Dr. Mario | Cheerful Ghost

Nintendo Announces Dr Mario World Game on Mobile

Nintendo is partnering up with mobile developer LINE to make a new entry in the Dr. Mario series for mobile called Dr. Mario World. We do know that the game will support iOS and Android and be free to play with in-app purchases. As a long-time fan of Dr. Mario this is great news and if LINE can translate the awesome puzzler elements to phones Dr. Mario World could be a perfect fit. I'm still very curious how the Mario Kart free to play smartphone game will turn out that's coming out this year and am optimistic about that but if i'm being honest, Dr. Mario seems like a better fit to me. After the amazing success of Mario Kart 8 and then 8 Deluxe on the Switch a... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 02/01/2019 at 03:31am

I'll check out Mario Kart and Dr. Mario on mobile, but as soon as I hit a wall where I have to wait for a recharge or pay microtransactions to keep playing I'll uninstall them.

However if that's how they're planning to monetize it, if they have the opportunity to buy the game outright and skip the free-to-play trappings I'll buy it if it's fun. Super Mario Run is probably my favorite mobile game of all time, and I gladly payed $10 for it and would do the same for these if the option is there and I won't have other microtransaction blocks.

Travis Admin wrote on 02/01/2019 at 03:50am

That's pretty much my rule for any mobile game.

1. Play it
2. Have I hit any artificial progress blocks that I *must* pay microtransactions or wait to continue? If so, uninstall
3. If there are microtransaction blocks but you can pay a one time fee to move past them, is the price worth it for the fun? If not, uninstall
4. If I have gotten this far, I let the game sit for 24 hours and if I kinda don't care about playing it, I just uninstall and forget about it.

I know the gems/coins/other fake currency to get past wait timers is like the bread and butter of mobile free-to-play games but I'd take loot boxes over that predatory crap any day, and you know how I feel about loot boxes.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 02/01/2019 at 03:51am

Yeah, I do.

I think it could be a lot like Candy Crush or Bejeweled Blitz you have some kind of energy and can wait or pay to continue. It's not too bad and usually if you play it for a handful of minutes it's fine. I played a bit of Bejeweled that way and it wasn't bad at all.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 02/01/2019 at 05:11pm

I am hopeful. I agree with you @Travis, Super Mario Run is one of my all time favorite mobile games. Well worth the $10.

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Portland Retro Game Expo 2016 - VHS, a Broken NES & The Retron 3

Portland Retro Game Expo is a mecca for retro game lovers. This year we had a booth a the convention and ran four NES speedrun and score tournaments. Packie was the overall tournament master by winning two of our contests starting with his blistering 2 minute 04 second Super Mario Brothers 1-4 speedrun. Packie then ended the convention by absolutely demolishing our Dr. Mario score tournament with a score of 334,400! His Dr Mario ability was incredible and i've never really seen anything like his setup and execution of combos. Ben won Papers, Please on Steam for his 1 minute 26 second speedrun of Super Mario Brothers 3 to the first Toad House. Philly won our RC Pro AM... Read All Portland Retro Game Expo is a mecca for retro game lovers. This year we had a booth a the convention and ran four NES speedrun and score tournaments. Packie was the overall tournament master by winning two of our contests starting with his blistering 2 minute 04 second Super Mario Brothers 1-4 speedrun. Packie then ended the convention by absolutely demolishing our Dr. Mario score tournament with a score of 334,400! His Dr Mario ability was incredible and i've never really seen anything like his setup and execution of combos. Ben won Papers, Please on Steam for his 1 minute 26 second speedrun of Super Mario Brothers 3 to the first Toad House. Philly won our RC Pro AM score tournament with a incredible final score of 18,658! I want to thank everyone that took part in our contests as each was unique to watch and some were won on the edge of a knife, or in this case a controller.

As Adam and I were preparing for our booth this year we identified early on that we wanted to run a few NES tournaments and I realized that the best way to do that was to get an old CRT TV. After looking at some options I decided that getting a TV/VCR combo seemed like the coolest option as I haven't owned a VCR in well more than a decade. As I scoured the local Goodwill and other second hand stores I also noticed how cheap VHS films were and that it might be fun to start a small collection. Between each tournament we played a couple VHS films such as Tron and Back to the Future and people seemed to really like that. Besides showing a few films between our tournaments I also had a few movies out on the table I was showing and more than a couple times people seemed interested in buying them. I didn't know there was even a small market for VHS films but I suppose a retro game convention would be the place to pick them up if you wanted to.

After our first NES tournament my childhood NES we were running the tournaments on stopped working. I was really upset as this NES had been with me since I got it for Christmas from my Grandparents back in the early 90's. Having your NES break at a retro game convention is pretty fortunate but I wasn't ready to pull the trigger on getting a new one quite yet but we had to continue the tournaments. In the end I decided on picking up a Retron 3 and that worked out really well. The Retron 3 not only plays NES games but it also accepts SNES and Genesis carts. We continued our NES tournaments without a hitch and I was surprised at how incredible the Retron worked with my existing NES games and controllers. After the convention was over I set it up with the TV in my office and played some of the games I picked up at the convention such as Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam on Genesis. Apparently Sega Genesis games are much cheaper than the SNES counterparts because collectors seem to prefer the Super Nintendo. Whereas I think the Super Nintendo does indeed have better colors and sound the Genesis ports of games are extremely solid and I have been having a blast playing Mortal Kombat on it. So much so that I plan on doing a formal review in the upcoming weeks on what I think of the game and my thoughts on the Genesis port.

I want to thank everyone that checked out the booth at this years Portland Retro Game Expo and hopefully we will be able to do it next year. We are already planning on attending and have some ideas on how to make it better but if you have ideas, i'd love to hear them.

If you are interested in seeing more of the convention you can hit the link on some pictures I took in an imgur album below:

http://imgur.com/a/YwFQk

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 11/02/2016 at 06:01am

That sounds awesome! Well, except that your NES failed you. I hope it's not dead. Nintendo used to have places you could take it for repairs, up until a few (or more) years ago that is. I never heard of the Retron 3, but it sounds amazing! I have an extremely small library of NES and SNES carts. I know exactly where my NES is (I think I got it around 13 years ago, maybe more), but I have no idea what happened to the SNES I had.

This event sounds and even looks totally awesome. I can imagine majorly geeking out there!

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 11/02/2016 at 03:04pm

This was such a great experience. I've gone to the expo for the past few years as just an attendee, but when Jon asked if I could help out at the booth, I jumped at the chance.

This is such a great convention as there's so much to do and everyone is incredibly friendly. People really do come from all over the country, so everyone had an interesting perspective.

The game competitions we ran blew me away. The combos Packers was pulling out on Dr. Mario... I honestly thought he was messing up, until he started nailing multiple-stage combos (he'd clear 8-10 viruses at a time... I can't adequately describe how much it blew my mind). The speed running competitions we're amazing as well. The precision some players had was astounding. I think I learned a thing or two, but would need to practice forever to even get close to the fastest times.

I got to talk to people about Cheerful Ghost, but I wish I had talked more about the site. The competitions took up the majority of Jon's and my attention lol. Next year I hope to be able to talk CG up more.

All around it was a great couple days. Thank you Jon for letting me be a part of it! I already can't wait for next year!

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 11/02/2016 at 06:23pm

How does the retron 3 feel with inserting and pulling out carts? I read some comments on the 5 that it felt like it was going to break them.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/02/2016 at 08:26pm

Will: Yep, it really does clamp on to them hard. It didn't seem to harm them but I wonder how that would work longer term?

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 11/02/2016 at 09:31pm

I think it would be fun to try to build something similar to a retron... Maybe with a raspberry pi? Have an emulator that runs on the pi, then have a device of sorts that takes the carts, plus some retro controller to usb functionality.

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GOOOOOOAAAALLL! Epic Dr. Mario Win!

Dr. Mario is one of my favoriate puzzle games and this video is an epic way to kick off Retro Tuesday! I sort of wonder if this video was an epic setup or just a random happening? Regardless, its fun to watch. Oh and stick with it until the end, thats when it goes straight to awesomeville!

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 10/17/2012 at 10:23pm

That was pretty awesome. To bad he doesn't get points for all that.

vdogmr25 wrote on 10/18/2012 at 05:41pm

I wish I was half as skilled as this person.

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 10/18/2012 at 09:20pm

Vdog, this may be important part for you to notice. His video says TAS. TAS stands for Tool-Assisted Speedrun. It means he played on an emulator and he saved and reloaded until he had 100% perfection on every part. He also can do things like slow the game to and absolute crawl. TAS is still challenging and it's not cheating because there's a pretty big following of TAS on SNES games.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/18/2012 at 09:30pm

Assisted... That makes sense. The person had a ton of time to line up all the pills just right. Still, not shabby either way.

vdogmr25 wrote on 10/18/2012 at 10:13pm

Ahh, good to know. That makes a lot more sense.

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 10/19/2012 at 04:42am

For some insight on exactly how helpful TAS is. Check out some TAS runs of megaman. They get every single shot perfectly through the whole level. They make it look so smooth and the bosses look like a joke. Of course this is they save. Check where monster is. Shoot like 10 different ways til they one shot him. Then start recording again (it doesnt show a pause) and it'll show him making impossible feats.

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 10/19/2012 at 04:44am

It actually takes a lot longer. Still a lot of time invested. For this mario thing to work. He literally needed to record and play the whole level over like 9 times. Til he knew every single color that comes out. To perfectly line up each color he wanted. This probably took him ages with the amount of color manipulation and positioning.

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