Fun 'n' Games Review by: Crazy Li - 8/10
What Is This Mario Paint Knockoff?Fun 'n' Games is a weird little game that seems very reminiscent of Mario Paint for the SNES. Both games feature a painting mode as the main attraction as well as a few side things you can do such as little mini-games and a music composer. Both games support mouse input (though Fun 'n' Games does not force it, actually making the controller be the default control scheme). At first glance, you may wonder why even bother with this game when you can play Mario Paint instead? A valid question. Let's take a closer look.
The biggest benefit of the existence of this game is to provide an experience comparable to Mario Paint to the Genesis. Obviously Nintendo wasn't going to make a Genesis port of their game, so fortunately a third party made a similar game for both systems. The genesis does have one exclusive mini-game and considering Mario Paint is probably a superior game in an overall sense, the SNES version isn't really worth bothering with. The Genesis version is worth at least a look, however. The paint mode gives you a blank canvas to draw on as you see fit. You have a variety of colors and patterns to use in your painting. You can use basic tools like Paint Brush, Flood Fill, Spray Paint, Eraser, etc... there are also stamps that add on pre-made images to your drawing. You can even make a custom stamp in a little sprite editing mode. There are also a variety of drawings you can add in and color those (like an army man for example).
Within the paint mode, there are a number of coloring book templates if you just want to fool around with pre-made scenes. Another unique aspect of this game is the Style Mode, which integrates into the Paint Mode. Style Mode basic gives you a person with multiple portions: hat, hair/head, torso, legs, and accessory (held in the hand). You can mix-and-match parts with several options for each section to create some crazy-looking person. These can be saved and then imported into your painting later.
There is also the Music Mode which is similar to Mario Paint Composer. I actually personally prefer it to Mario Paint's (the actual in-game one anyway) as I think the instrument flexibility is better. Whereas Mario Paint has random symbols that either make musical instrument sounds or sound effects and the instrument ones don't make any kind of logical sense, Fun 'n' Games' music mode has two different categories: Instruments and Sound Effects separately. The instrument icons are music notes with pictures of the instrument it is (like piano keys or a trumpet). This makes it very easy to figure out what type of sound to expect and makes song composing easier. I also think the sound effect choices are a bit more diverse.
Finally, there's the arcade mode. This lets you play one of three different games:
Whack-A-Clown, which is basically a Whack-A-Mole type game
Mouse Maze, which is similar to Pac-Man, but you eat cheese instead of dots, are chased by cats instead of ghosts, and if you collect a dog bone, you temporarily change into a dog and can turn the tables on the cats (similar effect to Pac-Man's power pellet). One unique thing is the mouse traps which if you run into them as the mouse, temporarily stop your movement (dog form is immune to this, naturally). I don't recall Pac-Man having anything like that.
Space Lazer, which is a space shooter type game from the cockpit perspective. I never really understood how to play that game well.
All-in-all, it's a pretty interesting game. I played it as a kid and could keep fooling around with the painter time and time again to make new creations. The only limit in replayability is your own imagination, really.
Graphics: They're nothing special for a Genesis game. The pre-made stuff to add to your drawing are hit-or-miss, though there's a good number of stuff in there and some of it's pretty neat. The mini-game graphics aren't too shabby either.
Sound: There wasn't an overabundance of music, considering it was mainly a painting game. The mini-game music seemed appropriate for the game you were playing. The music-maker music quality was pretty good and it had some nice pre-loaded songs you could sample. In paint-mode, there was an "Oh no!" sound effect that played every time you used undo. When I was a kid, I thought it was the most hilarious thing ever. There's also some other nice little sound effects here and there scattered about.
Addictiveness: If you're a creative person like me, this game's incredibly addictive. You can spend countless hours creating... images, music... create to your heart's content!
Depth: There's a lot to do in this game. Just exploring all the paint and pattern options alone can keep you busy for a long time. Then you have all the coloring book scenes, stamps, Style Mode combinations... then you can make your own music... even fool around in the mini-games. It's hard to run out of things to do in this game.
Difficulty: Well... you're not against any kind of opposing force, so it's not really difficult. It just might be difficult to get used to the controls at first. The mouse is a bit more intuitive for painting, but some might find the d-pad easier to control movement with. Either way, once you adjust, you'll be having lots of fun. The arcade games are also very easy except for the Space one.
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