Mario Paint

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Mario Paint (1992) is a painting game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, featuring Mario. It was the first game to use the SNES Mouse peripheral, and came bundled with it.

The game had various activities: making images using brushes, stamps, and patterns; creating animations; creating music (which could be used in the animations); loading pre-defined images to color or edit in any other manner; and creating custom stamps. Mario Paint also had a well-known minigame called "Coffee Break" (also referred to as "Gnat Attack" in the manual), in which you had to swat flies to progress through the level, going on forever until you lost all of your lives from getting hit by the flies. This minigame would later be featured in Wario Ware, Inc.: Mega Microgame$.

It is worth noting that the first animated Homestar Runner cartoon was animated using Mario Paint.

Tropes used in Mario Paint include:
  • Dueling Games: With Sega's Art Alive.
  • Easter Egg: On the title screen, clicking certain letters would cause certain things to happen, such as clicking the letter "P" to make grass, trees, and a bunch of other objects appear; or clicking the letter "O" to hear Kazumi Totaka's secret song.
    • The Starmen that also fly across the screen occasionally also contain one, if you're fast enough to click one.
  • Fan Remake: Mario Paint Composer, a PC/Mac expansion of the music creator from the original Mario Paint.
  • Follow the Bouncing Ball: When playing music in the music editor; except with Mario instead of the ball.
  • Mini Game: "Coffee Break"/"Gnat Attack".
  • No Plot, No Problem
  • Shout-Out: There are numerous references to this game in the Wario Ware series, including:
    • The fly-swatter minigame in Mega Microgame$, as a standard quick minigame and a full version.
    • In Twisted!, the hardest version of the minigame "Red Delicious?" features the exercising guy who shows up in Mario Paint between the title screen and the main game.
    • In Touched! 9-Volt has a microgame based off of Mario Paint. Touched! also has a remix of the main Mario Paint music.
    • D.I.Y. also features a Mario Paint microgame, as well as an Easter Egg involving the Mario Paint music.
  • Spiritual Successor: Mario Artist: Paint Studio, a Japanese-only game for the 64DD, which also came with a mouse peripheral.
  • Themed Cursor / White Gloves: The cursor is Mario's white glove.
  • Wide Open Sandbox: Nothing you need to do but make art.

The mini-game features examples of:

  • Big Bad: King Watinga, who appears at the end of every level after you have defeated 100 insects.
  • Endless Game: There are three levels, but they repeat endlessly.
  • Giggling Villain: King Watinga, if you die while fighting him.
  • 1-Up: Occasionally a hand will float down from the top of the screen, which will give you an extra life if swatted.
  • The Goomba: The basic gnats who appear first at the very beginning of the game and do not actually attack you.
  • Turns Red: Again, Watinga.