What is it?
Dr. Mario isn't among the most appreciated Tetris spin-offs. It is not quite in the league of Columns or Hextris. Still, it has been imitated and re-created now and then. The authors have called it Dr. Rudy or Pill-Box or Yet Another Tetris Clone, but in general they have left all or at least most of the original concept intact, the dancing germs, the pills, the bottle.
Boxes, while clearly inspired by Dr. Mario, takes a completely different approach. Gone is the pill bottle, the setting is supposed to be a space station, the pills have become boxes. They behave slightly different, they do not stick together, if one lands on an edge, the other continues to fall. There are new items, stones that block the path, bombs that can blow up the stones, joker boxes that take the color of the box on which they land.
Boxes has been something of a shareware hit. The original Boxes is now version 7.0 from 2002 (but still runs on Windows 3.1!), there have been two sequels and a number of similar games. I discovered it back in 1999 or 2000 and was quite fascinated, in spite of the predictability of the shareware levels. I had half forgotten it, but when I found it again, the fascination was still there.
