Dr. Hello (Master System) Playthrough
103A playthrough of Samsung's 1992 puzzle game for the Sega Master System, Dr. Hello (닥터 헬로).
Like the Zemina games I've posted over the past few months, this South Korea-exclusive is an SG-1000 port of an MSX game housed in a Master System cartridge. Moreover, it was an official release for the Gam*Boy, a Samsung-branded Master System produced under license from Sega in order to circumvent Korea's market ban on Japanese goods. So yeah, this is a legit console release, though I doubt Nintendo would see it that way.
But Dr. Hello is such a great name for a video game, isn't it?
Dr. Hello appears to be the work of Sis Co., and the box, which is adorned with drawings of Dragon Quest monsters and a headshot of Dr. Wily, lists Samsung as the manufacturer. According to the label, it shipped on 2 December 1992 with a suggested retail price of ₩18,000, which would've been the equivalent of about $22 USD per the exchange rate at the time.
The game itself is a surprisingly solid recreation of Dr. Mario (https://youtu.be/94joL2AgxJI). The graphics have been redrawn and the soundtrack is new (and surprisingly good given the hardware!), but the game looks and sounds close enough to the original to make the intent clear. The gameplay is also quite familiar. The pieces don't move as smoothly as they do on the NES, and since one of the controller's two buttons is reserved for pausing the game, you can only spin the pills in one direction, but the overall feel of Dr. Mario is alive and kicking in Dr. Hello.
And, just like in Dr. Mario, you're rewarded with a cutscene following the successful completion of rounds 5, 10, 15, and 20. Since Dr. Hello shipped on a cartridge half the size of Dr. Mario's 64K ROM, the cutscenes aren't nearly as elaborate, but they do change depending on the speed you're playing.
I show the cutscenes for all three speed settings in this video: the main playthrough is done on high, and once that's finished, I go back to play replay round 20 on medium (1:14:31) and low (1:23:30) speeds to show off the alternate endings.
I wonder what happened to poor Dr. Hello's foot. It looks like it has been broken in half.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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