Mario's Picross

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The Mario Picross game for the Game Boy and Super Famicom is a collection of paint by numbers logic puzzles involving a grid with numbers for every row and column which refer to the amount of marked squares within the grid.

Since paint-by-numbers puzzles were popular in Japan but not North America, releasing the game in the US was a gamble, and ultimately not a very successful one. It is perhaps the most obscure Mario title to date, and is not usually classed as a true Mario game. Nintendo learning from thare failure did not release the sequels of the game, Mario's Super Picross and the Game Boy sequel Mario's Picross 2 in North America.

Gameplay

Each game is played against the clock. Opposing the picross tradition of black and white squares, the puzzles are set in stone and are picked out by Mario with a pick-axe type tool. The initial levels are smaller and a lot easier and are mainly Japanese symbols and Greek letters. When the player solves a puzzle correctly, the black-and-white representation becomes colored and animated, and the game tells the title of the puzzle. When the player finishes a section, Mario will congratulate him on his progress and bow.

The player must work through levels in order to get access to harder levels, with more rows and columns. In Mario's puzzles, if you mark the wrong cell, you will lose time. The amount of time doubles for every mistake (1 min, 2 min, 4, 8, and so on). In Wario's puzzles, the time counts up from zero, and no penalty is assessed for marking the incorrect cell. Because of this, Wario's puzzles are a little harder than Mario's.

Nintendo re-used the game engine in their Picross NP series. In the Picross NP series, players could decipher pictures of Pokémon, Star Fox and other game characters, as well as famous locations in Japan.

External links

[Mario's Picross] at MobyGames

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