This Month in Retro January 2023
Hello all and welcome to the first This Month in Retro of the year! I hope you all had a great switch of the years and have made a bunch of nice resolutions to play even more Retro games. I definitely should at least... given that I can drop all the other games that keep me away from retro goodness. Anyway, enough about me. This month was pretty uneventful in the game industry as a whole, so I'm moving on straight to the games with a short announcement as well.
Going forward, every This Month in Retro will be shorter than we've been used to for the last few issues. I noticed that I've been pushing myself a bit too hard with trying to talk about like what, 15, 20 games? Several of which I'm not even familiar with at all? As much as I would like to talk about every interesting game, I simply don't have the time to do so, given how long it takes to research and write these. Besides, I'm probably not wrong in assuming not everyone has the time to read about all these games either, so it's a win-win situation... probably! Don't worry though, I will still list the more interesting games that I won't be talking about just to give you an idea still of what this month was about.
As for this issue, I'll only be focusing on the western releases. The Japanese-exclusive side was too dry for me to have almost anything to talk about, with the only noteworthy releases being Ganbare Goemon Gaiden: Kieta Ougon Kiseru for the Famicom, and Gaiflame and Atomic Robo-Kid Special for the TurboGrafx-16. As usual, I'll be covering the games with the critic and fan reception, as well as their legacy to this day, and a set if applicable. So without further ado, let's move on to the games!
I already slightly eluded to it, but the western side this month took it a bit slower compared to the month before where we had such massive hits as Donkey Kong Country. That's not to say that this month was complete drought though, as there were still somehow two Mario-related games released!
| Game |
|---|
 Tetris and Dr. Mario (SNES)
|
| Release dates | NA: December 30, 1994 |
| PAL: November 3, 2000 | |
| Sales | ??? |
| Average score | 87% (MobyGames, based on 7 reviews) |
What's better than one puzzle game? If your answer is two, then you are a genius. Tetris & Dr. Mario are enhanced remakes of the originals for the NES and Game Boy. Both games feature the same block- or pill-dropping gameplay beloved by puzzle fans all over the world, with the unique feature being the "mixed match" multiplayer mode. In this mode, two players have to play matches between both games interchangeably to end up with the most points at the end. If you only prefer one of the two games though, don't fret as there is still an independent multiplayer mode for both. Features from both the originals have been taken as well, such as the music and A/B-type modes from Game Boy Tetris. Suffice to say, for fans of both puzzle games this ended up being a really neat package, with the unique multiplayer mode getting the most praise. Fans are unsurprisingly in agreement since well... it's Tetris and Dr. Mario but better and in one package. It would be hard to mess this up, and fortunately, they didn't.
The achievement set covers both games and will test your skill in both to the max. After all, both puzzle games have higher difficulties and speed, and you won't be getting the mastery if you can't beat either while enduring multiple matches back to back.
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