Mario Paint

"A decent game for those of us with no artistic talent whatsoever"

Ah, yes, Mario Paint. One of the games I got when I first got my SNES. And looking back on it now, I'm puzzled. Why was I given this game? I wasn't exactly a budding artist or a child prodigy. In fact, I never really drew at all. So why was I given this game? Simple. My parents figured that since I loved videogames, I might just find another passion through them: art. Well, that didn't exactly pan out. But Mario Paint got its fair share of play time through the years, and for 1992, it still beats out MSPaint, hands down. But MSPaint isn't $50, is it? Oh well, on with the review.

Graphics: 6/10
Well, I guess the graphics in the game are your creations. But how do they really look when you make them? Well, they simply look decent. Nothing more. They're about on par with MSPaint, only a little more pixelated. The interface doesn't look too great, but for an early SNES game, I'd say it's passable. At least you can work with it and understand it.

Story: N/A
Why do you even bother asking?

Controls: 4/10
OK, it's not exactly the game I'm figuring, it's the hardware. The SNES mouse is simply a piece of crap. The game certainly wouldn't work with the SNES controller, that's for sure, but the least they could do was make a fully functional and responsive mouse! Anyways, the game came with the SNES mouse and mouse board. And already things are going sour here. The mouse board is far too small in my opinion. It's about as big as an 8.5x11 piece of paper, and oftentimes you will find your mouse falling off the board and causing a mishap in your creation. A poorly designed board, and unfortunately, an even more poorly designed mouse.
The mouse's ball, even after being cleaned, is not good. It will often slide for a little while, then the cursor will stop completely in mid-slide. And I'm not exactly talking about jumpy, occasional stops. I'm talking about COMPLETE STOPPAGE. You will find yourself getting pretty frustrated with that. And the BUTTONS! Oh, the buttons! The buttons are very unresponsive, to say the least, about one time out of six or so the left mouse button will not work. And even worse, about one time out of six or so the right mouse button WILL work. It's all hit-or-miss. And with the crappy, limited undo function, all this poor controlling will cause problems and ruined artwork.

Audio: 6/10
The game in the drawing mode has four music choices. Actually, only three, since one is silence except for the occasional sneeze of UndoDog (pointless if you ask me). None of the three stand out as hummable or even toe-tappable, but they at least provide more than just silence while you work. In Music Composition mode, the "instruments" are functional, but could certainly sound better. The best music in the game, other than maybe your own creations, is the Fly-Swatting game music.
The sounds are pretty annoying, too. The sound of the drawing of a pen sounds like a stick scratching on concrete, and the sound of the drawing of a large pen sounds like an old man clearing his throat. UndoDog also has an anomalous sound. It sounds maybe like a dog, but maybe if the dog is a small dog with a sore throat, its yip played back through a robot. Once again, the best sounds come from the Fly-Swatting game.

Gameplay: 5/10
Here's where the game is supposed to shine. But unfortunately, the featured aspect of the game kind of falls flat, while the auxilary aspects shine...sort of. It's kind of like what it would be like if you had an RPG where the best part of the game is the bowling minigame. Anywho, the drawing part of the game is pretty lackluster. The tools you have available just don't do the job too well. The pens, with the use of the crappy mouse, just don't do the job. The airbrush is OK, but just doesn't look as good as the one in MSPaint. The best tools are the auto-shape and fill-in tools. The auto-shape tool always gets the shape perfect, and the fill-in tool is versatile enough to get the job done. The stamp tool gets a lot of work, too, since most of what you will be making will mostly involve the stamping of pre-made stamps. A major gripe about the game is also the color selection. The colors simply don't look too good, and a few colors are missing from the main selections and are bumped back to the crappier-looking selections (a good brown and purple, for instance). And don't get me started on UndoDog, the undo tool. It only undos your last move, no earlier. So if you are really far into a true masterpiece and you accdentally make two consecutive mistakes, you can undo one, then you'll have to try to use the crappy eraser tool to undo it manually.
The music tool is pretty decent, but unless you have a real knack for music or a guide on hand, you most likely will not be making Grammy-worthy material. And part of this is to do with what is available. All the "instruments" are represented by symbols, which are stamped onto the bars. And some of these instruments sound terrible alone, but sound very good when combined with other instruments (just hear the Mario tune they give you by default). Another drawback with the music tool is the inability to change certain things with the music, like by making it sharp or flat. A huge drawback is the fact that it doesn't use real notes. Each symbol represents a quarter-note, and each gap represents a quarter-rest. There is no way to make drawn-out notes. Each note is a single tone, then silence, which greatly, greatly limits the possibilities. Length can also be a problem, since each song can only be so long.
Then there is the stamp-creation tool, which is really nifty...with the use of a guide that shows you how to make certain stamps. This is partly because it only gives you a fairly small grid of unresizeable squares, and thus your possibilities are limited with how good it can really look.
Then there's the tool that will probably see the most action: the Animation tool. This tool is pretty nifty, but I really didn't use it for much more than creating my own Mario maps and Zelda maps (using a guide, of course to make Zelda stamps). This is because the animation tool is not flexible at all. You first make the backdrop for your animation with the main drawing tool, then go into the animation tool and make the animation, which can either be 4, 6, or 9 frames long. This is a serious problem due to the flawed nature of the system. The next step in animation is Tracking, and you then use a little tool to create the path of the animated object over the backdrop. However, the animated object is just a consistent loop of 4, 6, or 9. And so it's hard to make a perfect little cartoon without it looping unwantedly. Also, since the animated object can only be 4, 6, or 9 frames long, if you want to make a cool little cartoon of your dreams, you might just have to flip pieces of paper or pay for a PC application, because this just isn't gonna cut it.
There's also something else that will see a lot of action: The fly-swatting game. This simple little game puts you in control of a little hand with a swatter that is on a mission to clear the three levels full of deadly insects whose sole purpose is to cause pain in his little fingers. The game is short and simple, but fun and challenging nonetheless. Unfortunately a lot of the challenge comes yet again from the crappy mouse.
Overall, the game has a lot to offer, but the game simply pales in comparision to the professional PC tools you can buy today. But how can you really compare it? It was made in 1992!

Play Time, Replay value: N/A, 8/10
There is no specified play time, but you will certainly replay it over and over again as long as you get a kick out of the music and animation tools.

Challenge: Hard
This is the challenge of the fly-swatting game. It's pretty tough, but it's a shame that most of the challenge comes from the crappy controls.

Good Points:
-Wide variety of options
-Easy-to-navigate interface
-Pretty good for 1992

Bad Points:
-Sub-par graphics
-Bad audio
-Terrible, terrible, terrible control (THE MOUSE SUCKS!)
-Most of the tools in the game are easily surpassed by today's PC applications
-Not enough options in music tool
-Animation tool is too limited

Overall Synopsis: 6/10
If this game had not been made in 1992, it would have gotten a 2/10. But I'm cutting it some slack here. Had Nintendo bothered to make a better mouse, the game may have been better. Had they worked more on the music tool and maybe used real notes instead of little symbols, it may have been better. Had they worked more on the drawing tool to make it more workable, it may have been better. But, as it is, the game is pretty dull. But if you do insist on giving this one a shot, get a guide. The fun grows immensely when a guide is at hand. Guides show you how to write great music, make great stamps, and make great animation. It's well worth the buy if you want the game. Give it a shot if you don't have anything better on the PC.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/05