Mario’s Super Picross
Year: 1995
Rating: Not Rated
Time Played: 3,898 minutes / 64.97 hours
It’s a little odd to me that Picross (or Nonograms) never took off as a puzzle genre outside of Japan. Sudoku and (my personal favorite) Kakuro eventually found popularity in the United States in the 2000s. This was likely due to the ease with which these puzzles could be printed. While Nonograms have the novelty of producing a pixelated two-tone image, they sometimes take up to 30 minutes to solve (especially for the more detailed puzzles). Pokémon Picross introduced me to Picross games, and it has the advantage of a stylus and touchscreen. The Japanese-only release of Mario’s Super Picross does not have this advantage.
Mario’s Super Picross became available on the Super Nintendo Virtual Console for the Switch, which is what allowed me to finally play this game. While the controls take a little getting used to, this game’s one novelty is the little animations that play when solving the puzzles. Unfortunately, most of the puzzles you need to solve are random objects and scenes, which is a weakness of the Nonogram format. However, what Mario Super Picross has going for it is its vast amount of content. Just when I thought I had beaten the game, then another mode was added. Then secret stages.
After almost 65 hours of playtime, I was able to 100% complete the game. The fact that I even went to finish the entirety of this game should tell you how I managed to overcome some of its technical limitations. Fortunately, because I played on the Virtual Console, I could use save states and rewinds to erase some of my mistakes and complete the more complicated puzzles without issue. I did have to look up one or two solutions near the end, but overall it was an approachable puzzle game. I would recommend people with the Switch Online service try Mario’s Super Picross.
A hidden puzzle game gem for the Super Nintendo, I give Mario’s Super Picross 4.0 stars out of 5.
