UPDATE: The three games named below have now been added to Nintendo Switch Online. If you are subscribed and have the Game Boy app downloaded, you will receive a prompt to update to add these three games to your Switch console. The original article follows below.
Nintendo has revealed three Mario Game Boy games that will be added to Nintendo Switch Online, on the Game Boy app.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, all three games will be added to the Game Boy app tomorrow, March 12, 2024.
Dr. Mario for the Game Boy was released around the same time as the Famicom/NES version in 1990, and Nintendo made sure to follow this simultaneous release around the world. This was only one of Nintendo’s many takes on the Tetris formula, which they came up with after they licensed Tetris as a pack-in game for the Game Boy’s launch the year before.
Not everyone may love Dr. Mario, but it is one of the more enduring falling block games, after Tetris and Puyo Puyo. And between Yoshi, Yoshi’s Cookie, and Wario’s Woods, there was no lack of falling block games with the Mario license, but this is the only one among them that ended up having a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Perhaps the fact that it is comparatively easy, which some players dislike, is also the reason it endured longer than these other games.
Mario Golf for the Game Boy Color was released for months after the first Mario Golf released on the Nintendo 64, in 1999. Both were made by Camelot, establishing them as masters of the genre, and they would continue to be a great developer for Nintendo in the years to come.
The two Mario Golf games can connect with each other, but what may surprise gamers nowadays is that the Game Boy version is the deeper one. To justify its portably incarnation, Camelot gave it an RPG mode, which is of course the convention Camelot would make for their Mario sports games moving forward.
Camelot also made Mario Tennis, which also had Game Boy and Nintendo 64 versions released four months apart from each other, in 2000. Like Mario Golf, Mario Tennis also had an RPG mode that would give players reasons to keep playing it on the go long after they mastered the gameplay mechanics.
All three of these games will certainly have very limited looking graphics, that may not age well on an HD capable screen like on the Nintendo Switch, and especially blown up on a TV. But they are still worth trying out for the gameplay, which Nintendo designed at a time when they had to convince the world to embrace portable gaming, even to bring their games around the world. In any case, if you have a Switch Online subscription, you don’t have to pay more for them than you already did. So make sure to give one or all of these a try when you find the time.
