Doctor – Dr. Mario

Dr. Mario seems innocent enough from a gameplay perspective. Simply match the coloured capsules and defeat the viruses. From an ethical perspective though, it’s unbelievable. You have Mario, who clearly has no doctor’s license, simply feeding pills of any kind in the hope that something, anything will kill the viruses. It’s like a twisted game to him…which would explain a lot.

As Nintendo continues to make its classic NES content available to subscribers of Nintendo Switch Online, we have come to expect a few new surprises along with the previously announced lineup of games we know we will be getting on the service. The last time, it was a special variant of the NES Legend of Zelda game. This time around, it’s a special version of the classic puzzle game Dr. Mario, as well as of the original Metroid.

But first, let’s look at the three games that were already announced for this month for subscribers, and which are now available—the NES Ninja Gaiden, Wario’s Woods, and Adventures of Lolo. All three can be accessed from the NES app, as can be Dr. Mario and Metroid’s special versions. The former starts you at Level 20 at Hi Speed, while the later gives you all of Samus’ abilities, and puts you right before the Ridley fight.

Those are some nice surprises, and a nice new way to approach these otherwise dated classic games that have now been played so many times by a lot of players that they have lost their ability to surprise.

Nintendo held a Nintendo ‘Micro’ Direct for western territories today, without any advance notice or warning, and for such a low profile broadcast, they actually managed to make a fair few number of important announcements. These included more information on games that had been previously announced, such as Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon and Mario and Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, new game announcements, such as confirmation of Bravely Second coming to the west in 2016, confirmation of LBX for the 3DS launching in the west, and confirmation of Dr. Mario on 3DS launching in the west.

It included new news for games that have already launched, including Puzzle & Dragons Z + Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros. Edition getting new content weekly starting today, and Splatoon getting a new map and new weapon, as well as Ranked Battle, starting today.

You can check out the full Nintendo Micro Direct for yourself above, via the embedded video. It looks like Nintendo is getting all the minor announcements out of the way now, ahead of E3, where they might be dropping some major new bombs. We’ll keep you posted on everything. Stay tuned.