tricksy trash

For those who haven't played, there's a phenomenon in Dr. Mario's two-player mode that goes something like this:  If Player X manages to clear more than one row or column with just one pill (whose movement that player can control), Player Y is punished for X's awesomeness with two half pills (whose movement that player cannot control) that inevitably float down in precisely the most inconvenient spot of Y's screen:

Half pills falling on an unfortunate Player 2

I always took for granted that these were called "tricks."  I was born knowing that, same way I've always known that the A button jumps, that a blinking green screen means you take the game out and reset it in the console, and that (most famously) if a game continues to malfunction, blowing the dust out of cartridge usually fixes it.

Of course, all of this must have been taught and learned at some point, but I don't remember how we passed those pieces of information around.  I guess there were gaming books and magazines, but I didn't know anyone who read them.  So how did we all just know this stuff?

If the answer is that we learned by talking to our friends--and I suspect that especially in the pre-internet NES days, it might be--rethinking the stereotype of the antisocial gamer might be in order.  But back to Dr. Mario tricks.

Apparently, someone in my circle growing up invented that term; I just didn't realize it until I played the game with someone outside of that circle years later.  When my Boston running/Dr. Mario buddy referenced "trash," I had no idea what she was talking about--and vice versa when I attempted to allude to "tricks."

Out of curiosity as to what the Officially Licensed Mario Term actually is, I discovered and consulted this site, where some nice person has posted PDF versions of the original booklets included with old Mario games.

Here's an extract--the only part of the official Dr. Mario game booklet that says anything about the concept of tricks or trash:

 

Apparently, neither of us were using the official term.  There isn't one!