Eight Bit Pills

I finally slept last night for the first time in a couple of days. For a handful of nights I’d wake about three hours before I normally do, putter about the house for an hour or so, then fall back asleep, then wake up again at my usual time—only feeling groggy. Insomnia is nothing new to me, I usually have a solid bout of it about once or twice a year. This is a significant improvement from when I would go for months without sleeping well. Insomnia also runs in my family. 

Sometimes I find I can’t quite get settled in bed into a position that I find comfortable. Other times, it’s simply a case of my brain not wanting to settle down for the night. That was the culprit of the current go about with insomnia. The same thing was happening every night. As I would climb into my cozy bed, then close my eyes, I would hear the same thing over and over in my head. 

It was a piece of music instantly recognizable from my childhood, and the childhoods of others from my generation. Let’s see if you can recognize it what it might be from typing out the little tune here with no context. I’d say this should be read in an upper tempo: “do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Pause. do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, dun-de-dun dun-de-dun dun-de-dun dun-de-dun.” Now you may be scratching you heads and thinking I’ve had a stroke, or you may have clicked immediately onto what the tune is. “Fever” from the Nintendo game “Dr. Mario.” 

“Dr. Mario” is a game that Nintendo released for the original NES in 1990. The game was Nintendo’s riff on “Tetris.” In “Dr. Mario” you have to remove multiple virus “bugs” from a large pill jar. Each “bug” is either yellow, blue, or red. Mario drops in pills that are either solidly one of those colors, a combination of two of them. You match usually four of the same color to one virus to make it go away, the goal being to clear them all from the jar before the pills reach all the way to the top of the jar. Much like “Tetris” when you clear a series of the same color, and a virus, they disappear from the jar and ones stacked on top of them fall to the bottom. 

“Dr. Mario” was a favorite growing up, I had it for my NES, and my game boy. My mother even liked playing “Dr. Mario.” Anyone who has enjoyed the game, or played any of the re-issues and revivals of the game, like Nintendo’s recent update for Wii U—“Dr. Luigi”— recognizes “Fever” and the other music from the game, the slow tempo “Chill.” Much in the same way I am convinced that one day nursing homes will be full of people humming the theme to “Super Mario Brothers,” “Fever” is also one of those tunes that is embedded in the deep tissue of my brain. 

The sounds and iconography of “Dr. Mario” are just there. Wedged in my mind from hours of playing the game, much in the same way I can instantly recall various sound effects and music cues from the Sonic the Hedgehog games. As I typed that, all I could hear was the sound of Sonic gathering a ring. As much as I love these sounds, as much as “Fever” was always my favorite of the songs in “Dr. Mario,” it’s not as much fun when you’re trying to sleep and the tune plays over and over and over again in your head for a good hour. 

Naturally, because hearing the music causes the visuals to appear in my mind as well, in addition to hearing “Fever” I couldn’t stop seeing the smiling 8-bit visual of Mario in his doctor gear, tossing colored pills as well—with those bugs doing that little dance they do. After several nights of this madness happening, I did what was the best option given the circumstances. I got out of bed after trying to sleep, went downstairs, fired up my Wii U, and played “Dr. Mario”—where I have a copy of the game from Nintendo’s wonderful “Virtual Console” feature. 

After playing the game for half an hour, I felt my eyes becoming heavy. I fell asleep in my armchair. I woke a few hours later to the flashing of a game over screen on my TV, and a sense of disorientation. Following that night, I slept beautifully, soundly, peacefully. I woke with a renewed sense of hope and joy for the world and my fellow humanity. I don’t know what in my mind was causing this desire to spend some quality time with “Dr. Mario,” but at least I finally got to sleep without needing, um, a pil