| Soma said: I've been saying Wii Music is the New Mario Paint, so my favorite part was this: "The saddest definition for painting would be to ‘paint within the lines’. If there was a ‘painting video-game’ made, this would likely be its realization. But Mario Paint was not this, and even the Hardcore enjoyed Mario Paint before they lost their child like innocence to become embittered." He's right! Why people hate this but not Mario Paint if it is basically the same thing? Mario Paint was not for casuals, but to people that like to draw, and Wii Music is not for casuals but to people that like to play music. |
Actually Mario Paint, despite the name, ended up being a bigger hit with people who like to make music.
As I said in another post, it was all about timing. Mario Paint was before the explosive success of the PlayStation era imposed a stereotypical image of what games and gamers are supposed to be on the mainstream public.
Personally I liked playing with the animation program more on Mario Paint then the composer, all though I did use it to make Music to go with my simple crummy little movies. I also use to own this simple Simpsons CD-Rom game that was basically a simple animation program. You had characters and some pre-programmed animations, as well as backgrounds and sound effects and quips of dialogue to make your own simple Simpsons shorts. Today I'm trying to use final cut pro to edit together a 15-20 min short horror movie produced by friends and family.
When I was a kid, there seemed to be a pretty healthy market for specifically educational software/games. Humongous Entertainment made several simple colorful point and click adventures for kids to give them a basic hold on problem solving, and the backyard sports series to get a basic feel of different sports. MECC made the Oregon Trail and it's follow-ups to teach people history and geography as well as gaining basic experience in resource and time management. Music Pen worked with Microsoft and Scholastic Press to produce a series of games based on the Magic School Bus books to better teach a variety of basic Sciences through games. Broderbund Software tried to get kids interested in Almanacs with the Carmen Sandagio series.
Why is it there was enough room in this industry for countless fantasy themed RPG's and war shooters, but not for these games?
