Mario Paint: The Best Compositions

There’s an unsung fan community out there… one that uses Mario Paint‘s composer utility to bring their own compositions to life. Thanks to the magic of the Internets, it’s now possible for these brilliant artists to craft long tracks and share them with the world. A few of the highlights follow…

Mega Man 2: Dr. Wily Stage 1

A great version of a great track. Note that the tempo is set almost to the fastest possible setting. It drives, much like the original 8-bit song.

Super Mario RPG: Let’s Go Down The Wine River!

Super Mario RPG had a great deal of classic tracks, and some were even overlooked, like this gem that occurred as Mario and Mallow fell down over the falls. The artist, TomBobBlender, has a literal plethora of Mario Paint compositions on his YouTube channel.

Tetris: Type A Music

Not a bad composition, and the Game Boy as the main melodic line is both appropriate and ironically fitting, but it seems like there are two-thirds of the song that didn’t make it into this video.

Street Fighter II: Guile Stage

A brilliant rendition of the classic arcade theme, with wonderful use of the Starman icon in the middle phrases. This also shows the limitation of the format, as several of the longer tones simply can’t be done by Mario Paint‘s one-beat rhythm scheme.

Outkast: Ms. Jackson

Not a complete rendition of the ’90s classic, but certainly well-done. Unlike the example above, this song is actually quite well-suited to the Mario Paint environment.

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!

This is another game that lends itself to the Mario Paint soundscape very well. Listening, it almost seems like they created some of the actual 8-bit sounds with this game in mind, or perhaps the other way around. Another one from TomBobBlender.

F-Zero: Big Blue

F-Zero‘s most dynamic music works pretty well on the Mario Paint system. Hey, here’s a bit of trivia! Mario Paint and F-Zero were on the same console! Awww yeeeah!

Meow Mix Theme

We’ll let our friend TomBobBlender shine once more with the theme song from the Meow Mix commercials. It’s like the developers specifically included the cat sound for this reason, and how fitting indeed to finish out the song, and this article, with the dog sound. ARF!