Dr. Mario

Dr. Mario for Satellaview, commonly catalogued as Dr. Mario BS Version or Dr. Mario BS Ban, is Nintendo's Japan-only satellite broadcast edition of its color-matching puzzle series. First broadcast on March 30, 1997, it ran on the Satellaview add-on for the Super Famicom and was produced and published by Nintendo. Rather than a newly designed sequel, this release presents the Super Famicom-style Dr. Mario used in Tetris & Dr. Mario, adapting the familiar virus-clearing contest for Nintendo's downloadable broadcast service.

The action takes place inside a tall medicine bottle occupied by red, blue, and yellow viruses. Dr. Mario throws two-color vitamin capsules into the bottle, and the player guides each falling capsule left or right and rotates it to place its halves. A horizontal or vertical line of four matching colors clears the pieces in that line, whether they are viruses, vitamin halves, or a combination of both. Clearing a supporting piece can make capsule fragments fall, opening the way for follow-up matches.

Each single-player round is completed by removing every virus from the bottle before the stack of capsules blocks the narrow top. Players can select a starting level and falling speed, so a game can begin as a measured placement puzzle or become a faster test of recovery and planning. Careful positioning matters because mismatched capsule halves remain on the board and can either set up future clears or leave the bottle awkwardly crowded.

The Satellaview version also retains the competitive two-player format. Each competitor manages a separate bottle, racing to remove their viruses while trying to create strong clears and chain reactions. The underlying Dr. Mario design makes its rules easy to grasp—match colors in lines of four—while the changing arrangement of capsule colors and viruses keeps each board a problem to solve.

This is specifically the broadcast-era Super Famicom rendition, not the original 1990 NES or Game Boy release. Its graphics and music follow the Dr. Mario portion of Tetris & Dr. Mario, and its normal menu begins directly with Dr. Mario. The title returned in several Satellaview broadcast periods after its March 1997 debut, making it a small but distinctive part of Nintendo and St.GIGA's satellite-delivered Super Famicom library. Later broadcasts continued into 2000, when the Satellaview service itself came to an end.