Mario Paint: Instant Win

Recently my wife told me that she may not allow my son to have a gaming console (Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox, etc.) when he gets older.

While I certainly understand her concerns and desires, it reminded me of all the good times and life lessons I would have missed out on had I not had a Nintendo when I was growing up. To recall a few:

True love conquers all.

Including King Koopa, and especially with flower power.

Things aren't always what they seem.

Turns out, Samus was a girl.


To get the job done, you need the right tools.

It took me forever to get through the mountain pass without the magical hammer.

One of my favorite memories is about a game called Mario Paint. Mario Paint was a suite of mini-games promoting creative play. This was just a really, really, really boring Nintendo version of MS Paint with a few little goodies on the side. One of those was a music lab. In it, you could pick certain icons that would represent a different tone, and place them on a music sheet for pitch. You would then run the program, and play your music, which sounded like a horrible MIDI file.

My friend and I messed around with Mario Paint for hours trying to get it to play the theme from Ghostbusters, with which we were obsessed. (My friend's parents were dumb enough to buy Mario Paint. To my parents credit, they knew it was a bad purchase). We never did get Mario Paint to make more than a bunch of bleeps and boops.

But someone eventually did get it to work well. And I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, The Theme from Ghostbusters, courtesy of Mario Paint: