Hold on to your favorites
I may not replay videogames very often, but when I do get the urge, it feels impossible to ignore. If it’s an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or Wii game I feel compelled to revisit, that’s no big deal at all — there’s still enough room for those titles on my shelves. Those systems are already set up.
But if I go back even one console generation further, I start running into issues. Say, for instance, I have the strange desire to play Treasure’s GameCube platformer/beat-’em-up Wario World because, I don’t know, I want to pile drive some dinosaurs into oblivion. I can’t. My copy of the game is gone. I sold it, back when I thought that was a good idea. It wasn’t.
There was a period during the early days of the Xbox 360 when I was willing to offload some of my older games on eBay and put that money toward, you know, I don’t even recall. Something dumb, I’m sure. I continue to regret those shortsighted decisions all these years later.
Fortunately, Mario Paint was kept safe, hidden away. I still have my original copy complete with a Super NES Mouse, mouse pad, and my crumpled instruction manual. I replayed it last night and the memories came rushing back the second the title screen appeared.
There’s something magical about digging a beloved videogame out of storage for the first time in years. To others, it may just be a dusty cartridge or a scratched disc, but to you, it’s so much more than that. Don’t rob yourself of that experience for a quick buck. Future you will appreciate it.
Now, I hadn’t planned to make this piece about Mario Paint outside of a quick name drop but, looking over the site archive, we haven’t covered it a whole lot before. That’s a shame.
So, in no particular, here are some of my favorite parts:
On the title screen, you can click on the letters in “Mario Paint” and various things will happen. The “P” is my favorite — it makes a grassy scene appear with a tiny spaceship.
This pre-made song. It’s all coming back, isn’t it?
To this day, I find something unsettling about the graphic for this musical note.
The undo button is a dog named Undodog. Hehe.
It’s stupidly satisfying to watch the paint brush tool fill colors in.
There are built-in “stamps” of Super Mario World sprites and they’re split apart in such a way that you can easily put Yoshi’s head on Mario’s body.
Gotta take pleasure in life’s little moments.
It’s enjoyable to erase stuff. I’d often erase, then hit undo so I could see the other animations dismantle my work. Speaking of animations, you could make your own, but mine were total crap.
The Gnat Attack mini-game is just the best. After beating all three levels, it’d loop and you’d have a new icon on the top left of your screen. I could only ever earn the first one, a star.
Also, according to the instructions, the boss is named King Watinga. King. Watinga.
—
I didn’t want to end on a rhetorical question asking why Nintendo hasn’t made a new Mario Paint for Wii U, but, good lord. The system so well suited for it. Why is this not a thing?
Let’s go ahead and have that happen after Mario Maker launches, Nintendo.
[Image credit: The Spriters Resource, The Cutting Room Floor, Wikia, and Wikipedia]
