Despite Mario (and later, Wario) serving as hosts, this game isn't really for puzzles of things from the Mario universe. Rather, it's just a bunch of standard Picross puzzling going on here. There's a pretty substantial number of puzzles, in fact, and some of the later ones become quite fiendish. Most of them do a little animation after solving, which gives things a nice little flourish. It's totally playable even if you can't read the Japanese. This was a pleasant surprise for me on NSO.

not much mario, but picross is picross

not much mario in the puzzles themselves which is a bit of a shame. still a fun picross collection tho

Mario throws absolute shade towards Wario's puzzles which is wild considering how much of a strickler Mario feels with his time limit and sad sound effect when you break a wrong tile whereas Wario's just here to chill out with a hard-as-nails puzzle that you can accidentally mark a piece you didn't mean to as much as you like. chalk another one up for Mario being the worst character in his own universe

Picross is fun, Mario is love, put them together and you have Mario's Picross. Music is comfy and catchy, though some songs are way better than others. Both game modes are great; Mario's levels have more room for trial and error with respectably difficult puzzles, while Wario's levels don't track your mistakes, making the puzzle solving considerably difficult but satisfying to complete. Even if I never complete all the levels in this game, I can certainly say I am a picross fan thanks to it.

Played on an emulator on my phone, as well as Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online. I like nonogram puzzles, and there's nothing wrong with this game, but with the large number of Picross titles available on Switch, I have no reason to return to this specific version of it.