WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - My Paint

Publisher: Saddleback Graphics Developer: WayForward Released: 1993

I wonder how many people even know the Genesis had a mouse peripheral. The internet prattles on endlessly about Mario Paint for the SNES, but Sega was all over that stuff as well!

OK, not really. The first paint program on the Genesis was a game called Art Alive, which predated Mario Paint, but which also didn't include any sort of mouse support. The game was released in 1991, whereas the Mega Mouse wasn't released in until 1993.

It doesn't take a genius to know that drawing using a console controller absolutely sucks.

My Paint actually started life as a PC paint program aimed at kids. Released in 1991, the premise of Saddleback Graphics' My Paint was to fill a major hole in the creative software market on DOS. The only options on PC for children were either full-fledged paint programs aimed at adult users or rinky-dink colouring programs that did very little to nurture creative talent.

My Paint is the best of both worlds. It came with a bunch of pre-designed colouring pages complete with interesting sounds and special effects. But it was also a full-featured drawing program that was both versatile but easy to use and interesting to look at, with big, animated buttons.

The port to the Sega CD is a good one. The interface is just as intuitive and the whole thing is, at the very least, interesting to look at and listen to. Obviously the colour palette is a bit lacking due to the limitations of the system, but the package still gets the job done.

I believe this game also marks one of the very first console projects for developer WayForward, which handled the port from DOS to Sega CD.

There's not a whole lot more to say about this program. It gets the job done. One kind of interesting oddity is that every preloaded colouring page has associated audio that goes with it. There is a whole series of dinosaur pages in the game, and the related audio features various facts about the dinosaurs which are pictured. It's a small touch, but kind of a cool one.