Superb PC remake of Nintendo's Dr. Mario, an inventive Tetris clone. Your goal in this game is to eliminate all the little germs in the bottle by matching the color of your pills to the color of the germs. You need four in a row of the same color to make it all evaporate, so if you manage to get three reds in a row, with a red germ on the end, the pill and germ disappear. Like Nintendo's classic puzzler, Dr. Rudy is challenging and addictive. The most annoying "problem" you will discover is the odd germ at the bottom that becomes virtually impossible to reach once dozens of different-colored pills are piled on top of it. But to most Tetris fans including myself, this is just one of the things that make the game more challenging than simple Tetris clones. Compared to Mean Bean Machine 2000, the other Dr. Mario clone reviewed on this site, Dr. Rudy offers less pretty graphics but more faithful gameplay. The option to choose game speed is a big plus, although it doesn't work correctly on my Pentium IV. All in all, a very nice falling blocks game that is worthy of every fan's collection. One interesting anecdote: the game was released as "freeware," yet you need to send the author $10 to unlock the hotseat 2-player mode. Must be one of the few shareware games in existence that try to disguise the fact ;) Fortunately the one-player mode is enough to keep you occupied - but please let us know if you have the registered version. Reviewed by: Underdogs |