Mario Paint

Moby ID: 6595
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Description official descriptions

Mario Paint is an educational game that allows anyone to create simple pictures, paint over black and white pictures, or free draw their own using the specially developed SNES Mouse. The player can also create their own piece of music using a selection of notes and themes, create greeting cards and animations, or play a game of "Gnat Attack", where they use the mouse to control a swatter to swat flies.

Spellings

  • マリオペイント - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (SNES version)

37 People (14 developers, 23 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 77% (based on 12 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 51 ratings with 1 reviews)

The Greatest Non-Game SNES Game Ever.

The Good
Mario Paint is what you make of it. The music and sound is only as good as you make it out to be, and if you have artistic talents, you can pull off some very impressive things. But for the first real home console paint program, it's a remarkably diverse title that actually adds enjoyment not only with the creating, but with the interface itself.

There are a lot of options available to the average User, including custom stamps, a music maker that allows several tracks to be put down, an animation maker, several color choices, and design options. Just about all options in the game can be tweaked or played with in some manner, including the title screen.

The interface is blessedly mouse-driven, and the control is precise, and allows for easy editing and alterations. The Save feature is a welcome addition to retaining that "masterpiece" that you worked will spend so many hours in creating, which also includes several customs stamps that can be designed.

The game's interface also allows for a lot of enjoyment whether you choose to create an elaborate image, or a silly and simplistic animation. Anyone can pick up the game, create something, and find enjoyment with it. The "Stamp" option was a personal favorite, as it allowed for accurate representations of 8 and 16-bit characters of the time.

The game even offers a friendly diversion back into the gaming realm with a "Fly Swatter" game, that gets increasingly addictive and more difficult the longer it's played. As simple as it is, the mini-game proves to be a lot of fun.

The Bad
There is a limit to the creativity allowed. As diverse as the game is, it only allows 15 available colors for the palette, a limited number of animation frames and stamps, and only one picture save. If you are wanting to create another picture past the saved file, all of your previous work will be lost. I always found myself limited by the options with my more ambitious projects, and simply wanting more.

As good as the game was in regards to music creation, there were far too many "wacky" sounds, and not enough musical instrument sounds. You could create a good enough of a symphony, but only so much could be added before your other musical choices were the dog and cat sounds.

As far as sharing your work with others, there was no way to transfer your work short of making a recording of it with a VCR or other similar media.

My biggest gripe about Mario Paint? They never made a sequel, and if there ever was a classic game that screamed for one....

The Bottom Line
This was about as unique as it got for the SNES. A program that could capture the attention of an aspiring artist or a passing doodler. The fan submitted pieces in old issues of Nintendo Power showed how much could truly be done with the program. Many of which were nothing short of very impressive.

Leave it to Nintendo to create the console version of "Microsoft Paint", and add personality to the program. It was the type of game that my friends and I would pass back and forth to make a quick animated laugh, or I'd stay up all night working on my next masterpiece.

I wish that Nintendo had released a sequel to this title for later consoles, and if there's ever a platform that could make the most out of it now would have to be the Nintendo DS. A Mario Paint DS title would seem like a no-brainer, and certainly make for a great on the go experience.

The game takes a few moments to get into, but once the creativity starts flowing, be prepared to spend quite a bit of time in front the the TV screen.

A very complimentary addition to the system as a whole, and one of my favorite SNES memories. Recommended.

SNES · by Guy Chapman (1748) · 2006

Trivia

Extras

The Nintendo Mouse and hard plastic mousepad were included with most copies of this game.

Homestar Runner

Mario Paint was the medium of choice for the very first Homestar Runner cartoons, long before Flash. A primitive Mario Paint made introduction video can be found in the museum of the site.

References to the game

One of the sound staff from Mario Paint, Hirokazu Tanaka, later went on to work on Earthbound. You can hear some sound effects and musical instruments used in both games.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • October 1992 (Issue 39) - Game of the Month

Information also contributed by Andrew Fraticelli.

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Related Sites +

  • Mario Paint Composer
    A clone of Mario Paint's music composition software has been made for Windows and OSX and is distributed for free by developers unFun Games.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 6595
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kartanym.

Additional contributors: Shoddyan, Alaka, gamewarrior, Pseudo_Intellectual, Patrick Bregger.

Game added June 6, 2002. Last modified September 18, 2023.