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When I was eight, dude,
I couldn't wait, dude,
to play this great new game called
Mario Paint!
A title I wish every house had,
it came with a mouse
and a mousepad!
(...It was a big deal back then.)

Mario Paint was released in 1992 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was the first game to use the SNES Mouse peripheral, and came bundled with it.

The software isn't really a game so much as an art tool: there's 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 WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$.

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

This game has a few Spiritual Successors, such as the Mario Artist series for the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive, WarioWare D.I.Y. for the Nintendo DS, and Super Mario Maker for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS.

Any videos of the music-making program can go here.


Tropes present in the program as a whole:

  • Artsy Beret: In the cover art, Mario's cap is tilted sideways to resemble a beret.
  • Cartoon Bomb:
    • Some screens have a cartoon bomb on the exit button. The bomb button lives in the lower-left corner.
    • The "O" on the title screen becomes a bomb when you click it.
  • Developer's Foresight: There's an error handler programmed in that pops up if an image somehow exceeds the exceeds the save RAM limit, giving you a Data Overflow error. The compression is typically good at keeping the save compact, so the error can only realistically happen if you deliberately made your canvases exceedingly complex.
  • 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 Super Stars that also fly across the screen occasionally also contain one, if you're fast enough to click one.
    • The game out of the box came with a pre-saved painting of a vintage car.
  • Fan Remake: The music maker aspect of the program picked up a few PC/Mac remakes, most notably Mario Paint Composer and Advanced Mario Sequencer.
  • Follow the Bouncing Ball: When playing music in the music editor, except with Mario instead of the ball.
  • Interactive Start Up: The game opens on Mario running across a Blank White Void with the title in a simple black font, an unusual lack of colour for the franchise. Clicking on each letter activates various gags, from shrinking Mario and powering him back up, dropping the letter A on his head, inverting the colours and sending the music into Uncommon Time, and briefly summoning Yoshi, to the letter P drawing out a whole clickable scene using the in-game stamps (clicking the icons makes sounds, though not the same as the instruments for the game's music tool), playing the in-game credits, and letting you paint the screen with a rainbow-checkerboard fill.
  • Jump Scare: The Undodog's loud sneezes that randomly happen if you choose the silent option in the background music menu (though the manual warns you that the Undodog does suffer from allergies).
  • Mini-Game: "Coffee Break"/"Gnat Attack".
  • No Plot? No Problem!: Just paint anything or compose music.
  • Themed Cursor: The cursor is Mario's white glove.
  • White Gloves: Mario's glove serves as a cursor.
  • Wide-Open Sandbox: Nothing you need to do but make art.

The mini-game features examples of:

  • 1-Up: Occasionally a hand will float down from the top of the screen, which will give you an extra life if swatted.
  • Action Bomb: The Bomb Flies, which tend to flicker and follow the swatter before exploding.
  • 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.
  • Evil Laugh: King Watinga, if you die while fighting him.
  • The Goomba: The basic gnats who appear first at the very beginning of the game and do not actually attack you.
  • Reverse Shrapnel: Watinga sometimes fires this out.
  • Turns Red: Again, Watinga.

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