Dr. Mario is a puzzle game published by Nintendo on the Famicom, NES, VS Unisystem, Game Boy, Super Famicom, Satellaview, Super NES, and Nintendo 64. The music was composed by Hirokazu 'Hip' Tanaka.

The game features a medical theme. Mario must seek to stop the spread of a deadly disease. Little cartoon viruses are floating inside a playfield of 8x16 squares (8x15 in the Game Boy version). Two-sided vitamin capsules fall slowly from the top of the bottle. Use the game controller to move and rotate the capsules so that four items (viruses or capsule halves) of the same color are contiguous in a row or column. With skillful play, you can set it up so that capsule halves created after a combination create new four-in-a-row combinations. There's also an addictive deathmatch mode, where players can use chain reactions to attack their opponent.

Dr. Mario was the first non-action Mario game in which the Mario character was neither controllable nor playable. Initially some fans called the game Mario 4, as it was the first Mario game to be released after Super Mario Bros. 3. The resulting debate over "what counts" as a Mario game may have resulted in the decision to name the next Mario action game simply Super Mario World.

Today the games is widely remembered by many people for the "Fever" music, which featured in Super Smash Bros. Melee, along with the Dr. Mario character.

U.S. Patent 5,265,888 covers Dr. Mario, but as of 2004, Nintendo has not enforced it against amateur software developers.

Article based on http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=551043

External links

• U.S. Patent 5,265,888 (http://164.195.100.11/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,265,888.WKU.&OS=PN/5,265,888&RS=PN/5,265,888)