This is truly the Year of Luigi. Today saw Nintendo releasing their latest Nintendo Direct Video, the place where the company announces their latest titles. One of the biggest surprises was undeniably Dr. Luigi, the follow-up to the classic NES puzzle game Dr. Mario.
Released in 1990 and designed by Gunpei Yokoi (the inventor of the D-pad!), Dr. Mario is easily one of the greatest puzzle games of all time. Like Tetris and other classics its beauty is in its combination of simplicity and depth- anyone can pick it up and figure out how to match colored pills to destroy same-colored germs, but you can really become an expert in it as well. The soundtrack by Hirokazu Tanaka amassed nearly as much acclaim as the game and now just thinking about it I know the tunes are going to be stuck in my head the rest of the week. While there hasn't been a sequel to the game since its release those many years ago there's been ports and remakes for every single Nintendo system since. Most recently a version of the game with updated visuals and online multiplayer was released for the Wii's Virtual Console, Dr. Mario Online RX.
But now it's Luigi's turn!
As you'll see in the video below, the biggest change to the game is the addition of L-shaped capsules .Basically two capsules stuck together, this changes up the entire mode of play and makes things that much hard to match up. Now when you play Versus mode against a friend you can mess with them in different ways. In Dr. Mario when you made a combo it would drop single pill pieces on their board and block things off, but now it will change the color of their next pills at the very last second, making them scramble to find a new place for it.
This is going to be the last game of the much-touted Year of Luigi, although Nintendo promises to make the lesser brother a priority the next year as well. Luigi has definitely done pretty well for himself in 2013, starring or having major roles in a number of games. His appearance in Super Luigi U remixed New Super Mario Bros. U, and increased the challenge of that already-great game, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon is one of the top games for 3DS and a worthy follow-up to the underrated Luigi's Mansion, and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is the perfect continuation of the fantastic RPG series.
There's not much you have to do to Dr. Mario since it's already a near-perfect puzzler but these new modes look like they complement the game nicely, and any game that features the green brother is ok with me. Anyone who can't get enough of Luigi should tak a look at the special Luigi's Mansion figurine Nintendo will be offering exclusively through Club Nintendo early next year.
Dr. Luigi will hit the Nintendo eShop store for Wii U on December 31st and cost you $14.99. What better way could there be to ring in the new year?
