Welcome to Puzzle Game Power Hour! The series here from Geek Battle Gamin where we take a look at all of the brain teasing puzzle games that have come out over the years.
Today’s spotlight is on Mario’s Super Picross, and the version I’ve been playing is the Super Nintendo game as I had downloaded on the Nintendo Wii U Virtual Console.
But first thing’s first, what is Picross? There are loads of Picross games across many Nintendo platforms, and I’ll be honest, if you’ve not played one, there is a good chance that you probably don’t even know what the games are and have brushed past them every time they release a new one.
First thing though, I’m sure Nintendo just slapped Mario onto the game to help the game as the gameplay itself doesn’t look at all interesting. At first glance you probably think it’s a game of Sudoku or some kind of cross word.
Both this game on the Super Nintendo and the Game Boy Mario’s Picross feature Mario on the cover and the title screen but after this don’t really have anything to do with the man from the mushroom kingdom. He’s simply there to add some sex appeal to Nintendo fans of the early 90s…ahem…
This will be because Picross games certainly don’t wow in screen shots, and if anything, video footage of the games probably make the game look duller in motion.
But oh boy, if you have dismissed these games as dull, I can assure you that you are wrong. They are something of a mild obsession of mine, so allow me to explain how the games work and why they are so much fun.
Picross is just the name Nintendo gives this type of game, but what they actually are are nonograms. You’ll find there are all kinds of nonogram based games on PC, cell phones, and other consoles that don’t come under the Picross name, and what a nonogram is, is a picture puzzle where you have a grid of squares that once solved will reveal a picture.
Each square on the grid is like one pixel, and the gameplay is all about the player deciding if a pixel is supposed to be coloured in or left blank. I know, this sounds really boring, but it’s actually very addictive.
To work out if a pixel is coloured in or not comes down to you following clues given by a vertical and horizontal line of numbers that are on the outer left and top of the grid.
These numbers will tell you have many of the squares on the line of the grid have to be coloured in. So, let’s say that you have a small grid that is five squares by five squares. If the first number on the top row of numbers says 1, it means that one of the five squares below will need to be coloured in. The other four will need to be left blank.
All of the squares look identical, so the way you figure out which square will be the one to be coloured is by cross referencing the row of numbers that runs down the left side of the grid. Let’s say that the third number down says 5. That means that all five squares out of the five going horizontally will need to be coloured in. Once you’ve done that you’ve now know which one of the five going down below the 1 will now be coloured.
We’ll also now know that the rest of the squares going down below that one do not need to be coloured in. A good thing on the Picross games is that they give you the ability to mark a cross on a square to indicate that it is a square that doesn’t need to be coloured in. As long as you mark it correctly, you’ll know that you can dismiss the square going forward.
Of course, the game gets a lot more challenging than just five by five grids with numbers like 1s and 5s along the side and top. You will end up facing 10×10 and 20×20 grids and bigger in these types of games. You may also have multiple numbers on each column or row such as a sequence that says 7-6-1. In this example you will know that that particular row would have seven connected squares then at least one empty square then six connected squares and at least one more empty square then one more coloured square. Before or after these sequences there could be more blank squares too.
When you start nay level you’ll probably find there are one or two lines where you are able to definitively identify a few coloured squares because these ones will be obvious. After this you’ll have to get down to detective work to work out the rest of the grid.
The game is all about small gains. You may begin with just a handful of squares that you are sure are coloured in or definitely blank, but as you cross reference the numbers with the lines you’ll discover that every time you work out if a square is coloured or not that another square or more will now be revealed with its status.
I’m doing my best to describe the gameplay, but I’m aware that it may come off more like Steiner math from Big Poppa Pump and even watching it, it may be confusing still. Perhaps I’ll make a second video that gives you a tutorial of how to play and do my best to highlight how the gameplay translates into addictiveness.
I’ll be honest, the idea that you are playing the levels to reveal the pictures is almost neither here nor there. After a level is complete, you’ll usually get a little animation sequence that shows you what the picture was supposed to be. Sometimes this will have been clear during the gameplay and other times it’ll be a laugh for how anyone could tell what some of these pixel shapes were ever meant to be.
I would have never played Picross at all if Nintendo hadn’t given away a relatively short Zelda based Picross game with just a few levels when they started one of their loyalty programmes during the era of the 3DS. It was one of those programmes where Nintendo launched their Mii based social media app during the time of the Wii U and 3DS. You signed in each day or registered games to get silver or gold points and the best thing you could get when it first launched was a free 3DS game. This of course was the Zelda Picross game and with my interest in the Legend of Zelda it piqued my interest.
From Zelda Picross I was hooked. Of course, we can look at Zelda Picross another day, but this is the Super Nintendo’s Mario’s Super Picross. I’m playing this on my Wii U, and you’ll have noticed that the text is both in English and at times in Japanese.
The SNES game never originally came out in the West, and was only released in the UK for the first time with this Wii U Virtual Console release. As was the case at the time, Nintendo didn’t bother to update the game into full English, but I didn’t mind as it’s a game that you don’t need to be able to understand Japanese to be able to play.
It’s interesting looking at this game how it features both Mario and Wario, but that the pictures you are revealing in the game don’t relate to the Mario series. Or at least I don’t think so. If there are they’re buried in a sea of other pictures like a dolphin or floppy disc or a vase…
Full disclosure, I’ve not yet solved every puzzle in this game, but I honestly don’t need to for this review. I’ve completed several Picross games, and the games are all essentially the same. OK, Picross mega fans don’t jump down my throat in the comments when I say that, but a nonogram is a nonogram. Unless you get the Picross 3D games which are admittedly different, they are all the same challenge level to level.
Later games in the series do introduce new gameplay modes where blocks of squares are bunched together for Mega Picross challenges, but we’ll get to those another day.
I’m not sure if this released first or the Game Boy game did, and pretty much laid the groundwork for all the picross games that were to follow. Nonograms are things you can actually play and solve on paper, but believe me, it’s soooo much better to do in a video game which will let you know if you get a square right or wrong, and actually give you a little animation at the end to show what the image was supposed to be. Without these gameplay elements you could just fill in a grid on a paper nonogram and never know if you correctly solved it or not or what the hell the images were meant to be anyway.
You can set it so that the game will give you a few squares filled in to start to get things going, but I love to take on the fullest challenge imaginable. But like I said, the game will let you know if you get a square wrong. The way this happens is that levels will have a timer and either show how long it’s taken you to beat a level, or they will give you a time limit to complete each challenge. If you go wrong, you will get a time penalty. This will either add a penalty of time to the timer and add time as if it’s taken you longer, or take away some time from a countdown.
In theory you could purposely keep going wrong to reveal what squares are what, but I don’t see the point in doing so.
For me Picross games in general are puzzle games that can take a while for each puzzle, but are games that draws me in and before I know it I’ve sunk hours into them.
I’ll be honest I do prefer some of the more recent Picross games that have smoother HD graphics or touch screen support, but this Super Nintendo game is pretty much just as playable as any of the newer editions.
It’s been fun to dive into this edition of the Puzzle Game Power Hour. Let me know your thoughts on Mario’s Super Picross in the comments and what puzzle games you’d like me to feature in the future. There will certainly be more Picross games, and it’s been great to continue this series after a hiatus.
If you a puzzle game fan lets chat in the comment section and tell me what makes Picross so addictive, or if perhaps you’ve played the games and just don’t get it.
Anyway, until next time I’d appreciate if you for check out the video version of this article over on the Geek Battle Gaming YouTube Channel.
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