Dr. Mario Express is a
falling block tile-matching video game. The player is given a playing field, seen in the
Nintendo DSi's bottom screen, populated with viruses of three colors: red, blue, and yellow. Mario, who has assumed the role of a
doctor, drops two-colored medicinal
capsules into the playing field. The player manipulates these capsules as they fall, moving them left or right and rotating them such that they become aligned alongside viruses of matching colors. When four capsule halves and viruses of matching color are joined together in a straight line, they are removed from play. The main objective of the game therefore is to remove all the viruses from the playing field without letting the capsules themselves pile up and obstruct the opening into the field. Successive
levels increase the initial number of viruses to clear. The player is
scored based on the viruses cleared in conjunction with the current
game speed.
Dr. Mario Express also keeps track of the player's current
high score. While the game lacks
multiplayer support,
Dr. Mario Express offers a "VS CPU"
mode in which the player plays against a
computer-controlled player, which has its own playing field visible in the DSi top screen. The player's goal is to clear their playing field of all the viruses before the computer player does. The player will win the game upon eliminating all the viruses or if the other playing field fills up with capsules. ==Reception==