(Completed via Nintendo Switch Online)
Dr. Mario for Game Boy is an impressive port of the NES original, successfully translating a pretty fun puzzle game to an on the go experience being practically a 1:1 identical with the original. The only real difference here is the lack of colour as it had been released for Game Boy and not the later Game Boy Colour - the viruses and pills are now all black and white. This does lose a slight bit of life, but doesn't affect the game's playability. The music sounds just as good as the NES version, with no real noticeable downgrade.
To "complete" the game, like its NES counterpart, you have to beat Levels 1 - 20 on High difficulty - where you'll get a cutscene per 5 levels. After Level 20, the cutscenes stop. The cutscenes in the console version are much better, in my opinion, as there's more going on - they're not worth playing this version to view. Additionally, after Level 20 the game starts to become extremely hard, to the point it almost seems impossible to continue, so while you can go further than Level 20 to increase scores, it was clearly intended as the "end goal". I found it hard to get to Level 20 even with the save states and rewind of NSO, it makes me wonder how you'd ever get to this point on original hardware. I played through the game to Level 20 on High mode, but foregoed Low and Medium as you only get one cutscene in these difficulties and it isn't much different from the High cutscenes.
Dr. Mario was a very impressive port for its time, but today, it's just not worth playing over the NES version or any other iteration of Dr. Mario. For this reason, while you'll have fun with it, I've decided to give it a fair middle point of three stars. It's especially baffling that Nintendo had rushed to put this one on the Switch Online service before other, more important Mario games, such as Super Mario Land and Wario Land 1 & 2, as it's the same exact experience as the NES version available on the service long before this one.
Dr. Mario for Game Boy is an impressive port of the NES original, successfully translating a pretty fun puzzle game to an on the go experience being practically a 1:1 identical with the original. The only real difference here is the lack of colour as it had been released for Game Boy and not the later Game Boy Colour - the viruses and pills are now all black and white. This does lose a slight bit of life, but doesn't affect the game's playability. The music sounds just as good as the NES version, with no real noticeable downgrade.
To "complete" the game, like its NES counterpart, you have to beat Levels 1 - 20 on High difficulty - where you'll get a cutscene per 5 levels. After Level 20, the cutscenes stop. The cutscenes in the console version are much better, in my opinion, as there's more going on - they're not worth playing this version to view. Additionally, after Level 20 the game starts to become extremely hard, to the point it almost seems impossible to continue, so while you can go further than Level 20 to increase scores, it was clearly intended as the "end goal". I found it hard to get to Level 20 even with the save states and rewind of NSO, it makes me wonder how you'd ever get to this point on original hardware. I played through the game to Level 20 on High mode, but foregoed Low and Medium as you only get one cutscene in these difficulties and it isn't much different from the High cutscenes.
Dr. Mario was a very impressive port for its time, but today, it's just not worth playing over the NES version or any other iteration of Dr. Mario. For this reason, while you'll have fun with it, I've decided to give it a fair middle point of three stars. It's especially baffling that Nintendo had rushed to put this one on the Switch Online service before other, more important Mario games, such as Super Mario Land and Wario Land 1 & 2, as it's the same exact experience as the NES version available on the service long before this one.