Month of Mario: Mario’s Super Picross (SNES)

Usually, I’m not too keen to play a game in a language I do not understand. While I’ll sometimes be assured the game doesn’t require reading to be played, words wouldn’t be present if they weren’t meant to be read so it feels like I’m missing part of the experience by ignoring them. Admittedly though, with a game like Mario’s Super Picross, playing the untranslated Japanese version doesn’t mean you’re missing too much if you can’t read its text. Since the focus is on filling in nonogram puzzles, you only need to understand numbers to succeed, provided you have learned how to play Picross from a source other than this game’s all-Japanese tutorial. Other than that, you miss out on a few congratulations messages and the words that tell you what the puzzle’s solution is meant to look like, but even then it’s not hard to pull up an online fan resource to cross-reference during those moments. Mario’s Super Picross has never been translated officially, but after being released in some countries for the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS Virtual Consoles as well as Nintendo Switch Online’s SNES offerings, I can say that most people will find even those versions easy enough to navigate and play.

Despite the beloved hero plumber Mario being the host of this puzzle game, he’s mostly there to present one set of Picross puzzles while his greedy rival Wario hosts a different batch. There are 300 nonogram puzzles on offer that are split between the pair, the main differences between the hosts being a few rule changes that influence their associated puzzles. Both follow the standard rules of Picross, that being you need to fill in spots on a grid to reveal a picture of some sort. Your clues for where to fill in those spots exist on the top and left border of the puzzle. The numbers in a row or column will tell you how many spaces you must fill in, but it won’t tell you which spaces those are. For example, a row with the number 3 of it will have three spaces you need to fill in, but a different row may list the numbers 3 2 3, meaning you need to fill in 3 spots, then include at least one empty space before filling in 2, and then include at least one more empty space before filling in 3 more spots. What makes a Picross puzzle entertaining is the need to logically deduce the spots that are possible to fill in by cross-referencing the different columns and rows. You can often deduce which spots can be filled in even without considering how columns and rows intersect, because if you find a row is 15 spaces long and you need to fill in 10, you can guarantee that the middle 5 spaces should be filled in regardless of the exact placement of all 10.

Gradually whittling down the available spaces and then using those to determine new spots you can fill in is what Picross is all about, but depending on if Mario or Wario presented the puzzle to you, you will have a few other rules in play. Mario’s puzzles all have a 30 minute timer, and if you try to fill in an incorrect space, you’ll get a few seconds docked from that timer. Multiple mistakes make that penalty larger, but the player can also kick off a Mario puzzle with a hint where one row and one column will be selected to be fully filled in. You can also deduct 5 minutes from the timer by way of the pause menu to get hints, which also manifests as a free row and column being filled in per hint used. Wario’s puzzles remove the timer entirely, but they also will not notify you in any way if you fill in an incorrect space. You can pause and enable a mode where you can fill in spots temporarily and then exit the mode to restore the game board to what it was like before you paused if you’re worried about long term mistakes ruining the whole puzzle though. Wario’s puzzles are the more difficult ones despite there being no penalties present, but Mario’s can get quite tough in the later stages where you may even run up against that 30 minute timer as you try to make very specific deductions. There are plenty of more manageable low level puzzles that let you do the sort of “paint by numbers” play without wracking your brain too hard, and both modes will allow you to mark spaces you think aren’t meant to be filled in with an X so you can further eliminate options to help you in gradually approaching a solution.

Despite Mario’s puzzles being presented as the more beginner friendly ones, their music is a bit more bouncy and goofy at times, meaning the tracks might not be easy for some players to listen to at length compared to Wario’s more relaxed background tracks. The pictures you’re creating by filling in squares can range in size, grids beginning at simple 5 by 5 puzzles you won’t take long to solve while later ones can be huge 20 by 20 grids or even a lopsided 25 by 20. This means early puzzles are often simple pictures, the first Mario levels even focusing on Japanese Katakana characters before you start getting more broad recognizable pictures like countries, clothes, animals, sports equipment, and food. Wario’s can be a little cheekier to show off his more impish personality, one of his puzzles even being a single dot that is labeled as a deserted island, although that joke does rely a bit on understanding the puzzle title given after its complete. Thankfully, when an image is complete, it is often colored in and sometimes even animated that helps with realizing what you just helped chisel out of the board. While there are some items specific to Japanese culture and some feature characters from other Nintendo games, most are still possible to parse. An odd choice was to alter some of the puzzles between releases, the original featuring puzzles that make Tetris blocks, the starlet Marilyn Monroe, and the famous painting The Scream, all likely changed to avoid legal issues because even The Scream was under copyright prior to 2015, a fact relevant for its more recent but still somewhat old Virtual Console releases.

Actually making a picture, one that can even spring to life a bit when it’s done, gives Picross a fun little reward for figuring out how the numbers all line up. It can also play a part in enhancing the play though, as sometimes as you construct an image, you might realize the direction it’s heading, and especially with symmetrical objects, you can use what you have as a clue to fill in some extra spots. You might not be surprised Wario’s puzzles sometimes include tricky spots to throw this off though, such as a butterfly that is symmetrical but you must also fill in a small trail to indicate its flight, the numbers indicating that trail likely to cause a good deal of confusion until you realize their purpose. Mario’s Super Picross won’t often force you into guesswork so making inferences on the visual direction of what you filled in is more a useful approach than a necessary tool for success. Not much of this is unique to Mario’s Super Picross though, much of this the baseline Picross experience save for Mario and Wario having different rule sets, but it is doing a good thing well and people into the puzzle format will certainly get a good deal of value out of its 300 different puzzles to solve.

THE VERDICT: While it has Mario and Wario present to help host the puzzle solving, Mario’s Super Picross is mostly just a solid collection of 300 enjoyable Picross puzzles presented in an effective albeit standard manner. Sometimes Wario’s cheekiness leads to a puzzle that’s a bit funny to solve and the two rule types offer a touch of variety, other features like hints just nice to have if you need a little help. The enjoyment will come from logically deducing which squares to fill in to reveal a little picture and that style of play tests your brain and entertains you similar to the way word searches and sudokus do.

And so, I give Mario’s Super Picross for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System…

A GOOD rating. There’s not much special to Mario’s Super Picross compared to other members of its genre, it not having a story or structure in the way a game like Pictoquest does and it not having the range of incredible features that could bump it up to the next level like Pictopix does. It’s Picross, not quite pure and simple thanks to the two rule sets, but it is mostly just 300 puzzles to solve and for fans of the puzzle type, it’s akin to someone buying a new big book of crosswords. Mario’s presence was likely part of a continued effort for Nintendo to introduce this type of video game logic puzzle to game-playing audiences in an appealing way, this game and it’s predecessor Mario’s Picross more about the puzzles than anything the hero of the Mushroom Kingdom is bringing to the experience. It’s pretty easy for a player to know if they’ll enjoy it based on if they have enjoyed this kind of number deduction puzzle in the past, but because of its lack of translation, unless you speak Japanese it is likely better you start off with a different game if you think the format sounds fun. Tinkering with Picross fundamentals could be distracting unless you go for it fully so improving on a fairly safe presentation of these logic puzzles might pull it away from the intended value of Mario’s Super Picross, but it does feel like it could have afforded to be more thematic. Doing Picross to music from Mario and Wario games would be a nice touch and Mario’s Picross back on the Game Boy had Mario in the top left corner reacting to play, something that could have been even more fun with the more over the top Wario to watch your work and perhaps even serve as a subtle hint system if he snickered at a mistake on occasion.

Despite some deliberately strange puzzle designs that can be played off as Wario’s mischief, Mario’s Super Picross doesn’t do much that could be considered an issue. That does mean it is only as good as standard Picross can be, but it also likely made it a good entry point for Japanese players looking for some fun logic puzzles. You do need to do a little work to jump in here if you don’t know Japanese, but even as a second Picross game after learning the ropes elsewhere, it does a fine job of providing puzzles that manage the familiar format well. Perhaps the Mario series could have contributed some neat gimmicks or fun subversions of the usual rules, but it’s certainly much easier to take Baseball or Racing and make them more elaborate than a puzzle format with some important ground rules to keep it manageable and thus fair and entertaining.