Mario's Picross

Mario Picross was the first picross game to hit international markets, and was also the last one for quite a while. The game sold poorly in the US and Europe, and so no picross games were released outside of Japan until 2007's Picross DS. In Japan however, this game received a direct sequel for the Game Boy in 1996, as well as a total of nine versions for the Super Nintendo, all featuring similar gameplay but different puzzles.

The puzzles in picross are what are called nonagrams, named for their original inventor, Non Ishida. The puzzles are laid out on a blank grid, with numbers along the top and left sides telling you how many of the grid squares should be filled in a row, with multiple seperate numbers indicating seperate groups of filled spaces. Once complete, the filled squares will form a picture of some sort, though in this game some imagination is needed at times due to the limited size.

Mario Picross in particular gives the whole game an archaeology theme to the interface, with puzzles described as ancient pictograms that must be decoded, and with marks being made by a hammer and chisel on a stone tablet. The game provides 192 puzzles initially, with 64 being labeled easy and being either 5x5 or 10x10 in size. Another 128 are 15x15 in size, and are organized into two courses, labeled kinoko and star. Once you've completed all of these puzzles, you will unlock time trial mode, which contains the final 64 puzzles, and has slightly different rules. In normal mode you are given 30 minutes to complete the puzzle, and every mistake you make knocks an increasing amount of time off your counter. In time trial mode however, there is no time limit, and the game won't tell you when you've made a mistake. This mode sounded interesting to me when I first heard about it, as the time limit does kinda bug me sometimes, but now that I've played it, the lack of any feedback does leave me feeling a bit lost. I guess I just need to get better at picross before I play it.

There's not a lot more to say about this game, it's not incredibly deep but it's still very fun, a great game to pass time or to relax with. Definitely a game I would recommend playing if you're looking for some relaxing puzzle time.