Dr. Mario , released on 1990-07-27 , is an action-packed adventure game where you play as Dr. Mario, who must drop differently coloured pills onto viruses to remove them from the bottle. Each pill is split into two, with each side being of one of three different colours, red, blue or yellow. Align three pills of the same colour to a virus of the corresponding colour (or any combination of pills and viruses totaling four or more) and it will be removed from the bottle, along with the aligned pills.
The gameplay involves dropping pills onto the viruses in a Famicom cabinet-style layout. The goal is to clear the level by removing all the viruses, while avoiding letting the pills reach the top of the screen. In addition to the normal mode, there are options for time trial and a two-player battle mode.