picross
Picross, except this time it's small and your ears are gonna bleed.
What more do you need? It's picross.
What more do you need? It's picross.
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.
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 is picross. Not as enjoyable as picross with a touch screen IMO.
how'd they fit so many squares inside this big square, it just doesn't make sense
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.
It's doing absolutely nothing new with the formula, but if you like Picross, you'll like this.
As basic as Picross can be. Competent, but there are so many better options today, would not recommend this version for any reason.
It's a decent picross game but it lacks many QOL features and has a frustrating issue were the cursor sometimes ignores inputs.
foda
It's like picross, but it's clunky. One of the only things a puzzle game needs to do is have a good cursor. It's also pretty small too. But, it's picross. And I do love me some picross.
(Review from 2021) Good Picross game for its time, I think some aspects are a bit clunkier now but considering when it came out I think it’s great and I’m happy it held my interest as long as it did. The time penalty was an interesting way to incorporate solving it correctly
THE best timesink on the gameboy. hidden gamer trivia is that the final mode where they throw a ton of random picrosses at you is NOT endless and is NOT (i don't think) completely random. 100% completion... it can be done...
I literally spent 10 years on this
I love this puzzle game. I can pick it up and play it anytime.
Was on Star Puzzle #60 when my cartridge shorted and I lost my entire save file. Fml.
Lacks challenge
how'd they fit so many squares inside this big square, it just doesn't make sense
It's really hard to go wrong with Picross.
peak
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.
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.
i liked this game but i gotta say the last 16 or so levels are next level evil. just the most fucked up guesswork ever construed by the worlds top sociopath But other than that ilikegit🙂
Played on an emulator for a little while out of curiosity, either on my phone or my laptop, can't remember which. I like nonogram puzzles, and there's nothing wrong with this game, but with the large number of Picross titles available on Switch, I have no reason to return to this specific version of it.
It's picross. Not sure why it's Mario's, there are hardly any mario related pictures in it.
It's lacking any QoL. When you complete a number in a row or column, it doesn't get marked.
While it's possible to finish the puzzles without guessing, it does get very difficult. Some of them take up to 1 hour for me(especially starting with the time trials). Maybe I'm just bad. I stopped after 7 time trials.
There are 256 puzzles in total. They get more difficult as you progress. First puzzles will only take a couple of minutes or less, then it ramps up.
Not sure I can recommend this one, when there are so many more picross games. Nothing wrong with this one, and I was curious how it was, but it's probably a better idea to start from the newer titles and go backwards so you don't get burned out by playing the old ones.
It's lacking any QoL. When you complete a number in a row or column, it doesn't get marked.
While it's possible to finish the puzzles without guessing, it does get very difficult. Some of them take up to 1 hour for me(especially starting with the time trials). Maybe I'm just bad. I stopped after 7 time trials.
There are 256 puzzles in total. They get more difficult as you progress. First puzzles will only take a couple of minutes or less, then it ramps up.
Not sure I can recommend this one, when there are so many more picross games. Nothing wrong with this one, and I was curious how it was, but it's probably a better idea to start from the newer titles and go backwards so you don't get burned out by playing the old ones.