🎨 The Legendary Mario Paint Returns — And So Do the Memories
I’m thrilled about Nintendo’s recent announcement: the return of the OG Mario Paint! This game was one of my most cherished cartridges from the golden days of the early ’90s, and probably the one I spent the most time with growing up. Mario Paint is a “game” that lets the player create using a 2D digital canvas for drawing and painting. While that’s the main attraction, it’s also bundled with light animation, pixel stamp/brush design, and music-making tools. If you don’t know, Mario Paint wasn’t just another Super Nintendo title to me. It was the spark that ignited the creative fire that would eventually drive my career. Back in 1992, my family didn’t own a computer. But we did have a Super Nintendo, and as a die-hard gamer, that was enough for me. Mario Paint was originally bought for my sister as a holiday gift (while I finally got my hands on Street Fighter II: The World Warrior). At first glance, I assumed Mario Paint was a shallow, simple tool for doodles and rudimentary music loops. And I couldn’t have been more wrong. Watching my sister explore it changed everything. She created pieces that felt thoughtful and expressive, and I began to see that Mario Paint was more than a gimmick. It was a visionary, creative playground that rewarded anyone willing to dive in and explore its full potential. It allowed you to build, compose, animate, and imagine, with the only limit being the creator’s imagination. Soon, I was recording videos of my projects and gameplay, combining art, music, and animation. I created fan art of Batman: The Animated Series, Jurassic Park, Street Fighter II, and my original projects, complete with soundtracks. For years, Mario Paint became my go-to creative toolkit. I recorded my animations onto cassette tapes and VHS. If YouTube or TikTok had existed back then, I probably would have been a regular content creator. But even without an audience, I poured myself into these projects purely for the joy of creating. Mario showcases his artistic skills in a charming pixelated style, painting a cheerful caterpillar in the nostalgic setting of Mario Paint. AI Art generated by Chat GPT. Mario and Mario Paint are properties of Nintendo. I had always hoped Nintendo might expand the series. I remember reading magazine articles about the Mario Artist collection in development for the Nintendo 64. It sounded like a dream come true. Sadly, it never saw the light of day. Other creative gaming tools followed, each offering something different with aspects that were included in Mario Paint. But over time, they faded from the mainstream. I recognize Nintendo did bring Mario Paint back before, in spirit—first with WarioWare: D.I.Y., and later likely paving the way for the Mario Maker series. However, those focused heavily on level design rather than full artistic expression. But Mario Paint was special. Long before Photoshop, FL Studio, or TikTok. It gave creators, especially a generation without access to computers, a way to make something entirely their own. It was intuitive, fun, and surprisingly deep. A true creative studio in a cartridge. Now, seeing it return via Nintendo’s online service is a beautiful thing. It’s not just nostalgia; it’s another long-awaited classic now with a second chance for a whole new generation to discover what made this “game” so magical. I’m genuinely happy to see how deeply it resonated with others, and that it’s not being discarded as just a one-trick pony in a sea of groundbreaking games. Nintendo is beloved and forever the company not to shy away from doing something truly different for its community. Whether you’re an old fan or a newcomer, I hope you get lost in it the way I did! P.S. My eternal gratitude goes out to my family for their love and the great times we shared, and to the Nintendo development team for creating something that helped shape so many imaginations. Your work mattered more than you know.
Is drive and inspiration an excuse for a bit of careless abandonment?
Technology is a great but costly career to be involved in. It seems to always be one more thing you find to help with work, and so you may plan on getting it to use and take off your wish list just in time for another item to seduce you with its sinful beauty. I shared my feelings of being rough with a budget at this business lately, but also shared people and places that make all the broke and hungry moments still matter most. Please check out ShoutOut Arizona and read my article there at https://shoutoutarizona.com/meet-willie-johnson-digital-artist-and-producer/
If I had the wisdom to think ahead…
We have those questions about what we’d do better if we had thought of something sooner. Hi, it’s WJ. Check out my new article on CanvasRebel where I discuss how my journey towards an art sanctity was building when I still had remnants sanity. Check it out here and thanks for the support! https://canvasrebel.com/meet-willie-johnson/
Read our story on Crude Arts at Voyage Phoenix…
Our story was published with Voyage Phoenix’s website (voyagephoenix.com). Please go check them out and read their articles, including many about entrepreneurs who have shared their stories. Our story can be found here: http://voyagephoenix.com/interview/life-work-with-willie-j-of-south-side/ Thanks! WJ
For Chadwick, the exalted…
You were a gift that many of us had loved but may not have deserved. It amazes how brave, charitable, how beautiful, talented, and inspirational you remained to the end. Thank you for standing out and being a true positive black role model on and off-screen, forever humble, and truly noble in your determination to help others in need. You were gone from us too soon. May you forever rest in power, suffer no longer, and may your legacy live on and bring back hope to this world.
Reintroduction
We got some news for you! We are happy to announce that earlier this month Curb Beats released its first full official album with CD Baby, Crude and Curb started a few small marketing campaigns to promote its brands, the gallery, and the website with various marketing services, and is now a full Limited Liability Company! My gift for any who’ll listen… The album, titled Claustrophobia, was something we have worked on for most of the year. It was a true test of the lessons we have learned with my software and expanding pallet of sound files, effects, etc. It was tricky working on many of the tracks and trying to come up with a balanced mix with the music and selections. While we wish we could have added more, we hope they make a great impression and provide some general influence to Curb Beats’ style, flexibility, and a little of the down tempo and retro-futuristic electronic sound we tried playing with to be it’s own thing. If you’re visiting from the ad… Welcome and thanks for checking out the site. It’s still a lonely place but hopefully not for too long. Please tell me if there was anything that you like or dislike about the ad, site, etc. Hope you’ll continue to visit and interact going forward. This place will eventually be packed with content and hopefully I’ll have some incentive offers to keep this place live! I’ll keep making this a platform for house my latest beats and related art and videos for sure, so stay tuned! In the works. I am working on my new stylized art projects new for Crude Arts and I’m story boarding to try my first graphic novel/motion comic project. That may be some time away but I’ll be here with you. Thank you for coming and share with me any news, questions, or just say hi. Much love and have a great day!
First Qtr of 2019
Intro First off, hello all. Thank you for visiting the Crude Arts blog. Let me know how’s it going and what bring you by. You may be surprised….. or maybe you have noticed, that I’m learning a lot about this venture. I can’t even describe to folks close to me what it actually is that I’m trying to do. I would love to show what I want with this company, but I haven’t scratched the surface. I have been fortunate to be able to collect all of the tools that I got. It is not easy, but the hardest part is to get things finished when it’s a lot I want to do and get perfected the first time around. In the works… I have been working on my first CG type project for the last few months. It’s pretty cool and I hope it brings up these videos to the next level. We’ll have to see, but I hope to get it finished before the month ends. Later, I will work on getting out an updated art collection for the art gallery. I’m not close to big production, but the Love, Death, + Robots and Into the Spiderverse pictures are notable influences of today for me wanting to go harder into something exciting and next level. Kudos, from me, to all those who worked hard making those projects and all those visuals pop. Last bit… If you follow Curb Beats, I have some updated tracks put out. Some are just demos for now in the Jukebox (because I plan to use some of them in future video projects). I have been working on a new collection.. or album I guess I can call it.. of tracks to get out this summer. Get ready! Finally, I set up a link to a store to sell Curb Beats branded gear. It looks cool and I’ll keep upping the track covers to make more appealing gear to grab. Thanks for checking out this blog! Please keep checking in for updated content and just come back if you like to look things over. Share with me any feedback that you might have for this website and later blogs, etc. or share your story here. wj