SPOnG can reveal today that Nintendo is currently developing Mario Paint for Nintendo DS, slated for release in mid-to-late 2006 – excellent news, we’re sure you’ll agree.
Speaking to us under terms of anonymity, a source close to Nintendo in Kyoto told SPOnG, “The project is at a turning point. The original plan is to make a DS update to Mario Paint on the Super Famicom which would seem an obvious thing to do. This would be a quite large application containing drawing, animation and music software,” continued our source. “Nintendo now feels it might be better to release three titles, one for painting, one for animation and one for making music. It’s not decided as to which plan will be followed.”
We were also told that “…the new Mario Paint will be a community-building game and users will be able to share their creations with other DS users and Revolution users.” Revolution users? “Yes, there is a plan for Mario Paint on Nintendo Revolution as well, as it is believed that the controller lends itself perfectly to creative software. Of course this will be with 3D options rather than just 2D, though the plan would be for Revolution and DS versions of Mario Paint to communicate in some way.”
An NCL spokesperson commenting from Kyoto to SPOnG today via Nintendo Europe simply said, “We cannot comment on any games that may or may or may not be in development.”
Of course, this news is one of those stories that is so obvious we find ourselves amazing that it’s not already been announced. Speaking to us several weeks ago on an unrelated issue, a Nintendo employee commented, “PictoChat was originally going to have a lot more functionality but it was pulled to get it embedded in the DS in stable form – shame it wasn’t more like Mario Paint…”
SPOnG would also like to register intrigue of the highest order in Revolution Mario Paint. The idea of making 3D models (not only of girls) using the little magic wand sounds like the kind of thing our wives will eventually leave us for/love us more for when we dedicate our entire lives to Nintendo's upcoming industry-breaking new machine.
