Changes: Dr. Mario

Latest revision as of 19:29, 25 May 2009

Dr. Mario is a non-tetromino puzzle game franchise developed by Nintendo and released on its systems.

The bottle is 8 blocks wide by 11 to 16 blocks high (depending on version) and starts out partially full of "viruses", or fixed blocks of the color red, yellow, or blue.

Pieces in Dr. Mario are vitamin pills with two halves (making them dominoes), with each half colored red, yellow, or blue. The player can move or rotate them as they fall into the bottom. Once a pill locks, if four or more blocks of a color are aligned horizontally or vertically, they are removed, and the pill segments above them (but not viruses) fall in a cascade. In 2-player, cascades cause garbage pill segments to drop into the opponent's playfield. Anything that falls falls slowly, at a rate of 4 rows per second, due to the design of the playfield refresh logic. Modern versions allow players to speed up the fall rate of these cascades in single-player, but not in multiplayer, where the time lost waiting for garbage segments to fall is often more damaging than the segments themselves.

Players who like Dr. Mario may also like Columns, Klax, and Puyo Pop. The game Tetris 2 can be thought of as Dr. Mario with tetrominoes.

Rotation system

Ordinarily, the pills rotate within a 2x2 box whose bottom left corner is always filled. Clockwise rotation looks like this:

Wall kicks on Dr. Mario (NES), WarioWare Inc.: Mega Microgame$ (GBA), and Dr. Mario & Puzzle League (GBA) are as follows:

Horizontal to vertical:

No kick here

Vertical to horizontal:

Kick left

No kick here

Tetris & Dr. Mario has some additional wall kicks from horizontal to vertical:

Kick right

Kick down

Kick down+right

Fail

Tetris and other puzzle games by Arika {{}}
Arcade releases: Tetris The Grand Master | Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 | Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS | Tetris The Grand Master 3 Terror-Instinct
Console releases: Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura Eternal Heart | Tetris The Grand Master Ace
PC releases: Jewelry Master
Topics: Arika (TGM) Rotation System

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 |preview=1
 |released=1990 (NES/GB)
-|platform=NES, Arcade, Game Boy, Super NES, N64, GameCube (Japan only), GBA
+|platform=NES, Arcade, Game Boy, Super NES, N64, GameCube (Japan only), GBA, Wii
 |title-scrn=DrMNES-title.png
 |ingame-scrn=DrMNES-play.png
@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 The [[playfield|bottle]] is 8 blocks wide by 11 to 16 blocks high (depending on version) and starts out partially full of "viruses", or fixed blocks of the color red, yellow, or blue.
-[[Piece]]s in ''Dr. Mario'' are vitamin pills with two halves (making them dominoes,) with each half colored red, yellow, or blue.
+[[Piece]]s in ''Dr. Mario'' are vitamin pills with two halves (making them dominoes), with each half colored red, yellow, or blue.
 The player can move or rotate them as they fall into the bottom.
-Once a pill locks, if four or more blocks of a color are aligned horizontally or vertically, they are removed, and the pill segments above them (but not viruses) fall in a cascade.
+Once a pill locks, if four or more blocks of a color are aligned horizontally or vertically, they are removed, and the pill segments above them (but not viruses) fall in a [[Line clear#Cascade|cascade]].
+In 2-player, cascades cause garbage pill segments to drop into the opponent's playfield.
-In 2-player, [[cascade]]s are worth more points.
+Anything that falls falls slowly, at a rate of 4 rows per second, due to the design of the playfield refresh logic. Modern versions allow players to speed up the fall rate of these cascades in single-player, but not in multiplayer, where the time lost waiting for garbage segments to fall is often more damaging than the segments themselves.
 Players who like ''Dr. Mario'' may also like ''[[Columns]]'', ''[[Klax]]'', and ''[[Puyo Pop]]''.
@@ Line 197: / Line 198: @@
 == See also ==
 {{Nintendo games}}
+{{Arika games}}
-[[Category:Non-tetromino games]]
+[[Category:Non-tetromino Games List]]