Month of Mario: Dr. Mario 64 (N64)

Dr. Mario 64 is a Wario game in disguise. While it certainly features the familiar virus-busting puzzle play found in the original NES Dr. Mario, the plumber turned medical professional finds himself in a plot starring a range of villains from Wario Land 3 as well as the greedy hero of that game. I cannot seem to find any meaningful overlap in the credits of either game, making it unlikely it was simply the Wario Land 3 team bringing over their own characters, this odd situation even the more stranger for its lack of a clear explanation. However, it definitely helps Dr. Mario 64 have an interesting identity, the puzzle game series all too often having its entries blend together as they focus a bit too closely on the gameplay exclusively.

It is fairly reasonable for them to do so at least considering the quality of the Dr. Mario puzzle formula. As seen primarily in Classic mode, the goal of a normal round of Dr. Mario 64 is to clear the screen of viruses. Depending on the difficulty, the pill bottle that serves as the play field will be filled with the monstrous representations of viruses, the maladies coming in blue, yellow, and red. The viruses float in place, it falling on you to utilize colored pills to try and eliminate them. Matching a virus with three pieces of the same color vertically or horizontally clears it from the bottle. Pills can feature two different colors on them though, the player needing to rotate and place pills properly to avoid cluttering the field, especially since the speed of play increases gradually as more capsules drop into the bottle. Classic mode gradually has the pill bottles become even more cluttered over time, the player having to be strategic on the fly to avoid filling the bottle to the top and losing the round. With room for last minute spins to slip capsules into place, riskier strategies like horizontal matches, and with even approaching a virus from below sometimes an option, a round of classic Dr. Mario play can be challenging, flexible in terms of your approach, and still complicated well by the fact the pills won’t always provide you useful colors and thus managing the playfield becomes a useful skill to survive.

Where Dr. Mario 64 gets even more interesting beyond this effective initial style of play is through its multiplayer battles. In a Vs. match against either humans or computer opponents, everyone will have their own individual bottle but will have the viruses placed similarly and the pill order set to be the same. While the goal is still to clear the playfield, external pressures can now add interesting developments to how the match unfolds and increases the pressure to play speedily so you can clear the viruses before your rivals can. If you manage to chain together matches by having one destroyed virus drop pieces to eliminate another, you can even send extra pieces into an opponent’s bottle that they have no control over. These little colored drops are fairly random and can sometimes aid the opponent, but it’s often worth the risk since more often you can land a colored piece and foil the plans they were working towards. While it is a bit hands-off compared to more directed or planned forms of interaction between players, it still leads to the puzzle solving play becoming more involved and dangerous, a player needing to be adaptive and try to do more than make straightforward matches at their leisure if they want to come out on top.

The competitive form of virus busting is what the game’s story focuses on, and there are actually two stories to play through. One features Dr. Mario in the starring role while the other focuses in on Wario, and they are for the most part fairly similar save for the exact framing of a few moments and occasional divergences in the enemies encountered. The flu has begun to spread and Dr. Mario’s incredible Megavitamins are able to wipe it out with ease. While Dr. Mario’s intentions are altruistic, Wario witnesses the curative effects of the vitamins and believes he can make a fortune selling them off. He’s not the only one to take notice though, the evil Mad Scienstein pilfering the Megavitamins and running off with them to give them to his mysterious master, both Mario and Wario scrambling after him to get the pills for themselves. Along the way, minions of Mad Scienstein as well as innocent fauna accidentally caught up in the chase will turn against Mario and Wario and force them into battle, a battle that oddly enough involves them busting viruses in the familiar pill dropping puzzles. You’re likely not meant to wonder how a spider, frog, or jellyfish somehow manage to handle vitamins with the same skill as the actual doctor, although it is possible this is literally just meant to be a story rather than something that happened in Mario’s world. The characters in the story sections are represented with cut-outs after all, although at least in battle they are more reactive and animated characters who celebrate or show their frustration based on the course of the match.

While most battles in story mode utilize the effective battle mode format of two players duking it out through vitamin dropping play, there is one section that ups it to a four way competition between characters, this also available as a separate mode involving as many human and AI players as you like. The rules aren’t that different in a four player fight unless you choose to do the two on two team format, although the colors of your matches do determine which of the other characters you attack. It’s a little hard to plan for targeted attacks with the amount of potential chaos or limited choices in a round of Dr. Mario though, but this mode is still an entertaining shift in how you approach things and essentially a step up in difficulty because pill pieces can come in even more frequently. The one weakness of four player mode though is when a player is eliminated, the match can run on for quite a while. You are given the option to play “practice” mode where you can continue on playing even though it won’t impact the round or other players, but the puzzle format is not generally one that forces expediency even in a competition and the wait can drag on quite a bit if the remaining players are struggling to clear their play field.

There are a few modes beyond the standard and competitive twists to the familiar formula found in Dr. Mario 64 as well. Flash is a mode where only specific viruses need to be eliminated, this available in the different variations of the competitive modes. Potentially faster than a regular round and catering even more strongly to strategy because you need to figure out which viruses beyond the flashing ones are worth eliminating, it is a nice way to potentially speed up rounds, especially in four player, without sacrificing too much. Score Attack isn’t quite as interesting though, the player having three minutes to clear a virus bottle where they’ll be judged on the points accrued while doing so, any remaining time after the bottle is cleared also converted into points. Whether alone or against an opponent, Score Attack feels like it emphasizes a less interesting element of Dr. Mario, the design feeling like it focuses most on clearing the playfield rather than making fancy plays to earn high scores. The format doesn’t feel set up for it too well either due to a round starting with an inherently crowded play field where trying to set up interesting high scoring maneuvers will probably lead to your loss unless enough of it has been cleared away in time. At least in every mode you have a selection of small but catchy tunes to underscore the play.

THE VERDICT: Dr. Mario 64 has the virus busting puzzles that make the series a delight, the pressure of clearing a cramped bottle balanced by the satisfaction in gradually dispelling the viruses to some memorable music. It’s a relaxing yet challenging form of play, and over in the competitive battles against players or characters, there are plenty of interesting twists to make it more energetic and further reward strategic pill placement. The extra modes for multiplayer and a Story to structure some battles makes Dr. Mario a nice twist to a classic that is still preserved at its heart for those looking for it, making it an excellent little package for fans of color-matching puzzle play.

And so, I give Dr. Mario 64 for Nintendo 64…

A GREAT rating. If judged only on its story mode it might feel slight or like it underutilizes interesting concepts like four player battles, but Dr. Mario 64 presents its play in a few different formats that lets it succeed at being an easy puzzle game to return to while also providing some structured content so you feel like you’ve made some accomplishments. While something like Score Attack doesn’t properly make use of the usual focus on the pill bottle starting jam-packed and your goal being to wear it down rather than pull off flashy matches, most modes like, funnily enough, Flash know the thrill in the play is in trying to manage incoming capsules that don’t always line up with what you need but also finding interesting moments of opportunity by matching in ways beyond the obvious vertical stacks. You have less demanding solo play here, but you also get that external pressure of trying to outpace another player or AI opponent over in the competitive side, it given a much greater focus than the NES original and able to introduce nice touches both cosmetically and mechanically. More strategic and varied than something like Tetris, the Dr. Mario formula continues to shine and Dr. Mario 64 doesn’t rock the boat with how it iterates on it, long time fans finding what they’re looking for and a few nice variations to make it more than a repackaging of the classic game.

Perhaps at one point this was almost Dr. Wario instead, the inexplicable presence of so many Wario Land 3 elements in the story a little less stranger if that was the case. However, Dr. Mario 64 does feel like it mostly leans on safe bets, iterating in small doses rather than completely changing up the formula. Unless the multiplayer of the series is your main interest it isn’t exactly a must buy because of how similar it is to other entries, but just enough of it is unique or interesting that it can at least be your preferred flavor if you do get a hankering for virus popping play.