Day 161, Game 161 - Mario Paint

Today was kind of a big deal in the video game industry. A little thing happened you might have heard of, that seemed fairly popular on the internet, from what I could tell. Day one of the E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo happened today, headlined by major press conferences by Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft and EA, just to name a few. While the headlines were dominated by the new consoles (Xbox One and PS4), there was one company that remained quiet all day.

But that's pretty par for the course when it comes to Nintendo. 

Nintendo marches to the beat of their own drummer, as they say. They don't ever do anything out of pressure from the industry, but always because it is what they want  to do. Every year, they always do their press conference on Tuesday of E3, but this year, they are going a different route. Instead of the normal big production press conference, they are simply releasing a Nintendo Direct video first thing in the morning, which is something they have gotten very good at over the last year or so. They haven't really said why they are trying this new form of E3 announcements, but if I were a betting man, I would guess that they just realized that it wasn't going to be as efficient in driving whatever point they have to make home - and that a scripted, edited Nintendo Direct video would be more successful. 

Why am I bringing all this up, you ask? And what does this have to do with the game I played today, which as you can see, is Mario Paint for the Super Nintendo? Well, it's simple, really. If I could have one wish as to what Nintendo will announce in their Nintendo Direct video, it would be a new addition to the Mario Paint franchise. Ideally, I would love to see it on the Wii U, but a 3DS version would work fantastically as well. A Wii U Mario Paint game seems almost more obvious than it should be, but then again, we are talking about Nintendo. They don't ever do the obvious things when it comes to business models.

Playing Mario Paint tonight made me realize how far ahead of the curve Nintendo was with this game - and usually is with most games and ideas they have. Thanks to smartphones and tablets and everything else out on the market now, the concept of Mario Paint seems simplistic, basic and uninspiring in today's marketplace. But seriously, a eShop version of Mario Paint on the Wii U would sell gangbusters, plus it would be the type of game to finally show off properly how great the GamePad is, and what kind of potential it has.

The painting in the game is pretty straight forward, but throw in the stamps and textures and patterns, the video recorder and the fly swatting mini-game, and you actually have a well designed Paint game. Also, it's amazing that Nintendo can shameless push out plastic peripheral after peripheral without any qualms from the consumers. 

Good news with a Wii U version of this game is that everything you would need to make the game work, you would already have. So at least you won't have more plastic Nintendo licensed products sitting around collecting dust ... since that's what your Wii U is doing anyway.

So we will see, Nintendo fans! 

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