Title: Mario Paint
Release Date: 05/05/1992
Developer: Intelligent Systems; Nintendo R&D 1
Publisher: Nintendo
Finally another first party Nintendo game, and this one showcasing a peripheral for the SNES. This is another one of those SNES titles that is mainly here to serve as a tech demo for the mouse attachment. Honestly, it's not really a game perse, but instead a program that encompasses several different functions; almost like Nintendo's SNES era equivalent of an Adobe Suite.
Background
Mario Paint was developed by Nintendo R&D1 and was directed by Hirofumi Matsuoka, a Nintendo stalwart who worked on many projects within the Metroid series, and seems to be regularly attached to Gunpei Yokoi's team. He would later go on to direct Wario Land 4 and the first game in the Warioware series, apparently taking great inspiration from this game in the aesthetic and "create your own fun" style of Mario Paint.
The aforementioned Gunpei Yokoi serves as a producer on this game, which makes a great deal of sense as he was one of Nintendo's chief engineers when it game to introducing new hardware. His gift as an engineer was in making ideas such as "I want a portable gaming device to play Nintendo games on the go" and coming up with something that wasn't just a functional version of that idea, but one with charm and the ability to connect with its audience. Mario Paint is a primordial attempt at a "maker" game; a virtual studio in which children could create: be it art, simple cartoons, or songs. Now while professional programs take intensive onboarding and tutorializing to become proficient at using, the idea behind Mario Paint is that even a child can get into and use its programs within about five minutes. The skill ceiling on such a program is really quite high as well, as it can be something you tool around with and make nonsense for thirty minutes, or you can actually make some neat (if not stunning) music and art with this program.
Gameplay
The game has several modes to play with, each with different purposes. The first to talk about is the one that is implied by the name of the game: the drawing board. This is a very simples MS Paint style drawing program with 15 colors, 75 patterns, and 120 stamps available to make some neat art with. As well, you can then put this art into a simple animation of up to 9 frames of animation (woooo). Here are some cool pieces of art I found from around the interwebs...
Finally, the actual bit of "game" in this game is the fly swatter game. It is a game you can play in which you try to swat flies using the mouse. As you swat flies, they increase in number and vigor. After you swat 100 flies, then you fight a boss monster named King Watinga. It's a fun diversion between creating art or music!
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Final Verdict
This is a classic SNES program with a long reaching influence on future Nintendo products. I have fond memories of just messing around with this program when I was a kid, and even though this has since been outmoded and outdated, there was definitely a good bit of joy in returning to it even just to mess around for a half hour. You can see its influence on the Mario Maker series, which plays around with the concept of making your own fun but extends that to classic Mario gameplay. Overall, it is the first step in Nintendo using its branding and ingenuity to step outside of the realm of making strictly video games, at least in terms of a game that had wide reaching appeal and sales to boot (this game sold well over two million copies). So, in my opinion, definitely check it out if you never have played it before, or at least go to a reddit of compilations of art made with Mario Paint.
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