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Not quite Mario Paint, but it'll have to do for now
Though the Wii seems like the perfect platform for a Mario Paint revival (as does the Nintendo DS), it's doubtful that you'll hear an announcement for that in the next year or so. In the meantime, if you have a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and are interested in the Wii homebrew scene, you can try out WiiPaint, a new program from Spanish programmer Kontakatilu. So far, it looks like the version 1.0 application only lets you draw on the screen with a 28-color palette. While that doesn't seem like much functionality, it's a start! Pretty soon*, you'll be looping animations and composing Mega Man 2 themes!*This probably won't happen "pretty soon."[Via DCEmu]
Mixing masterful music in Mario Paint
For us, game music doesn't get much better than the Dr. Wily Stage 1 theme from Mega Man 2. And thanks to YouTube user TomBobBlender, we have a kickass rendition of the track done in Mario Paint to listen to. The guy has even done renditions of tracks from Street Fighter II, Punch-Out!! and even the theme to Tetris.We've included the Dr. Wily stage 1 track after the break, but be sure to hit up the "Read" link below to check out all of TomBobBlender's tracks.[Via 4cr]
Virtually Overlooked Week: Dave's picks
Virtually Overlooked has taken over Wii Fanboy! All this week, members of the staff will be outlining their personal picks for future Virtual Console releases.I was always a Nintendo fanboy growing up. I had all the Nintendo consoles (I even owned a Virtual Boy once) and only arrived on the Sega scene as it neared its conclusion. But when I did, I arrived in style, as my dad gifted us kids with a Sega Genesis, Sega CD and 32X add-ons, one Christmas during my teen years. There were a lot of great Sega games I was able to play thanks to that, including Star Wars Arcade on the 32X (let the laughing commence!). But, I still managed to primarily play on Nintendo consoles. It wasn't soon after that the N64 emerged on the scene and I found myself actually playing wrestling games. You remember those games, developed by AKI and Yuke's? WCW vs. NWO World Tour was probably the game I played most on the N64 (aside from Goldeneye, of course), but I couldn't bring myself to include it into my list. What did I include in my list?Well, let's find out!
Nintendo and their progression of color
If you're a Nintendophile like us, you love to read and learn about the company, no matter what aspect of it that may be. And over at blog COLOURlovers, they looked back at the history of Nintendo's consoles and focused on the progression of colors throughout the life of the company in the console market, compiling quite the compelling article. Obviously, as time progressed and the consoles Nintendo manufactured became more and more complex, the depth of color and richness of textures were easily determined.But, what you may not realize is how Nintendo's palette have evolved along with their approach. A system that focuses more on being easily enjoyed by all such as the Wii now has a color palette to suit. Not only that, but the colorful strides made by the original NES helped us all realize a visual and fantastic world only gaming could present.[Via digg]
Today's most musical video: Final Fantasy in Mario Paint
YouTube user TomBobBlender has built a stockpile of game music songs recreated in Mario Paint. One of his latest, the Final Fantasy IV battle theme is our pick for today's video, but browse through his YouTube page for even more selections. Game music recreated in a game -- does it get any geekier better than that?See the clip after the break.
Fatbits Pocket Painter, Mario Paint for the DS
Having created Rotoshop, the software behind uniquely-animated films like Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, Bob Sabiston is no stranger to new ways of manipulating media. His latest project, Fatbits Pocket Painter, takes advantage of the Nintendo DS' hardware features to create both pixel-based and vector-based illustrations. The DS' top screen shows the entire canvas while the touchscreen displays a close-up view for editing. Fatbits won't replace your copy of Adobe Photoshop, but with features like color palette mixing, variable thickness paintbrushes, and opacity sliders, the program is a lot more sophisticated than MS Paint. The application even supports an animation mode and playback for recorded sound effects (via DS mic) just like Mario Paint. Users will be able to share their complete creations or works-in-progress by uploading them to a web server with the DS' WiFi feature. While Nintendo is aware of the project, there are no cemented plans for a commercial release. Sabistan admits that he might eventually cast the program loose for the homebrew community to play with if he is not able to find a publisher. For now, a brief user manual and a gallery of images created with Fatbits are available.
DS Daily: What do you desire?
Pocket Gamer issued some DS demands recently, with their list of titles that should already be on the handheld, but aren't. While they offered up some interesting candidates -- a good place to start the discussion -- we'd love to see you guys start throwing out ideas on all the games that could be. Sure, a GoldenEye or Mario Paint DS could be really excellent, but there are a lot of games out there. What do you think might benefit from the touchscreen, the WiFi, or both? Last time we discussed the what-ifs, we talked only about franchises ... but this time, anything's game.
Totaka's song: The search is on
A seventeen-note theme that has been hidden in Nintendo games for over a decade is finding new life as internet sleuths track down new instances in old games. Totaka's song is most easily accessible from the title screen of the SNES' Mario Paint, but the quirky ditty has appeared in over a dozen games featuring the work of Nintendo sound designer Kazumi Totaka.Interesting trivia, but not too relevant to today's gamers until a few months ago, when Powet.tv compiled a video of the song's known occurrences and put out the call to gamers everywhere to track it down in other games. Within a month, video confirmation for instances in Pikmin 2 and Wario Land for the Virtual Boy had been obtained, and earlier this week Powet posted a video of the song in Luigi's Mansion.MobyGames lists 24 games Totaka has worked on, including the recently released Wii Sports, and it's a decent bet that his song is buried somewhere in most if not all of them. And so the call goes out to Nintendo fans across the land. Let's harness the awesome collaborative power of the internet to solve a mystery that has been plaguing humanity for, er... well... not exactly plaguing but... oh, let's just figure it out, OK?[Via Digg]
