Game Statistics

• Single Player.
• 8-megabit cartridge.
• 4 modes of play.
• First game to use SNES mouse (included with the game).

Game Design
This game is designed for people who want to dabble in the arts of music, animation, painting and fly swatting. The sections are as follows:

Music - Using sprites from Mario games (such as a mushroom for drums, a Fire Flower for saxophone a Mario head for xylophone, or a baby Yoshi for... the Yoshi noise) you can compose your own music for use around the home. The sounds are quite varied, and it's fairly simple to recreate a well-known tune. Jingle Bells, if you're me.

Animation - Basically, you draw up to nine pieces of artwork, and use them as your frames to make an animating picture. It can be quite difficult to get each image in the right place - your animation might be a bit jumpy, but we aren't Disney, so it doesn't matter.

Painting - I really hope you can guess this. You draw a picture (or load one of four ready-drawn ones) and colour it in with pencils in different sizes, stamps in different shapes, spray paint, and normal paint, all in a wide variety of colors.

Fly Swatting - Here's the weird part. You play as Mario's hand, which is holding a fly swatter. Flies, mosquitoes and other bugs fly around the screen, and you need to whack them as soon as possible. Some of them just hang around the screen, some shoot at you, others attack in swarms, and some are the bosses at the end of each stage. These can handle a lot of hits, and gradually turn red as you kill them. Their attacks either leave small open spaces for you to avoid them, or send out seeking bugs, which you have to dodge. I think this is the best part of the game.

Graphics
While the graphics are colorful, the main screen isn't anything special - colors down the bottom, white screen up top, but it's simple and effective, so I won't complain any more. All the sprites have a decent number of pixels, and the music section in particularly looks good, with each note as an image. And the fly swatting section looks great, the flies are fairly well drawn, and the hand is very cute. So the graphics fit into the Mario image.

Sound
While the background music does get a little repetitive (even with the - gasp - FOUR tracks), the music in the music section is your own composition, which makes it sound better in itself, but it also has a wider variety of sounds which are well defined and sound realistic. Except for the Yoshi sound, because Yoshi's aren't real. That said, as long as you don't make them too repetitive, your own tracks will sound inventive thanks to the fine sound waves supplied. The sound effects are pretty basic, with Apple Mac-esque sound clips.

Control
The mouse is well designed, and fits the hand snugly. Of course, the controls are simple - there's only two buttons - and you won't have trouble getting used to it if you have a computer. Which you obviously do. The only squabble is with the painting area, it's difficult to make a straight line (or stay in the lines) with the mouse, so it could get frustrating at times. Everywhere else, control fits in perfectly.

Satisfaction
With me, the game has always left something to be desired. It lacks the sense of accomplishment you get from winning a race, or defeating a boss. But at the end of a successful drawing or composition, you will be quite proud of yourself, which I guess is the equivalent in such a game. And anyway, if you're after the rush I mentioned, you can always play the fly swatting game.

Replay Value/Game Length
Well, I still find myself going back to this game now and then, just to create a tune or two, but it's not the kind of game you could never get bored of. It lasts a while, then fades, then you play again a while, and it fades again. Best in small doses, I guess.

Overall
Mario paint is different then most console games. It encourages creativity and has no real start or finish. Nintendo's attempt at application software is a nice thing to see, however, it falls short in playability and usability due to the fact that the SNES is not a practical platform for this type of software.

Review by Rago

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