#47: Dr. Mario (Nintendo, NES, 1990/1991)
Another game about manipulating things falling into a well, it’s complicated enough compared to Tetris to stand on its own, but not so much to hinder understanding its challenge. It made a nice complement to it, as seen by the later SNES double-pack of the two games. In Dr. Mario, you match up lines of the same colour and they disappear. If the pills fill up to the top of the screen, you lose. The varying possibilities of different overhangs, and the viruses fixed in place that you have to clear, add strategy. The encouragement to get just better enough to beat its latest challenge is maybe even stronger than Tetris, thanks to a clearer division into levels.
On the downside, the presence of fixed blocks higher up the screen means that mistakes can accelerate very fast into irrecoverable situations. The way that the fall speed increases on each level, coupled with sluggish controls and the fact that most pieces have four different possible rotations, means that it’s much more common to get into the situation of being unable to pull off a clearly visible move. Where Tetris leaves you frustrated at yourself, in Dr. Mario there are more occasions to direct frustration at the game.
That’s where the game’s theme comes into its own though, the metaphors making something else out of the flaws. In medicine, early diagnosis and treatment is crucial. Sometimes, the ideal treatment is obvious, but it just doesn’t work. If you indiscriminately chuck a load of pills at a problem, they’ll kill you before the illness does! Or, if you somehow don’t want to focus on all that, there’s always Mario in a white coat throwing pills, and who can stay mad at him?