October 2024 Game Challenge: Dr. Mario

Prof. Will Lestrange · October 2, 2024

Last month's winner, Janne Halla, requested a puzzle game for the new month. I looked at various puzzle games from different eras that were playable online and finally came upon a game from the early nineties that I can't believe we haven't gotten to that yet. Hopefully you all have your advanced degrees in colour matching, because this month's game will be... Dr. Mario!

Dr. Mario is a 1990 Nintendo game that was originally designed for Nintendo's home video game systems at the time: namely the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Game Boy (though eventually a version appeared in some video arcades). It can be considered a 'bizarro Tetris' because pieces fall down into a grid like Tetris pieces, but... every piece (technically a 'pill') is the exact same shape, two squares long. If we were playing Tetris rules with these pieces (fill lines to clear the grid) the game would be easy, but two things make this surprisingly tricky:

-The squares of the piece can each be one of three different colours; red, blue, or yellow... and instead of filling lines of the grid, you need to get four pieces in a row of the same colour, horizontal or vertical, to eliminate them.

-The grid starts out with random coloured 'virus' squares; you need to eliminate all of them to move onto the next level (and forming a line without a virus square doesn't even earn you any points!)

Incidentally, that's where "Dr" Mario comes from: the premise is that Mario, wearing a doctor's outfit, is throwing pills one by one onto the screen and your goal is to maneuver them to eliminate the viruss! Once you're done with the viruses on one level, everything starts again with even more viruses...

For this month's challenge, you want to go to THIS LINK to play Dr. Mario; choose "1 Player" and then any starting "virus level", speed (the faster the speed, more points you get), and music to play. Screencap your best performance (and post it in this thread) by October 31 at 11:59 PM HOL! (And in your post, also include what type of game you want to play in November: are you thinking of 'action'? 'adventure'? 'puzzle'? 'web game'? 'Golden Era of gaming'? 'In the past five years'? If you win the month, I will try to make it happen!)

PS: The left and right arrow keys move the pill left and right, the down arrow drops it faster, and the Z and X keys rotate the pill. (Z is clockwise, X is counterclockwise; yes, there is a difference if the pill has two different colours!)

-Participation at all will earn you 5 scales.

-If you clear the first level (defaults to 00) or score 2024 points or higher, your screencap will earn you 10 scales instead of 5.

-The top three scores of the month will get extra scales (25, 20, and 15 respectively for the month instead of 5 or 10) as well as special awards!

PS: Feel free to edit your post throughout the month as you improve your score!