In June of 1995, a puzzle game was released for the Gameboy known as Mario's Picross. It's a puzzle game that truly tests your mind. How is this game compared to other puzzle games  such as Tetris on Gameboy? I'll tell you what I think by making this review.

Graphics: 7/10 The visuals for Mario's Picross are alright for a gameboy game. Mario looks the way you'd expect him to, and the grids are sized perfectly. When it comes to a game like this, those aspects are the most important part about the visuals. Compared to other games on the system though, it doesn't compare to Pokemon or Link's Awakening, but the graphics are still good enough for me to give this category a 7.

Sound: 3/10 This is the category where Mario's Picross falters. The music in the game gets extremely repetitive and doesn't have any memorability, unlike the gameboy classic Tetris. I've heard far worse gameboy soundtracks before, but that doesn't change the fact that this game could've had much better music. I'm giving the sound a 3 because this soundtrack is definitely not the worst I've heard on the gameboy.

Addictiveness: 8/10 Mario's Picross offers addicting puzzles that'll make you want to keep playing until you've completed the game. When you've completed all the puzzles, there's a time trial mode that gives players a good reason to keep playing even when they've completed every puzzle. Overall, Mario's Picross offers a good amount of replay value. Good enough for me to give this category an 8.

Story: N/A Mario's Picross doesn't have a story, therefore I'm leaving this category blank.

Depth: 8/10 This game has several different game modes: there's easy, Kinoko, Star, and Time Trial, with a grand total of 256 puzzles to complete. There's enough content here to keep you occupied for many hours. Overall, this is the perfect gameboy game for a person who loves puzzle games that require serious brain power. For these reasons, I'm giving the depth an 8.

Difficutly: 8/10 Mario's Picross is one of the more challenging gameboy games you'll come across. In each puzzle, there's numbers listed on each row and column. You must chip at the blocks by the number that's listed, for example, if the number's 5, you clear 5 consecutive blocks. If there's another number in that row or column, then you need to space out and clear however many blocks the other number says. This gets more and more complicated as the game goes on, so it's one of the tougher games on the system. Overall, there's enough toughness for me to give this category an 8.

Overall Score: 7.5/10 Mario's Picross is one of the better puzzle games you'll find on the gameboy. It has a great number of puzzles to complete, some good game modes like time trial mode that give the game replayability, and it provides a great challenge. If it weren't for the bad music, I would've given this game a slightly higher score. Overall, Mario's Picross is worthy of a 7.5 out of 10 from me.

I never got into Mario's Picross and have only played it a handful of times. It just wasn't a game that I was too interested in back when it came out. I've heard some people say some good things about the game overall though. With such a huge library of games out for the system it's easy for games to get lost in the mix.

Jordanv78 : Yeah, there's tons of great gameboy games out there, and there are better ones out there than Mario's Picross, so I can see why you didn't buy it when it came out.

Damn, how do you know about all these releases? I am jealous .

Anyway this was another fine review of yours. You gave as many details as possible for such a game, which are usually not numerous (my Tetris review had less than 800 words). However I would have liked to know what makes the music so bad: short loops? simple arrangements? It is just bleeps and boops? But it is still worthy of a 4.

janus : lol! I guess I'm well informed lol!

Anyways, I'm glad you liked this review. I thought about adding more details to the sound category, but nothing was coming to my head. I didn't want to try to force myself to write more than what I thought was necessary. Still, I kinda do wish I could've written for that category.

I haven't played this game before, I should try it out!

Puzzle games are difficult to review in my opinion so I'm impressed with the length of this review. Having a time trial mode on this game sounds pretty cool. Like janus mentioned you should have gone into more detail with the sound, but aside from that, nice job!