Mario Paint

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.