Mario Paint
Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Main other{{#invoke:infobox|infoboxTemplate | child = | subbox = | bodyclass = ib-video-game hproduct {{#ifeq:|yes|collapsible {{#if:|{{{state}}}|autocollapse}}}} | templatestyles = Infobox video game/styles.css | aboveclass = fn | italic title =
| above = Mario Paint
| image = {{#invoke:InfoboxImage|InfoboxImage|image={{#invoke:WikidataIB |getValue|rank=best|P18 |name=image |qid= |suppressfields= |fetchwikidata=ALL |onlysourced=no |noicon=yes|Mario paint box.jpg}}|size=|sizedefault=frameless|upright=1|alt=|border=|suppressplaceholder=yes}}
| caption = {{#if:Mario paint box.jpg|North American box art|North American box art}}
| label2 = Developer(s) | data2 = Template:Unbulleted list
| label3 = Publisher(s) | data3 = Nintendo
| label4 = Director(s) | data4 = Hirofumi Matsuoka
| label5 = Producer(s) | data5 = Gunpei Yokoi
| label6 = Designer(s) | data6 =
| label7 = Programmer(s) | data7 = Template:Plainlist
| label8 = Artist(s) | data8 = Hirofumi Matsuoka
| label9 = Writer(s) | data9 =
| label10 = Composer(s) | data10 = Template:Plainlist
| label11 = Series | data11 = Mario
| label12 = Engine | data12 = Template:If first display both
| label13 = Platform(s) | data13 = Super Nintendo Entertainment System
| label14 = Release | data14 = Template:Vgrelease
| label15 = Genre(s) | data15 = Art tool
| label16 = Mode(s) | data16 = Single-player
| label17 = Arcade system | data17 = Template:If first display both
| data30 =
| below = Template:EditOnWikidata
}}Template:Main other{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|ignoreblank=1|preview=Page using Template:Infobox video game with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"| alt | arcade system | artist | caption | border | child | collapsible | commons | composer | designer | developer | director | embedded | engine | fetchwikidata | genre | image | image_size | image_upright | italic title | modes | noicon | onlysourced | platform | platforms | producer | programmer | publisher | qid | refs | release | released | series | state | subbox | suppressfields | title | writer }}Template:Main other{{#if:Mario paint box.jpg|}} Template:Nihongo foot is a 1992 art creation video game developed by Nintendo Research & Development 1 (R&D1) and Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Mario Paint consists of a raster graphics editor, an animation program, a music composer, and a point and click minigame, all of which are designed to be used with the Super NES Mouse peripheral, which the game was packaged and sold with. Per its name, the game is Mario-themed, and features sprites and sound effects that are taken from or in the vein of Super Mario World.
Mario Paint sold very well following its release and is one of the best-selling SNES games, with over 2.3 million copies sold. The game was released to fairly positive contemporaneous reviews; critics highlighted its accessibility, features, innovative design, and educational potential, but criticized limitations on creation that rendered it unviable for serious creation. Retrospective reviews have been more positive, praising the game as "memorable", "addictive", "unique", and "ingenious", and it has been deemed one of the best SNES games of all time. Mario Paint's music composer in particular has been used to create original songs, covers, and remixes using the game's sounds and limitations.
A successor game, Mario no Photopi for the Nintendo 64, was released in Japan in 1998. This was followed by a series, Mario Artist, released for the 64DD peripheral starting in 1999; however, only four titles were released in Japan only before the next game was canceled by 2000. Similar titles and game creation systems released by Nintendo since, such as WarioWare D.I.Y., Super Mario Maker, and Super Mario Maker 2, include features from and references to Mario Paint; Super Mario Maker in particular was originally envisioned as a Mario Paint sequel for the Wii U.
GameplayEdit
According to the manual, two parts of Mario Paint are meant to familiarize the user with the SNES Mouse: the title screen, where users can click on each letter in the logo and each element on the screen to prompt a respective Easter egg;Template:Sfn and a fly-swatting minigame, "Gnat Attack", where the player must swat 100 insects before fighting a boss named King Watinga.Template:Sfn The minigame has three levels, and after they are completed, the game starts over with the enemies swarming in and attacking at faster speed.Template:Sfn Content creation features of the program include a drawing board, a coloring book, an animation tool (called "Animation Land"), and a music composer. Collages can be saved at a time in the program to be loaded at later usage of the softwareTemplate:Sfn or recorded to VCR.Template:Sfn In the coloring book, the user can color-in and edit four pre-made black-and-white drawings, including one featuring Yoshi and Mario, another featuring various animals, a greeting card, and an underwater scene.Template:Sfn
The drawing board is where original paintings can be created. A user can choose from 15 colors and 75 patterns.Template:Sfn After choosing, the user can draw with a pen (small, medium, or large) and airbrush; Template:Sfn fill in a closed area the selected texture with the "paint brush" tool;Template:Sfn and create perfectly straight lines, rectangles, and circles that is the color or pattern selected (either fully colored-in, with just an outline, or with a spray-canned outline).Template:Sfn Parts of a drawing can be copied, pasted, and moved to other areas,Template:Sfn rotated vertically and horizontally,Template:Sfn or erased via pens of six various sizes.Template:Sfn An entire painting can also be erased via nine unique visual effects.Template:Sfn Animation Land involves the use of the drawing board's tools for creating four, six, and/or nine-frame animations. Elements of one frame can be copied to others for smooth animations to be created.Template:Sfn If a character is being animated, the animation box can be set on a background and move throughout it in a "path" recorded by using the mouse in the "path lever" feature.Template:Sfn
In the animation and drawing features, stamps can be added to each painting and frame, with 120 existing stamps included in the software.Template:Sfn There is a stamp editor that allows the user to create new stamps or edit existing ones via a large tile grid,Template:Sfn with the same 15 colors from the drawing board usable in the stamp editor.Template:Sfn Up to 15 user-made stamps can be saved to a "personal stamp database".Template:Sfn There are also text stamps, such as English, Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji characters, that can be added and changed in size and color.Template:Sfn
The music composer allows users to write pieces either in common time or triple time.Template:Sfn There are 15 instruments samples to use that are notated with different icons, including eight melodic sounds (a piano represented by Mario's head, a bell sound represented by a Power Star, a trumpet represented by a Fire Flower, a pulse wave represented by the Game Boy, a horn section sample represented by a goose, a guitar sound represented by an airliner, and an organ represented by a car), three percussion sounds (a bass drum represented by a Super Mushroom, a woodblock represented by a ship, and a bass pluck represented by a heart), and five sound effects (Yoshi's zip, a dog bark, a cat meow, a pig oink, and a baby hiccup).Template:Sfn The icons are added to a treble clef. Notes that can be added are limited to a range from the B below middle C to high G.Template:Sfn Since no flats or sharps can be added, pieces are restricted to notes of the C major/A minor scale.Template:Sfn Other limitations include composing only in quarter notes,Template:Sfn a maximum number of three notes on a beat,Template:Sfn and a maximum number of measures a song can last (24 bars for Template:Music songs, and 32 bars for Template:Music songs).Template:Sfn Pieces made in the composition tool can be played in the animation and coloring book modes.Template:Sfn
ReceptionEdit
ContemporaneousEdit
Template:Video game reviews The Mario Paint and Mouse package sold more than Template:Nowrap units by March 1993.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Mario Paint is one of the best-selling SNES games at over 2.3 million copies sold worldwide.<ref name="whitepaper">Template:Cite book</ref>
Mario PaintTemplate:'s possible age appeal and amount of features were discussed in reviews. While Nintendo Power and GamePro suggested that it had enough features and interactive elements to fascinate a person of any age with "even a remote interest" in artistic ventures,<ref name = "GameProrev"/><ref name = "NPrev">Template:Cite magazine</ref> other reviews, even from critics who enjoyed the program, suggested the program's limitations made its novelty wear thin to those past its young target demographic<ref name = "SuperPlay"/><ref name = "Controlrev"/>Template:Sfn and made its high price tag unjustifiable.<ref name = "Total"/><ref name = "Controlrev"/> Total!Template:'s Steve Misery argued that the limitations were inexcusable for a title on a console that can have 250 colors on a screen at a time, stereo audio, and instantly changing graphics.<ref name = "Total"/> Additionally, he noted the program "goes completely overboard in one area, and then misses others out completely", such as the lack of a zoom feature despite there being multiple flashy ways to erase a painting.<ref name = "Total"/>
Criticisms of the program brought up in reviews include long save times, "impossible" fine detailing, and the fact that only one collage can be saved at a time.Template:Sfn
Mario Paint was honored by the Parents' Choice Award, a non-profit organization recognizing children's educational entertainment.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The game also received a platinum award at the 1994 Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Awards.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Nintendo Power rated Mario Paint the fourth best SNES game of 1992.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
RetrospectiveEdit
Template:Video game reviews Calling Mario Paint "perhaps the most ingenious and inspired idea Nintendo ever came up with for a product", AllGame rated it 5 out of 5 stars.<ref name="Mario Paint, AllGame"/> Honest Gamers stated, "It has very little flaws, if any, is very addictive, and even a child can use it. The games never get old and none of it ever gets tedious. It is one of the best games for the SNES."<ref name = "honestgamers"/> US Gamer called Mario Paint "an era-appropriate solution to graphics programs on expensive PCs" which is "at least somewhat responsible for our modern era of 2D indie throwback games". It said, "Every single element ... is engineered to make the act of creation fun in and of itself, even if you're just aimlessly doodling."<ref name="The Road to SMM">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Josh Despain of Defunct Games, however, opined that while it was a "bold and unconventional move" for Nintendo to release a Mario product that was not a game, thus being a "unique piece of video game history", it was nothing more than another simple paint program with a Mario theme.<ref name = "DefunctGames"/>
In 2006, it was rated the 162nd best game made on a Nintendo system in Nintendo Power's Top 200 Games list.<ref name="NP Top 200">Template:Cite magazine.</ref> In 2014, IGN ranked it as the 105th best Nintendo game in its list of "The Top 125 Nintendo Games of All Time". IGN editor Peer Schneider cited the game's "smart and playful interface" as a "game changer" and commented that "It effectively erased the barriers between creating and playing, making it one of the most memorable and unique games to ever be released on a console."<ref name="Top 125 Nintendo Games">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Rp In 2018, Complex listed Mario Paint 35th on their "The Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2022, IGN rated Mario Paint 22nd on its "Top 100 SNES Games of All Time", noting that the game inspired different variations of popular songs.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
LegacyEdit
In video gamesEdit
Several video game developers have cited Mario Paint as an inspiration. Hirokazu Tanaka, a member of Mario Paint's sound staff, later worked on EarthBound (1994), where some of Mario PaintTemplate:'s sound effects and instrument patches appear. Hirofumi Matsuoka, who directed the development of Mario Paint, later worked on several Mario Artist entries and many of the Wario titles, including WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! (2003) for the Game Boy Advance, the microgames from which originated from minigames present in Mario Artist: Polygon Studio, which themselves were conceptualized by Kouichi Kawamoto.<ref name="Nintendo RD1 Interview">Template:Cite interview</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Masahito Hatakeyama, one of the designers of WarioWare D.I.Y. (2009) for the Nintendo DS, cited Mario PaintTemplate:'s drawing board and music composer as the inspiration for D.I.Y.'s drawing and music creation tools, and several development team members cited it as an early inspiration for their video game development careers.<ref name="Iwata Asks Warioware">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Further references to Mario Paint appear elsewhere in the WarioWare series. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! includes Gnat Attack as a microgame. WarioWare: Touched! (2004) for the Nintendo DS includes both a microgame set in Mario Paint's drawing board and a feature called "Wario Paint", which has players color in outlines of WarioWare series characters in a manner similar to Mario Paint's coloring book. WarioWare D.I.Y. includes several easter eggs and callbacks to Mario Paint, including microgames based on the drawing board and Gnat Attack.<ref name="Iwata Asks Warioware" /> WarioWare Gold (2018) for the Nintendo 3DS also includes Gnat Attack as a unretaled new microgame. Sound effects from Mario Paint also appear throughout the series.
The Wii Photo Channel features editing functionality similar to Mario Paint, and includes several of the special erasers.Template:Citation needed
Super Mario Maker (2015), a level creation suite, was originally envisioned as a Mario Paint title for the Wii U.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Takashi Tezuka, the game's producer, stated that he "was inspired to bring the fun of Mario Paint into this course editor to make something fun and creative for people to enjoy".<ref name="Mario Maker started out">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> US Gamer called Mario Paint an essential part of "the road to Super Mario Maker".<ref name="The Road to SMM" /> As a callback to Mario Paint, Super Mario Maker includes interactive title screen easter eggs, the return of the Gnat Attack minigame, and the appearance of elements and characters originally from Mario Paint, including Undodog, a tan dog functioning as the undo button in both games. Its sequel, Super Mario Maker 2 (2019) for the Nintendo Switch, also features references to Mario Paint, including the return of Undodog as a prominent non-player character in the game's story mode.
Super Mario Odyssey (2017) for the Nintendo Switch includes three costumes for Mario—a black tuxedo, an artists' paint-covered apron, and a classical conductor outfit—that are directly based on artworks created for Mario Paint's promotional materials, with the apron's paired beret also referencing Mario Artist.
A remixed Mario Paint soundtrack medley can be played as background music in the Miiverse stage in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (2014). Mario Paint is also represented in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018) for the Nintendo Switch through an Assist Trophy called "Flies & Hand", where the flyswatter from Gnat Attack attempts to hit both insects and opposing players.
In animationEdit
The first episode of Homestar Runner in 1996 was animated using Mario Paint.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> A primitive introduction video made with Mario Paint can be found in the museum section of the site. A later short in the series, "Strong Bad is a Bad Guy", was made using Mario Paint.
In musicEdit
Since the early 2010s, there has been an online culture of users on forums, Discord, and YouTube creating original songs and covers with Mario PaintTemplate:'s music composer and programs replicating it, including Mario Paint Composer, Advanced Mario Sequencer, and Super Mario Paint.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name = "GameRantcomp"/> Mario Paint covers that have garnered coverage from the press include jeonghoon95's rendition of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky",<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> a cover of Nicholas Britell's theme for the HBO series Succession,<ref name="GameRantcomp">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and axelrod777's cover of the Bob-omb Battlefield level music from 1996's Super Mario 64.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
SuccessorsEdit
A downloadable version was released in Japan via the Satellaview broadcast service in 1997. Titled Template:Nihongo, this version was modified to use a standard controller without the need of a mouse.
A sequel to Mario Paint was titled Mario Paint 64 in development,<ref name="Miyamoto Reveals Secrets">Template:Cite interview</ref> and then released in 1999 as the Japan-exclusive launch game Mario Artist for the 64DD. Nintendo had commissioned the joint developer Software Creations, who described the game's original 1995 design idea as "a sequel to Mario Paint in 3D for the N64".<ref name="Miyamoto Reveals Secrets"/><ref name="Mario Artist at Pickford Bros">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Paint Studio has been described by IGN and Nintendo World Report as being Mario PaintTemplate:'s "direct follow-up"<ref name="Mario Artist: Paint Studio Review at IGN">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and "spiritual successor"<ref name="64DD at NWP">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> respectively. Likewise bundled with its system's mouse, Paint Studio includes many features from Mario Paint, including new additions such as a gallery and 3D explorable spaces that can be drawn on.<ref name="Mario Artist: Paint Studio Review at IGN"/> Gnat Attack was also intended to appear in Paint Studio, but it was cut before the final release,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> though it was shown on several magazine previews and some reviewers received copies including it.<ref name="Mario Artist: Paint Studio Review at IGN" />
See alsoEdit
NotesEdit
ReferencesEdit
BibliographyEdit
External linksEdit
Template:Mario series Template:Intelligent Systems Template:Authority control