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DrMarco

An 8086 adaptation of Dr. Mario with dirty-cell rendering, FM arrangements and a separate CGA path.

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Full screen, VGA
DrMarco full screen. A tall bottle in the middle holds red, yellow and blue viruses and one landed red and yellow capsule. The left panel reads Score 0000000, Level 08, Speed Low, Virus 36 and Fever. On the right are the next capsule, a cartoon doctor holding a pill, and three dancing germs.
Level 8, full-screen on VGA.
Levels
0-20
Adapters
VGA / CGA
XT CGA move cost
1.4 ms

01 / Rules and provenance

Rules and provenance

DrMarco follows the NES game's capsule sequence, virus-placement tables and speed progression, using the disassembly referenced by the source tree. It is a native adaptation; no NES CPU or PPU is emulated. Nintendo retains rights to the original material.

The bottle is 8x16. The port supplies levels 0-20 and three speeds. Left/Right move, Down drops faster, Z/X rotate, P pauses and N restarts. M selects Fever, Chill or silence. Esc suspends full-screen play back to the desktop.

02 / VGA and CGA captures

VGA and CGA captures

Title screen
The DrMarco window on the os8088 desktop: a large blue and red capsule reading DrMarco in yellow letters over a green checkerboard, then the lines Enter Start Game, H How to Play, LV 00 Low Fever, with the doctor on the left and three germs on the right.
Incremental title reveal.
How to play
The DrMarco window showing the help page: How to Play, Match four of the same color, Clear every virus to finish, and a list of the keys, beside the doctor and a small picture of four capsule halves in a row.
Help screen.
Full screen, CGA
DrMarco full screen in four colours: black, green, red and yellow. The bottle holds green, red and yellow viruses, the left panel reads Level 08, Speed Low, Virus 36, and the doctor and germs are drawn in the same four colours.
CGA gameplay capture; green substitutes for blue.
Title screen, CGA
The DrMarco window on a black and white CGA desktop: the capsule logo, the doctor and the germs drawn as white outlines on black.
Monochrome title artwork on the CGA desktop.

03 / Frame budget

Frame budget

The renderer compares bottle cells against the last submitted state and redraws changes. The recorded moving-capsule costs were 3.4 ms on VGA and 1.4 ms on CGA; unchanged frames cost 0.04 ms. Background decompression occurs on full-screen entry.

The simulation target is 54.6 Hz. The recorded worst animated-virus update took 27.5 ms on VGA, above that frame budget, versus 14.7 ms on CGA. The target rate should not be read as a guarantee for every update.

FM arrangements use three music voices and one effects voice, with at most two note updates per frame. The NES percussion is omitted. Gameplay timing tables are converted from the NES rate to the PC timer rate.

drawingVGACGA
a capsule moves3.4 ms1.4 ms
nothing changed0.04 ms0.04 ms
the background, once506 ms94 ms

04 / Port differences

Port differences

Single player only, with no demo or ending sequence. Gameplay requires VGA or CGA; Hercules supports title/help and music. CGA substitutes green for blue in the selected four-colour palette. Timing and music are adaptations, not cycle-identical NES output.

05 / Run DrMarco

Run DrMarco

Keep DRMARCO.O88 with its .VGA, .CGA and .HRC sidecars. Use GAMES, the dedicated 360KB games image, or The Wire. The 128KB build does not include it.

Download os8088 The Wire Running os8088