Or Earthbound if you're pretentious
While those are great games, people always overlook my favorite game. A game that had a profound influence on me. My number one spot would easily go to:
Mariopaint was like ms paint combined with a music sequencer, a simple animation editor and an addictive fly-swatting game. It came packaged with a mouse and mousepad. This was a big deal because I didn't have a computer while growing up. Even my small highschool didn't have any computers. We learned to type on manual typewriters. Computers seemed magical and out of reach. Then one Christmas I got Mariopaint and everything changed. I finally had access to the type of creative programs that only existed on computer. Not only could I draw ON THE TELEVISION, but I could also compose music in the sequencer and make animations of Mario exploding into pixelated gore that would send my little brother screaming from the room. I loved the animation portion so much that I once called the Nintendo tip line to figure out how to run my Nintendo through a VCR so I could record short animated clips back to back to make final animations longer than the game's limit of 9 frames.
My favorite aspect by far was the stamp editor. It gave you a small grid and allowed you to create pixel art. Individual "stamps" could be combined to make a larger, higher detailed image. While drawing large images freehand with the mouse was inexact and clunky, especially after it started to fail from overuse, the stamp editor allowed you to make pixel perfect images every time. It came with some default stamps, and this one in particular blew my mind:
The shadow on his hat was purple! And the white circle at the crest of his hat was yellow! Yet, when seen from far away, the colors didn't look unusual, only richer! (note the small thumbnail at the top-left of the image) It never would have occurred to me to use any color other than a darker shade or black for shadow. I started trying to re-create this effect in my own stamps.
For all my love of the program, there was one thing I didn't like. It was weird. I think the designers were going for "fun weird" but they overshot into unsettling. Much of the music was creepy and surreal. The graphics were oddly drawn and the color choices were strange. It didn't even feel like a mario game as much as a bizarre paint program that they shoved the mario license into minutes before shipping. It's a small quibble though. It was so inventive that even the interface was packed with creativity. For instance, the undo button was the face of a dog who would bark when clicked. If the game was idle for too long he would get up and wander around the screen. (note him sauntering around the bottom center of the image above)
Today you can play Mariopaint in your browser. Its a cool idea, but by default you have to use your keyboard to control it which is challenging. The stamp editor is still a blast, and people still use the music editor to make simple chiptune music. Try it yourself!
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