389 - Dr. Mario

Dr. Mario, the prescription is fun. And welcome to Nostalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm... And I'm Sean. Yeah, you have to do the end. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In honor of Joe. Joe's not here. I can't lead everyone on to make them expect another voice. It's what we've all been waiting for another Mario game the Mario game that I always was like that can't be a Mario game

Dr. Mario, right? Like, just right to doctor? Did he go to school? Did they give him an honorary PhD for saving the Mushroom Kingdom? It's kind of strange that this is, like, the first thing that he tries to do after Plummer. Well, here's the real question. Is Dr. Mario a different Mario? No, it's Mario. I think it is because if you go into the manual, the first page... You think it's a different Mario?

No, no, I'm saying just following Smash Brothers logic. Like, you know, there's Mario and then there's Dr. Mario. And, like, Dr. Mario would just be a skin then, right? Like, you would just be a selectable costume for Mario, but he's a totally different character. However, the manual for this game, first page says, My name is Dr. Mario. Hi, everybody. I'm Mario. How's it going?

Over the last few years, I've been involved in some pretty wild adventures. Now, believe it or not, I work in the virus research lab at the Mushroom Kingdom Hospital. Like, what a weird premise to start this game. Wuhan Hospital? Is that what he said? He said the Mushroom Kingdom Hospital. Oh. Yeah, yeah. They even have a little dialogue between him and...

Not Princess, but Nurse Toadstool. Dr. Mario, something terrible has happened. What's wrong, Nurse Toadstool? One of the experiments has gone out of control. The viruses are spreading quickly. Oh no, we've got to do something. I have just developed a new vitamin that should be able to take care of it. I sure hope this stuff works. It's like, what's happening? None of this is like exposition nobody needed, right? It doesn't actually say much.

It does. It does. It teaches you that as long as you take vitamins, you won't have anything to worry about. But we knew that from Hulk Hogan. Oh, yeah. Hulk Hogan always told us to take our vitamins.

But he never made claims about like, you know, this will explicitly cure this virus. Yeah. All right. I understand. Dr. Mario developed by Nintendo R&D 1. Do you know any other Nintendo R&D 1 games? Aren't, like, all the... It's, like, they're the big dogs. They're the big dogs in, like, what way?

Like, isn't that like, you know, if you make it to, like, the alpha team, then you're a big dog. And this isn't me just kind of not remembering a specific game that they may have made. They're not the Mario people? No, no. So Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda, that's R&D 4. Those guys just make perfect games. In fact, in our developer breakdown... We have, let's see, R&D1 made 26 total NES games so far that we've played. 15 skip-its, 8 play-its, 3 essentials.

What are the essentials? What are the essentials? Let's see. Metroid. Okay. Let's see if I can pull up another one real fast. Duck Hunt. Ah, yes. And Balloon Fight. Okay, so, I mean, they're still... Still doing bangers. Yeah, they're still doing good stuff. I guess I already knew this at some point and have forgotten because those are all old games.

At least to us. Right. What was like the most recent R&D one game? We shouldn't surprise you though. Okay. It was Tetris. Oh, wow. All right. They're like, yeah, we, we haven't, we have an engine and everything. We know how to make these puzzle games. Let's just make our own version of a puzzle game featuring a Nintendo character because the licensing on that Russian IP might be a little sketchy.

I guess, yeah, there is still a Soviet Union at this point. And I'm sure that they're pretty tough with, you know, their... I would say they're a litigious group. I would imagine. You know what? Now I don't really think I know if they could because you know what? This is a rabbit hole. It's not worth going down.

Yes, Dr. Mario, a puzzle game starring Mario in a lab coat. But I have to ask you this question. Are you playing as Mario? Yeah, I mean, you're or maybe like you're playing as all of the pills. Or like he actually just put a bunch of like Mexican jumping beans in the pills and you're the jumping bean. Yeah, you can clearly see. Dr. Mario on the screen, and you can clearly see him holding what's going to be the next vitamin, but he does throw it in, too. But then you control, like, where the...

vitamin lands and like turning it and everything. But you could assume that just like how you're playing as, you know, LeBron James in NBA 2K25 or whatever they're called these days, you could assume that like you don't just... go from playing LeBron to playing as the basketball once the ball has left the hands. No, that's only you would say. Yeah, exactly. No, I'm not arguing it. I'm saying that I think...

I'm agreeing that you do play as Dr. Mario in this game. Probably not the way people wanted to play as Mario in a puzzle game, right? You probably wanted to do something with jumping. or uh platforming but in a way you're building platforms here so there's there's some element of that but it's not it's it's mario like we've never seen him before because

Mario will have more puzzle games, but this is his first puzzle game on the NES. Other stuff has been either arcade-y or as a side-scrolling platformer. To have Dr. Mario here, it's kind of like the Mickey Mouse thing for Disney where you're just like, yeah, well, we have a company mascot and he's just going to go do the thing now. It's kind of surprising that they didn't also...

put him in some of these other Nintendo games like Barker Bill's trick shooting, right? It could have been Mario's trick shooting. I think they were doing really well not falling into that. That kind of sounds like a crutch to me. Like I'll just put our mascot and everything and I think they've been doing pretty good Staying away from that pattern But I guess I have to imagine that if this wasn't Mario marketed

That this wasn't going to do very well. Like what else? Like how else was this going to like get players? It's a good question. Here's another Mario question for you. So you throw vitamins and you have to stack four of the same color in order to clear. Should it have been vitamins? Mushrooms are what Mario eats to get bigger and stronger. Should it have been little mushrooms of different colors? I think that would be a very different kind of doctor. And maybe they'd have to...

I'd have to give it a different name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like also mushrooms, while they are simple enough, would be a little too busy of like a sprite. for that to work here. I think that the pills are just, you know, it's just two squares. So...

As we've said, Mario has apparently received his medical license. No details provided on that, even in the manual. I'm a doctor now. It literally just says that. The objective is to eradicate the viruses from... It's actually cute, the screen. It looks like it's just another one of those Tetris rectangle things, but it is a medicine bottle shape, right? So you're kind of like building out the...

You're filling up the bottle that the person will then drink, right? Like first you're getting rid of the virus and then you're giving the bottle to that person. You following my lead here? I suppose. I think, you know, the bottle. is a little strange, uh, if it's actually interacting with the viruses on the side, you know? Sure. Yeah. I guess they put the, maybe it's like, um, you know, like a lab.

thing and they're just putting the viruses in there and then they're clearing them out and then no one's actually going to drink it or anything it's just like this was the cure for this specific virus because it's made up of uh three different kinds of virus colors there are red blue and yellow viruses you'll know them because they they appear to have like under a microscope

They're like characters with personalities and they make silly faces and things. But also inside the bottle where you're throwing the vitamins into, you'll see little versions of them with just their faces just kind of. in one continuous like two frame animation loop. Um, you know, I guess like chipping at the player or whatever. Uh,

So you have to match four of the same color in a row against those viruses in order to clear them. You can also just clear your own vitamins four in a row, but that's not necessarily helpful. Because the only way to get to the next stage is to clear all of the viruses. So if a virus is blue, you need to stack three of the blue vitamins on top of it or to the side of it in order to clear it.

This is all very true. I'm only speaking facts here. That is the way you play the game. How did you feel? You know, obviously the... The thing that they're playing off of here, Tetris, it's actually very different as opposed to what I thought walking into it, seeing like... People play it in the past like is like, oh, this is just Tetris with less shapes Did you have to like rewire your brain to do this

It's interesting because, yeah, it matches the same falling block style gameplay. But because of the match four thing, it winds up being a little more like those Puyo Puyo games. which have now merged with Tetris. There's Puyo Puyo Tetris games. And the one thing I learned about that was that my brain can't necessarily handle the... The stacking nature like, oh, I'm going to purposefully make.

connections that don't connect because once i drop in this one it's going to make everything else fall and complete rows and rows of different colors that i had set up previously and i'm sure it's actually like a pretty simple to gather like um uh you know setup that you need to do of like okay you want to put down three of this and then one of this other one and then three more of this one on this side granted they would have to

fall in that order for it to work. So it's easier said than done. You'd have to deal with what the game gives you. But I still just can never wrap my brain around that. So what I wind up doing instead is what I imagine a lot of, at least the kids at the time were doing, if not most people who still play Dr. Mario.

uh is you you know you just wind up saying like okay well how do i get like four in front of this vitamin in front of this virus and then everything else can just kind of go over to the side you know where the viruses are and are I guess I kind of do that. But if you play long enough, you'll be able to internalize those patterns more. But yeah, no, I'm a pretty basic person when it comes to these kinds of games. I'm also very bad at Tetris. So I think it's just like if you...

Put me under like a time like a very short like several second time limit and try to make patterns of blocks I'm just not your guy, but that's basically what I did Yeah, and you have to remember, too, the reason why I was saying about the once you clear a row, you can have a chain reaction is because any of the vitamins comes in blocks of two. And it doesn't necessarily guarantee that it's going to be two of the same color. So you might have a...

yellow and blue vitamin or a yellow, yellow vitamin or a red and blue vitamin. And you always know at least what's coming next as the one that's falling is is being prepared to be placed. But you're always just basically playing. in in the sense of eventually there's going to be capsule fragments after you clear stuff and those remain so a yellow blue vitamin that has four that connects to four other three other blues

Only the blue part of that vitamin goes away and the yellow either continues to fall down the puzzle or stays right where it was if there's nothing holding below it. So there becomes this like. You know, you do have to, especially in the later levels where they stack a lot of viruses inside the bottle screen, you have to think about where these things are going to fall. And that's always going to be my downfall.

Tetris is a game of shapes, you know, so at least I know what the shapes look like. These, because of them just being always two of them, it's a different kind. It's like how Puyo Puyo, I think, is always. It's either always two or always three of them. It's the same thing where you have to think about how you're placing these things because the ones that you're...

not creating matches for are permanently there now. Like you're eventually going to have to either clear them or you've made a part of the puzzle. that you have essentially locked yourself out of, which is not good. I remember several times playing this that you could just feel the extra time that you just caused yourself.

By closing off a line of three with a color that you didn't mean to and Now you're gonna have to go through several more rotations before you can even get to that part of the puzzle again and then hopefully it lines up i think like part of what i what really got me on this was

With with Tetris, you know You're kind of you kind of start with a blank slate and then any problems that may occur are kind of your fault But in this game it in the beginning, it's not too bad. They give you like three or four viruses

to clear out but in later levels like it's like most of the screen are viruses in whatever pattern and so you've got to very quickly start thinking about how you want to even if you can think about how you can combo in the beginning because you already have very little space to work with.

Yeah. And even if it was a, you know, like a skill issue for us. Right. And like, oh, well, actually, it's very satisfying if you know what you're doing. I don't disagree. I think like people who can create these chain reactions, that's a very.

Not only is it a very important part of the game for winning, but it's the most satisfying thing about it is if it happens to you even on accident, you just play it off like, yeah, I always meant to do that. Yeah, just like I wrote it up. Exactly. But that's like the most fun part, because otherwise, as you continue to clear through these levels, we've talked about that they add more viruses into the screen, but also the speed.

increases the whole time mario's up there in the top right just kind of like some weirdly smug lab supervisor watching over you like i wouldn't have done that And the only saving grace is that the music tracks are awesome. So they're... One of them is the one that I always think of when I think of Dr. Mario. But the other one I just think of as like an NES track. And it's great, too. They are like right there with Tetris again. So you have like this unique.

puzzle game thing right where it's like you need to just like Tetris right you need to know what you're doing in order to like be good at the game you can't just stack blocks anywhere but then also like the music in Tetris was great the music here is great So I don't think Nintendo just made a Tetris clone and called it a day. I don't even think of comparing this to Tetris, much other than the fact that it's a falling block game. Do you agree?

No, I don't. I think that any falling block game is at its core a Tetris clone. I think that it wouldn't have been made had Tetris not been. So yeah. I agree with you that this is definitely because of the Tetris mania because this is also a Game Boy game similar to how like Tetris was also a Game Boy game. So like they clearly were thinking about this from a like.

portability replay system seller thing. And the NES one's just kind of like, yeah, well, we could also release it there too. But I think it's just like, at the end of the day, it is just like a different... kind of game like it doesn't scratch the same itch for me as as tetris tetris is more like uh i don't want to say simpler because it's not it's it can get even more intense but it's way more um

Simpler to understand and grasp the concept of than this game that adds these viruses onto the screen. Tetris has levels in maybe in in other.

versions of the release where they do add those junk blocks as well yeah but like you know i don't i still think like the concept of what Tetris is it's just like okay well now instead of me making those junk blocks they they put them on the screen this is a different thing this is like the goal isn't to get a certain score or do a clear a certain amount of lines it's

we've put these viruses, these bosses in the level, and you have to defeat them all in order to move on. So it does still have that Mario philosophy behind it, even if it is a totally different genre. Yeah, I guess I can see that. Yeah, it's more tearing down than, I guess, in Tetris, you're building up to tear down. But I don't know. Yeah, they're still very similar in my brain.

And does the two-color capsule mechanic create more strategic depth than doing the shapes thing? Could you imagine instead if the game was... You know, the same kind of like Tetra style blocks of the L shape and the square shape. Does it help that they're always just two blocks falling at a time? I don't know if I would use the word help. I think it was kind of.

It threw me off that I thought that this was gonna be a very simple game like oh four colors to two blocks at a time only like four orientations with that like this game's gonna be like tetris baby mode and then i immediately got like very confused and

It was like oh wait should maybe I have to like offset this so it's kind of hanging off of the This column now and so you're basically You just have to use a different part of your brain and i wasn't ready for that so i would say that it it definitely threw me off Thank you. And should there have been anything else to this game other than just this puzzle element? Like, you know, you're just you're just playing basically this new Dr. Mario game they created.

And once you clear the virus of the stage or whatever, then you move on to the next stage. And then there's 20 levels of that. And once you clear the 20 levels, you beat the game. Should there have been anything else offered here? Is that enough?

of a game? I think so. I think it's got just as much strategic depth as a Tetris. As much as... you wouldn't think that on first or at least how as much as i wouldn't have thought that on first first glance Yeah, and I think a lot of this game too, especially for the NES version, although it's present in the Game Boy version as well, is the multiplayer aspect of it too.

There's not really a story mode here. It's just kind of you playing against yourself. But ideally, you know, you want to like bring over your friends and, you know, trick them before they have any idea what kind of game this is that you've already figured out everything and you can just whoop their butts. But like.

I think that's probably where most of the replay value goes. It's not in playing by yourself. It's playing against people. And it's literally, you're just playing side by side and it's kind of like, uh, I can get the higher score. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The simplest form of multiplayer, I guess, yeah. So Mario has been a plumber. He's a referee. Yes. A golfer. Yes. Yeah. Construction worker? Wrecking crew? True. Demolition specialist? Is that what's going on with Donkey Kong? I guess what I'm seeing, not to cut you off, but all these jobs that... That we've listed aside from this one. They're all kind of like side gigs. You know like he. I mean he likes to golf. So that's just his hobby. But reffing.

I would say that maybe that's just something that he does on Sundays for beer leagues. Yeah, those are all like blue-collar jobs. Yeah, but now he's joined the elite. Yeah, he's joined the elite and like in a totally different way, too, because, again, I'm not saying that Dr. Mario should have been a game like Operation where you're like doing surgery or something. Maybe it could have been like Trauma Center 20 years early, but.

The other games, besides referee or – I'm trying to think. No, referee is the only one that comes to mind for that. But he's just a bystander. He's just like a – participant fun little cameo thing the other games where it's like it's actually his job to be these things plumber uh construction worker uh cement factory worker doesn't It's not an NES game, but there was a Game & Watch game, Mario's Cement Factory. Those are all like...

jobs that he has to do and you have to do them as him. And yes, they're nowhere near like simulation level, but like they introduced the job as like a fun thing to control Mario for. I didn't feel like I was controlling. Mario or that I was doing anything that like was Mario specific in this game. Yeah, I mean, that's why I was voting for the mushrooms, you know, like, no, I just I'm literally just saying that I don't think that there's enough here.

to warrant the mario in the title this is a nintendo made game so sure i guess they can get away with it but like it feels weird that there's not even like koopas or um You know, like even the cut scenes, right? If they like involved the Mushroom Kingdom a little more or you had like a little like fun thing where you.

were in the hospital and Mario had to do some side-scrolling platforming to run to the next room or whatever. I think that there could have been something else here to add Mario to it. Instead, it's just like you're playing as a doctor. Basically, yeah, I think what you just said about like having some Pac-Man style cut scenes, but just be a little bit more involved. Like it's kind of it's more like a contagion style story where.

if you don't do super well in the beginning like you're gonna get higher death tolls um for the viruses that you're trying to to solve or to to cure and like you're you've got that rival um bowser is actually also a doctor now and uh his his team's gonna come up with a vaccine before you can and then maybe there's some like some corporate espionage happening

i think that i think maybe that would do it and dr mario will evolve uh as a franchise like we have just this is the first game but uh there is uh tetris and dr mario on the super nintendo which at the same time I know, you get both games in one, and it adds a versus against the computer now, so you don't need a friend at all. You can say goodbye to all your friends. I just played Dr. Mario against the computer.

Dr. Mario 64, which now, you know, the whole thing with the N64 was that it had four controller slots built into the console. So, of course, there's going to be four player multiplayer. And there's also a story mode where like. What I just said happens? Well, Wario instead of Bowser. Then there's Dr. Mario Express.

on dsi wear which like i know what that is but like i'm not gonna bother to explain it here but it was like a weird thing where nintendo had the ds and then they released the dsi which Basically had the ability to play like downloaded games from the internet. And this is one of them. He still had to pay for them. So it was just like, oh, Nintendo figured out about digital games and a digital game store.

So it was just like there's nothing notable about that. It was on that platform, nothing new. And then Dr. Mario Online RX. Now, that's a pretty cool title. I like that they put the RX in there, even though I don't know what that stands for in pharmacy terms. I genuinely don't either. Yeah. But that brought, obviously, because it's Dr. Mario Online, it brought online multiplayer.

So that's pretty cool. They just keep figuring out new ways to take away and then add your friends back in. Okay. What was the last time? Okay, let's say before Smash Brothers. Had you thought about Dr. Mario at all since you were a child? No, Dr. Mario before Smash Brothers was just that he was one of the... Dr. Mario 64 was one of the games you could play at McDonald's. You know how McDonald's had those N64s hooked up? I remember them being in...

Blockbuster. I don't remember the McDonald's. Oh, they were in McDonald's, and it was pretty cool, but the problem was that you had to play Dr. Mario 64. You wanted to play Mario Kart 64. Why wouldn't they give you that, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because they need people to be eating burgers. Come for the N64, stay for the burger. Have more burgers. Now, we were ragging a little bit there about...

Dr. Mario. But remember, we're not judging this game based on how Mario it is. We have to judge it based on if it's still a video game worth playing today. And so we'll do that in our next segment, The Essential Games List. Yeah, so if you take the Mario out of it all, what you have here as a puzzle game is actually the same exact puzzle game. That's how little Mario there is to it. And I don't think anything of value is lost. I think that this is...

Definitely different enough from Tetris that like if you enjoy Tetris, you should try this because it's a totally different kind of game. It's not like, oh, the Mario skin for Tetris. I don't know how I feel about the game from like my own time with it because I didn't really enjoy it. But it's a totally competent game. Competency isn't really like what we aim for here, though. And I'm kind of surprised that like Dr. Mario.

is still around and regarded because I don't think that this comes anywhere near the levels of replayability that Tetris has or even certain other puzzle games that I enjoy. I think there's something like where it's just the two blocks always being a constant makes the gameplay like turn off your brain a little bit. And then by the time you need to turn your brain on to really think about this stuff.

I'd rather be playing something else. So it's not essential for me. What about you, Sean? Yeah, you were kind of getting at something that I was thinking about, just sort of how this is... a very popular game. And yet I feel like this episode, at least in how we approached it, it was kind of anticlimactic. for something with Mario in the name and in the marketing and with the pedigree that it has. I didn't dislike the game. In fact, I could see myself coming back to this whenever I get into a...

Tetris-y kind of mood, but for some reason, maybe I don't want to play Tetris. Um, I, I think it offers some of the same kinds of things that, uh, the whole like Zen state. you can find yourself in i have there were a couple moments before it got too fast which is very early in the game for me that i was like oh i'm getting into a groove here um but yeah i don't have it doesn't feel like

the killer app that Wikipedia sold it to me as. Or just like Nintendo history in general sold it to me as. So it's definitely a play it. but not essential for me. And I think you brought up a good point there, Sean, about just like, remember Super Mario Brothers 2 on the box had like that little red ribbon at the bottom that was like Mario Mania, you know, or Mario Madness. And it's like...

That was a thing that was definitely happening and probably still happening in the same year that Super Mario Brothers 3 releases, right? It's like everybody's clamoring for more Mario. We're like removed from the mania aspect of it.

But we have Mega Man 3 coming up. Is Mega Man 3 actually just like a life sim? Right, right. That's what I'm saying. We know it's going to be a real Mega Man game, thankfully, but we will probably treat that one as a bigger deal than we did this. I think that's part of the charm.

If I dare say so about the podcast, though, is that we're removed from all like we don't know what's supposed to be a big deal and what's not supposed to be. I bolded Dr. Mario for us so that we knew it was like a bigger game. But once I played it. I didn't feel like I needed to treat it like a big deal now. I think at the time, even if you're comparing it against Tetris, it's kind of weird that it came out so soon after. Like I get that.

I get that like you're riding off the mania but like was disposable income for video games like that frequent back then that you would own like Tetris and then be like well I have to I have to go buy another game right now and I might as well buy another puzzle game right like no you'd probably buy like a sports game instead right or an action game like switch it up a little bit i don't think you would like double down in the same you know in the same year but like the game boy version

is where this whole thing like probably actually lies. And this NES version is just because it's like, yeah, well, we can release it there too. So we might as well double up. One thing that we didn't talk about that I like to talk about from time to time is the box art. Because the box art, even though I've never seen the box in person, I'm familiar with this box art. Yeah. And, like, that's the most we get of Mario. And still, it just kind of shows how weird.

The viruses are that they're just like three new characters that don't look like they belong in the Mushroom Kingdom at all. Right? Like those guys don't look like anything I've seen in the last three Super Mario Brothers games. And they're they're scary, but like they're also like the blue one, especially is like rabbit like a little bit like that. They're like furry animal ish things that I don't I don't want to. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't want to see them again.

I don't even know if maybe if maybe if they just remove the viruses and made this a game where you're just stacking pills on top of each other and you and then like that makes something right. Then like fights the virus. No, I think they just needed... The design just needed to be more Mario. They had to just make it look a bit more like a Koopa or something.

I had to shoot my shot. I always had to change the game if possible. Yeah. What's with the X on Dr. Rx Mario? Dr. X Mario? Are you supposed to say it like that? I think that's just the... That's just the same. Wait, so there's Dr. Mario something something RX? Yeah, there is that. But the RX thing, is the X silent? I gotta figure out. What's Rx mean? What Rx mean? So the symbol Rx, it's said to stand for the Latin word recipe, meaning to take.

is customarily part of the superscription of a prescription. That makes no sense. Yeah, I don't like any of this, but also I guess I just don't understand. We don't do that for doctors. We don't put the X. No, no, that's just them mashing up a bunch of drug stuff. Thank you. Thank you.