Some games don't hold up with time. That wasn't my impression with Dr. Mario. As soon as I started rotating pills the old habits came back and I was hooked all over again. It's as if I never stopped playing the game. Dr. Mario is even controlled holding the Wii Remote sideways, as if it were a NES controller!

The WiiWare release "Dr. Mario & Bacteria Extermination" (known as "Dr. Mario Virus Buster" in America) is actually composed of two distinct games. The Dr. Mario half of it is extremely faithful to the simple, but addictive, gameplay that fans know and love. Your playing field is a bottle containing red, blue, and yellow viruses. Likewise colored pills will fall from above that players rotate and stack. Sections (and viruses) are cleared by arranging four pieces of the same color in a vertical or horizontal line. If there were any pill pieces resting on the section that was just cleared, gravity will cause them to fall and maybe even clear another line of pieces in the process. As in previous Dr. Mario games, you've got the option to play by yourself, versus a computer, or versus a second player.

Dr. Mario can also be played in an additional flash mode. (again, one or two-player) The goal is not to clear everything, but remove a select few specific flashing viruses that may be buried underneath others. It's an interesting tweak that makes you focus more on gaining access to certain viruses so you can clear them, but it doesn't really change any gameplay fundamentals.

Extremely welcome though is the ability to play either mode online, competing with random opponents or players from your friend list. Yes, Dr. Mario has game-specific friend codes. But it features a surprisingly generous option by allowing you to send a demo to someone whose Wii system friend code you already have. This demo allows your friend to get online and, after exchanging Dr. Mario friend codes, and play with you! Additionally, the game tracks your overall rank online and appears to try matching you with opponents of similar standing.

The second half of this WiiWare title is Bacteria Extermination, which started out as a mini-game in Brain Training 2 based on Dr. Mario. The rules for clearing viruses are the same, but instead of holding the Wii Remote sideways, here you hold it remote-style, using the pointer and the 'A' and 'B' buttons. This mode magnifies the view a little bit because you'll need to point to falling pills, grab them with the A button, rotate with B, and drag them left, right, or down.

At first it doesn't seem that different, but this mode really tests your mettle once it starts to throw two or three pills at you all at once. This forces you to mentally juggle and manually position multiple pills at once. The multiple falling pills are already a significant expansion to the Dr. Mario paradigm, but there's also the new ability to grab falling pill sections that have been dislodged and steer them left or right as they fall into a new position.

Perhaps the most exciting feature that Bacteria Examination brings to the table is support for up to four players all playing cooperatively, pointing at the same screen, and handling different pills. With more than one player though, you need to coordinate your moves and make sure that you don't get in each other's way. This will result in a lot of instructional shouting (and panicking) in even a two-player effort!

In one final detail, it should be noted that both games support Miis. In order to play players will set up accounts tied to Miis. They'll see these Miis standing on the sidelines in lab coats during play, and tied to the high scores that the game tracks.

Playing Dr. Mario again after all these years feels really, really good. But not only that, it can finally be played online and gains the four-player offline cooperative possibilities in Bacteria Extermination to boot! I'm now perfectly ready to let Dr. Mario back into my life, and to buy my mother a copy so that she can resume her nightly ritual of wiping the floor with my dad.

Editors note: Flash mode was previously described as a "new" mode. In fact, the mode has appeared in both Dr. Mario 64 and Dr. Mario / Puzzle League on the GBA.