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.

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.

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.

This is a game I got for free via the My Nintendo service aaaages ago (like, 8 years, according to my 3DS' time log XD) back when they still did gold points for games from time to time. I've had it sitting half-finished in my 3DS for ages, and after doing Super Mario's Picross a few weeks back, I figured why not go through and finally finish this off as well. It took me a total of 38 hours, according to my activity log, to beat all(?) 256 puzzles in the game.

Mario's Picross is one of Nintendo's first attempts to get Picross popular outside of Japan, and it didn't really catch on. That said, it's still a fine Picross game. It has 264 puzzles of 5x5, 10x10, and 15x15 sizes. 64 are beginner "Easy" Picross, then there's the larger and more difficult Mushroom and Star rank puzzles of which there are 64 each. These are standard puzzles where you have a 30 minute time limit and errors are corrected and subtract from your time. Then, when you beat all of those three sets, you unlock Time Trial mode.

Time Trial mode has you playing without error corrections and no time limit (like Wario's puzzles in the Super Famicom game), but with a bit of a twist. There is no level select for Time Trial mode. You just get another selected puzzle from the set of 64. I actually wasn't counting, and there's no way to know if you've actually done them all, but I played a LOT of time trial mode and eventually the puzzles started repeating, so I assume I've beaten them all? XD . At any rate, they very confusingly rank your best times against one another and you can enter your initials, which is pretty weird given some of those puzzles are much easier than others, so ranking the times against each other has no real point, but the random assortment (picked from the list of 64 of ones you haven't done yet) does give this a good deal of replayability if it's all you've got for a long car ride.

The downsides of this really come down to its age and its platform. For starters, the most obvious problem is that this is still in the age before the numbers you'd filled in were filled out automatically. What's even worse is that unlike the Super Famicom game, you can't even cross out those numbers yourself, so it's all counting in your head. Given that the biggest puzzles are 15x15, that isn't SUCH a huge problem, but it's still a pain. Then beyond that the limitation of the GameBoy's resolution meaning 15x15 is as big as the puzzles get is a little disappointing, but it's not a really big deal, and it helps the games go faster too.

The presentation is fine. There are a good assortment of puzzles of Mario things as well as all sorts of other objects (from the Grim Reaper to a Mario Mushroom to even a sake jug with the kanji for "sake" written on the side XD). There are no animations on the finished puzzles like the Super Famicom game, but that's really to be expected. The music is also not amazing and really forgettable, but it's Picross, so you could really always put on your own music or a podcast these days.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. The lack of QoL features compared to more modern Picross games makes this more of a difficult game to recommend than the SFC game. It's a good puzzle game for the GameBoy, but you're probably better off just going with a more modern Picross game given how cheap they are on the Switch (or even on your phone) compared to what you'll have to pay for this game. It's not a bad game, but age and the popularity of Picross haven't been very kind to this otherwise quite solid entry in digital puzzledom.

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

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

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.