I'm probably the only person who thinks this, but the beginning of the title screen music sounds like a coked up shark is sneaking up on me to shank my ass.

Mario's Picross really shocked me, I actually completely forgot it existed on Game Boy for the longest time. The amount of content here is astounding, I've been playing it for about two weeks now for like an hour before going to sleep and it doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon! The controls unfortunately do feel a bit laggy, I was ready to blame it squarely on my 10+ year old DS being shit, but I guess the combo of both is why my cursor sometimes feels delayed at times. Otherwise though, this a surprisingly fun picross title for the Game Lad!

Wholly recommended! It's only fifty whole didgeridoos for an American copy! Maybe by 2026 we'll see this game on Switch finally!

Oh boy, it’s Picross! Was this the first outing, or was that something that came before? I’m not super sure, but this is a good puzzle game. I bought this to scratch that Picross itch and it did not disappoint… up until I hit the time attack, anyway. I don’t like that it tosses a random puzzle at you every time instead of giving you a list to work through! I understand it was probably due to system limitations but I like to put puzzles I’m having trouble with down for a while to work on other ones, and I can’t do that with this setup! It’s a thing that was fixed later at least.

Em casos como o desse jogo, é sempre bom pensar que ele talvez seja um produto de sua época, que o Game Boy não conseguiria dar uma experiência tão boa quanto um 3DS ou um Switch, e eu relevo várias das coisas nesse ponto.

Mas dito isso, hoje em dia, ele não é lá o melhor jogo de Picross pra jogar... Os puzzles são meio estranhos (seja pelos picos malucos de dificuldade, seja pela simetria de 80% dos desenhos que quebra um pouco da graça do puzzle), seja pelo limite de tempo e pelas punições absurdas.

Picross é sempre bom, mas se você tem um videogame moderno pra jogar, não precisa voltar tão longe pro Game Boy não.

For what it is, it’s fine and fun, and a nice first entry in Nintendo’s Picross series.

It just doesn’t compare at all to its sequels. It won’t have as many puzzles, and they’re pretty basic whilst also being unnecessarily cryptic by the end of the game. Lots of guessing involved, and that’s not great for a game like this. It also doesn’t help that you can’t mark the numbers of the completed tiles, and the cursor kind of lags sometimes, which can ruin your run if you’re short on the remaining time.

It’s all doable though, and you’ll find enough fun in this one, but make sure you check out Mario’s Super Picross for the Super Famicom and Picross 2 (also for the Game Boy, Japan-only though) after you’re done with this. Especially the latter.

Let's get this one thing out of the way first. This game does not relate to Mario at all and is more so used for marketing purposes. But after you play this, I doubt you'll care, because Mario's Picross is a great puzzle game

Picross (otherwise known as Nonograms) are picture logic puzzles in which squares on a grid are filled in or left blank to match numeric clues at the side of the grid to reveal a hidden picture. Let's take a 5 x 5 grid for example. There's a 5 on top of the left side of the grid and another 5 on the top left; these can easily be filled in as that is the maximum length and width of the grid. With me so far? Let's say there's a 3 1 on the left side of the grid for instance; you must fill in 3, skip 1 and then fill in the one on the end. This may seem a bit complex, but the game offers an excellent tutorial showing you the ropes of how to play picross

Once you clear the tutorial, you'll be thrown into the main attraction containing three courses which are Easy Picross, Kinoko, and Star course. Each course will ramp up in difficulty and the difficulty curve is not that bad. The game has three sets of grids; 5x5, 10x10, and 15x15. The main game has a time limit of 30 minutes, which may not seem all too bad if you don't screw up. If you chisel in the wrong tile, you'll lose time, and if it hits 0, it's game over and you have to start again. You can use a hint that'll give you the correct tile from one column and row, but personally, I think it's fun without using the hints, but there's no shame in using one if you get stuck. Figuring out a tricky puzzle on your own and chiseling in the right squares is oh-so-satisfying. Sure, you can say that for a lot of puzzle games, but picross is different. Once I cleared 10+ puzzles, I was instantly hooked and wanted to do more

If you dig the mechanics, you'll get a lot of mileage with Mario's Picross. There are 192 main puzzles, and while I enjoyed clearing them all, it does get a bit exhausting when you're halfway done with the Star Course. There is also an additional 64 puzzles for the Time Trial mode, which makes it a total of 256. In this mode, you have no timer, no penalties for your mistakes, and no hints available. I haven't done much of these, and while I like the change of pace after doing the timed ones, it can be stressful figuring out which one is correct without any penalties, at least in my opinion

Mario's Picross is a great puzzle game that more people should experience. It's really addictive, and it's a shame that it sold poorly outside of Japan. Since the 3DS eShop is about to close and Nintendo is slowly offering Game Boy games to the Nintendo Switch Online service, I think it'll be great to add this game to the service since they added Mario's Super Picross, a game that was never released outside of Japan until much later. If you have this game on a Game Boy, 3DS, or an emulator, I highly recommend you try this game out

Have you ever played a game where you wished there were less content?

Mario's Picross is that. I enjoyed my time a lot, and Picross still gets me hooked, but I'm starting to feel like it's less of genuine enjoyment and more of an obsession of seeing boxes filled and checked.
I also don't actually enjoy the time limit system, and I felt like some of the puzzles near the end were a bit too dependent on either educated guessing or using the hint system which I didn't use.

Of course, this was a full price game intended to be completed over a longer period of time, I'm sure, and grinding through it over roughly a week probably didn't help...

I never heard about picross before. I found out about it here on Backloggd and got interested, so I played this. It's a solid puzzle game.

I got addicted when I started playing it because I loved right away the concept of picross. The game does an amazing job teaching you how to play it and overall is very easy. This game is divided in three sections of 64 levels each: easy, less easy and medium. Don't expect a challenge.

Each level has to be completed in under thirty minutes and every mistake takes some minutes away from the timer. If I'm not mistaken, you can make up to four mistakes because the fifth takes all the time left. It's an interesting concept to make the game less boring and it worked well for me.

The main problem is the screen. It ended up being compact to fit all the numbers and the 15x15 grid, which can make it a bit harder to play properly. Also, they should've added a small grid for the numbers in front of the rows, it would be much appreciated.

There's not much else to say I think. It's a cool puzzle game but I'm sure there are better ways to play picross than on a Game Boy. I had a good time and only recommend Mario's Picross if you're curious about it.

It's lacking a lot of the convenient quality of life flourishes in most modern Picross games, and it's never particularly difficult, but there's something extremely charming about its breezy gameplay fitting perfectly in a handheld format. I played through this over the course of a month on an emulation handheld, and booting up to an autosave and doing a puzzle or two each night before bed was a perfect way to unwind.

It's doing absolutely nothing new with the formula, but if you like Picross, you'll like this.

Completion: Completed all 256 picross puzzles, including every single random Time Trial puzzle.

Review: Originally got this game on the 3DS Virtual Console as a kid. Remember playing it a bit on long car rides, but never beat it. Been getting back into some picross games, and thought this would be a fun one to come back to and finally beat. It was simple and fun, but there was a noticeable lack of Mario/Nintendo themed puzzles from what I was expecting. The Time Trial was a pretty neat unlockable mode, and as a speedrunner, really hooked me into trying to get some really fast completions. If you like simple picross games, this one is definitely enjoyable. Does take a long time to unlock the fun Time Trial mode though.

Proof of Completion

There is so much fucking content here, so I'm writing my review after finishing the Kinoko courses. I know that's bad practice, but I know it's just gonna be more of the same but harder that I'll get to eventually. I understand the game well enough by this point.

Being a successful puzzle game on a portable seems like a cheat code for developers and publishers. Tetris is Tetris on every platform, Sudoku is Sudoku on every platform, and Picross is Picross on every platform. It was always gonna be good because Picross is always good.

The only nitpick I have with the game is one QoL aspect that's missing. I wish there was an option to mark or fill in an entire row/column instead of doing it one by one, though I'm sure that's addressed in newer versions of the game. There also could've been more Mario characters, but that's really nothing. Otherwise, I can't think of much bad to say.

You'll enjoy this game as much as you enjoy Picross. I happen to really like it.