo

Game Screen
* Virus not move in bottle

Title and Game Screens
* Dr. Mario logo not appear

Game and system sold separately.

good game especially for 2 people to compete

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

product was delivered expediently and the game is very userfriendly and good for 2 people to compete

Simplistic and Addictive

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

When Tetris hit the scene, it became more than just a popular video game. It became a cultural phenomenon. Usually when a game achieves an unusual amount of success you'll have a game try to copy the formula (usually failing). Doctor Mario, on the other hand, didn't try to copy the formula put forth in Tetris. It simply put a new spin on the puzzle genre.

Dr. Mario perhaps some of the simplest gameplay of any game. Mario stands on the sidelines and throws pills into a jar. In the jar are different color viruses. Red, Yellow and Blue. The color of the virus doesn't matter. What matters is the colors on the pill Mario throws in. The objective is to simply match the corresponding color of the pill with the virus. In the first level, there are just a few viruses. The higher the level the more viruses are in the jar.

You don't have to begin at level one. You can choose what level you want to begin with. Even then, the game doesn't end at the maximum level you can choose. It keeps going. Much like Tetris, there's really no end to the game.

You can also choose your speed. Medium, Low, or High. This is really the only thing which will add difficulty to the game. Mario not only throws pills faster, but they fall faster, depending on the speed you choose.

It doesn't sound like much, but the game is addictive. Especially when playing against someone else. It's not as addictive as Tetris and competition becomes more based on how fast you can do certain levels rather than actual skill. But then again, there's not much skill involved in Dr. Mario. Which is exactly why Dr. Mario works. The game is so simple that anyone can play it.

Visually for an NES game it looks pretty basic. Very colorful. Although Mario has never looked better, there isn't much you can say about Dr. Mario's graphics because they're just so basic. Even for an NES game. So there's nothing groundbreaking even for its time. But who cares? The game is fun and in the NES days that was what you played for. It's a great game and its simple. While there's no doubt that Tetris had nothing to fear, Dr. Mario was still a fun game.

If there was anything wrong with Dr. Mario it would simply be that there's no real way to build upon it. All the future releases of the game have pretty much been the same thing over and over again, just on a different console. This isn't necessarily bad, but it means that if you own one of the other variants, say the Gameboy, Super Nintendo (which is the best one because you get Tetris with it), or Nintendo 64, then you're all set. Regardless of which one you have, you'll probably be satisfied.

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