Game

I didn’t own a SNES when I was a kid, but when I was like, 13-ish in the mid 2000s, my brother’s girlfriend gave us her childhood SNES. It had three games: Inspector Gadget, Super Mario World, and Mario Paint. Out of those three, Mario Paint was prolly my most played, even as a cynical and grumpy 13 year old. And as a cynical and grumpy woman in her 30s, it’s still one of my favorite SNES games. And it really didn’t need to be this good. Mario Paint was built to be a way that kids could play games that could be CONSTRUCTIVE, and usually attempts at that failed, especially with art, and especially back in the day, and especially on consoles.

Game

It’s literally just an art program. That’s it! That’s all it is! But it’s a… pretty good one? With nice AI. If you compare this to something like Art Alive on the Genesis, it’s stunning. That game is clunky with a dated AI. And don’t even get me started on Color a Dinosaur. But this has aged amazingly, it feels TIMELESS. And it’s smooth and has lots of tools to express your creativity.

You’ve also got the side content. I was really into the music maker in the mid 2000s, I loved watching Youtube videos of people making songs in it. Today, it’s still good, but I’m not as into it. And you’ve got the mini-game “Gnat Attack” too, where you swat gnats. Honestly, the worst part of the package to me? It’s not bad, at all, but if Gnat Attack didn’t exist, it wouldn’t effect my opinion of Mario Paint in any way. Ironically, Gnat Attack was like 70% of the achievement set for this. I had to beat a loop of it, which is pretty hard.

If you’ve never played the original SNES Mario Paint, you might not know it used a mouse. A lot of consoles back then had mice. I have lots of opinions about these mice, as I own a lot of them. The SNES one is one of the better ones, though it’s still clunky and rough, by today’s standards. But most mice were back then.

Game

Mario Paint is beloved, and even today is 100% worth playing. There’s something really fun about using archaic art programs to try and make something actual artistic. Both of these works were made by me, by the way. Shout outs to Bob Ross. This and Kid Pix are the standouts of child’s paint programs. Today I guess they have like… Clip Studio Paint. Which is technically better in every way. But it doesn’t have Totaka’s Song.