Eek! A mouse!

[+atari2600land]

I noticed I had Mario Paint, but no mouse. So I went on trusty eBay to get one. It arrived today. And I am having a blast with Mario Paint. I got the cartridge to work after a couple of tries. I guess it has been years since I used the cartridge.

 

So tell me your experiences with the SNES mouse. I definitely plan on getting more mouse-compatible games and urge SNES developers to consider optional mouse controls.

[Wayler]

I tried my original SNES mouse some years ago and it came quite a surprise on how loud it is to use. I guess that is to be expected with a mechanical ball mouse but I found the noise was amplified because of the official SNES mouse mat made of hard plastic. It also has a ridiculously short cable and kind of an awkward design for my hand. I've been considering getting the Hyperkin SNES mouse that looks bigger and is optical.

 

I never understood the appeal of Mario Paint. We had MS Paint on PC. It's Paint, whoop-di-doo. As for games, I'd suggest anything with a pointer that has a PC/Amiga origin, like Lemmings 2, Cannon Fodder, Eye of the Beholder etc. There are a couple of great exclusives out there like:

Mario's Super Picross - pixel/picture puzzle, SFC only

King Arthur's World - Lemmings in medieval times

Shien's Revenge - 1st person ninja action slasher

Edited June 17 by Wayler

[Tanooki]

Personally I've had a few games over the years that supported it but currently I just have the original Mario Paint bigbox they sold (lacks the flimsy foam tray though) and I know I put a lot of hours into messing with it, coloring when I just needed to chill the few things it had.  Sometimes I would draw something and then save it to realize it had ONE save, sucked, but I got it, so eventually I used a VCR to store a few more things.  When that was in place I then started to make a few 8bit art movies, one I remember was Link battling it out in an original Zelda dungeon.  I never could read/write music, that sucked, so I borrowed the Zelda tune from the Mario Paint guide within Nintendo Power.

 

On top of that I used to have a few others like Civilization, Sim City 2000, (SFC) Mario to Wario, Tinstar, and tried Lemmings 2.  Doom works with it, but I found it terribly setup but I guess with 2 buttons it was limited, so I wouldn't advise it (I have this still, but it's so bad just don't bother.)

 

Civ worked great, that one did one thing the controller stupidly didn't do, 8 direction movement (vs 4) which saved a bit of time in movement, and it made menu navigation a breeze.  The same can be said, diagonals aside, for also Sim City 2000 as it just was more meant to be as is Lemmings 2 to a slightly lesser effect as it converts a bit nicer to a controller.  Mario to Wario lives for quickly going to a spot to drop a path for you to complete the stage, it wasn't my thing, but it works super well.  And well, then there's Tinstar which was optional, and if you opted into it, it made for a nice point click and shoot style light gun w/out the gun type thing which is fine as an alt but still nicer on a controller.

[WavyGravy]

I had one waaay back in the day when Mario Paint came out. I was pretty young, so I had a great time with it, and then some years later my brother and I rediscovered it and the stamps and animations, trying to outdo each other on who could come up with the most brutally violent way for Mario and Luigi to murder each other in 9 frames or less.
Truly, fun for all ages.

[Dire 51]

On 6/17/2024 at 3:43 AM, Wayler said:

I never understood the appeal of Mario Paint. We had MS Paint on PC. It's Paint, whoop-di-doo.

In 1992, to my recollection, PCs were pretty expensive and not many homes had one yet. So to be able to get a paint program for $50ish dollars that you could use on any SNES was quite the thing. My friends and I used it all the time to make custom intro cards for the home videos we made, since we could connect the SNES right up to a VCR, and we continued to do so for several years. Here's a few we came up with between 1994 and 1997.

I also made a series of videos called "Super Dead Mario," but most of those have been lost to time.
 

Edited Thursday at 02:21 AM by Dire 51

[Wayler]

3 hours ago, Dire 51 said:

In 1992, to my recollection, PCs were pretty expensive and not many homes had one yet. So to be able to get a paint program for $50ish dollars that you could use on any SNES was quite the thing.

I admit the biggest reason for dismissing Mario Paint is my lack of artistic skill and interest in both drawing and painting. I mostly consume but rarely produce the medium. 

[Austin]

On 6/17/2024 at 3:43 AM, Wayler said:

I never understood the appeal of Mario Paint.

The bonus fly swatting game. It's pretty damn good, man!

[CPUWIZ]

Are there no cheap BluTooth mouse adapters out there?

[+atari2600land]

Just got Super Solitaire. It works with the mouse. It took me a few times, but I beat a game of Klondike.

[Austin]

1 hour ago, CPUWIZ said:

Are there no cheap BluTooth mouse adapters out there?

8BitDo has a BlueTooth adapter for the SNES that works with modern controllers (Switch, PS4, etc), but their page says nothing about working with BlueTooth mice: https://www.8bitdo.com/retro-receiver-snes/

  

33 minutes ago, atari2600land said:

Just got Super Solitaire. It works with the mouse. It took me a few times, but I beat a game of Klondike.

I didn't even know there was a Solitaire game on the SNES, let alone one that works with the mouse. I'll have to give it a try sometime.

Edited Thursday at 07:33 PM by Austin

[CPUWIZ]

There seem to be a lot more games for it than I thought.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_NES_Mouse

[CPUWIZ]

Hmm, looking at the dev manual, that doesn't look very complicated.  🤔

 

 

[Tanooki]

Damn I should have both posted that wiki link to the mouse, and realized I forgot to mention Arkanoid as I have that cart.  That one works marvelous with the mouse.  You'll get better results on that than the controller which isn't much worse mind you, not as obviously ehhh like the vaus vs nes controller for Arkanoid on there.  And wow, I forgot or didn't realize that one Sailor Moon puzzle title I got back in my hands in a bundle months ago works with it too, that would make it so much more approachable for speedy results than moving the cursor about.  The sad thing is a lot of really good games that did use it, they stayed in Japan, and others didn't quite advertise it in the states that did which was a mistake as it would make those menu based titles more fun to navigate.