Dr. Mario

Dr. Mario is a falling-block puzzle spin-off from Nintendo, developed by Nintendo R&D1 and released simultaneously for Famicom and Game Boy on July 27, 1990. Players take the role of Dr. Mario, tossing two-colored vitamin capsules into a glass bottle filled with red, yellow and blue viruses. Match four same-colored segments horizontally or vertically (combining capsule halves and viruses) to eliminate them. Rotate and move falling capsules, and cleared blocks trigger gravity drops which may create chain combos. Players can pick starting level and capsule drop speed before play. There are 21 base levels, and level 20 caps the virus count. Game Over occurs when capsules stack up and block the bottle neck. It features two legendary chiptune soundtracks, Fever and Chill. A 2-player versus mode is available; clearing viruses will send garbage capsules to the opponent’s bottle as interference. It is one of the most famous puzzle battle games on the Famicom platform.

These are the default keys. Click the gamepad icon 🎮 in the player’s bottom toolbar to rebind them. Gamepads are detected automatically. On phones you get on-screen buttons.

1P

2P

The NES was always two-player — 2P uses the numeric keypad, and NumLock does not matter. No numpad? Rebind 2P to other keys in the 🎮 panel.