New Flash! Super Smash Bros.: Dr. Mario

Hello! We are working very hard on translating the Melee website. We decided to ramp up our translation focus on the character introduction pages in order to give everyone a better picture of Melee, and its character. Special thanks to soma for providing assistance with this translation.

All comments were originally written by Sakurai himself. You can see Sakurai’s individual picture comments by hovering your mouse over the image. Originally pictures were given their own page, but for the sake of brevity I combined them. The original page can be accessed here.

Dr. Mario:
Updated: January 1st, 2002

Among the clone characters, Dr. Mario was created with the concept of “the parts that aren’t different are the parts that are different.”

In Smash, I always include “unique traits that only this character has.” That goes for clone characters as well.

For clones, even if I can’t change the special moves or the animations, I can change some attributes and make them play differently from the original characters.

However, because Dr. Mario actually is the same person as Mario, I can’t make the differences too extreme. Just because he got a new outfit doesn’t make him run twice as fast, or jump half as high. That would be weird.

But then, on the other hand, I thought “if there was a character that was pretty close to his original, would people be able to make good use of those slight differences?”
In reality, I think there will be two camps, where people are split between Mario and Dr. Mario being “basically the same,” and being “completely different.”
(The people in the latter camp are probably the people who really gotten into this game)

Dr. Mario also has the distinct job of being a doctor, so maybe when you play with other people you’ll start making some doctor puns? Do your best to properly diagnose your enemies.

Another reason I wanted to include Dr. Mario was because I thought “I want to have Dr. Mario’s music in Smash.”
We’ll revisit that reason someday…

Unlock criteria:
Beat Classic mode with Mario with no continues.
Alternatively, play 100 VS matches.

(Images taken during development)

1. He’s a doctor! Dr. Mario appears.
2.Instead of Fireballs, Pills. Take your medicine.
3.Instead of the Cape, it’s the Super Sheet. Lacks horizontal range, but it’s got more vertical range. It’s powerful.
4.The battle of black vs. white. The ones on the ground are rumored to be unlicensed.
5.A lot of their moves have differences.
6.Compared to Mario, his mannerism make him seem like an old man.