09/10/2019

A Cartoon About Bigfoot Serving Lemonade From His Armpit Done In Mario Paint (From The Attract Mode Archive: #101)

by Matthew Edward Hawkins

The following post originally appeared on attractmo.de, on April 18, 2014.
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The above is was done entirely within Mario Paint. Not via an emulator, but on a real deal Super NES, with a real deal Super NES mouse. I can’t help but compare it to the stuff that you’d find on Liquid Television back in the day, hence why I dig it so much. Am also reminded of a long-standing belief that, if I were to ever overdose on psychotropic drugs, the world would be reduced to 256 colors and Mario Paint’s sound library, at least in my mind.

The short was introduced to me during PAX East weekend by its director, Jeff Benson. Not only is he a member of Fangamer (who aside from helping us run the shop, are simply super coolest guys & gals ever), Benson also maintains the Mario Paint Collective, an online community that’s dedicated to evangelizing Nintendo’s early 90′s art creation toolset for today’s artists.

Thus far the collective has held workshops, and I forget if there’s already been an exhibition, or are working towards their first. You can find many highlighted pieces over at their Tumblr; my personal favorites are by Benson once again, which feel a lot like classical 20th century still lifes, but with pixels instead of oil paints. One has to wonder what Edward Hopper would have done if the SNES was around during his time.

It’s also where you’ll find SREK: Remastered and Uncut, which clocks in at almost 30 minutes. What’s supposed to be a retelling of the beloved CGI ogre’s various exploits, is mostly just a series of animated loops and nonsensical statements, though stuff like “what’s in the blood igloo” and “mommy draw the blinds” are rather bone chilling, IMHO. As is the birthing scene, around the 10-minute mark.

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