Overview

Mario Artist: Paint Studio is the launch title for the Mario Artist series — an ambitious creative suite for Nintendo's ill-fated 64DD peripheral. It is the spiritual successor to the SNES classic Mario Paint, and just like that earlier title, it shipped with a mouse: Paint Studio came bundled with the Nintendo 64 Mouse, sold separately for the rest of the Mario Artist line.

The game blends a traditional 2D paint program (with all of Mario Paint's tools plus new stamps, shapes, and a 4-player collaborative drawing mode), a flipbook animation creator (Parapara Manga), and an experimental 3D World mode that lets players explore three small interactive worlds and photograph their inhabitants — essentially a Pokémon Snap-style mode hidden inside an art program.

It is one of only two 64DD games to use the Transfer Pak (the other being its sibling Mario Artist: Talent Studio), allowing the player to pull images from a Game Boy Camera cartridge straight into the canvas. Hidden support also exists for the unreleased 64GB Cable and Game Boy Printer Color peripherals.

Controls

In the editors (2D Paint & Parapara Manga)

In 3D World

Modes

Paint Studio is structured around four distinct modes, all accessible from the main menu:

• 2D Paint (２Dペイント) — traditional drawing canvas with shapes, text, stamps, and a unique 4-player collaborative mode.
• Parapara Manga (パラパラまんが, “Flipbook”) — multi-frame animation editor up to 35 frames.
• 3D World (３Dワールド) — explore three worlds, photograph creatures, edit their textures.
• Gallery (ギャラリー) — slideshow of saved 2D Paint and 3D World creations.

2D Paint

2D Paint is Paint Studio's direct equivalent to Mario Paint's main art mode — the heart of the program. It carries forward every tool from the SNES original (brushes, shapes, text, fills) and adds new stamps, new backgrounds, and a feature that Mario Paint never had: collaborative multiplayer drawing, where up to four players can paint on the same canvas simultaneously using any mix of controllers and mice.

The mode also supports image import from external sources via the Capture Cassette (RCA video input) or the Game Boy Camera through the Transfer Pak — a feat unprecedented for a Nintendo console at the time.

Stamp Library

The new stock Nintendo-themed stamps are an embarrassment of riches. Paint Studio shipped with artwork from across Nintendo's late-90s output, including:

Images drawn in 2D Paint can be exported into Mario Artist: Talent Studio as talent textures or movie backgrounds — the Mario Artist suite was designed to feed assets into itself.

Character Stamp (Promo)

Promotional screenshot showing the Character Stamp tool in action.

Character Stamp In Use

In-game shot with SM64 Balloons and Bullies stamped onto a canvas.

Parapara Manga (Flipbook)

Parapara Manga (“Flipbook”) is Paint Studio's animation studio — the spiritual successor to Mario Paint's Animation Land. Players can string together multiple frames to create flipbook-style animations, with a hard cap of 35 frames per animation.

Animations and 2D Paint creations are stored separately, but the two modes share an import pipeline: any frame can pull from a Capture Cassette video feed, a Game Boy Camera image, or a previously saved 2D Paint creation.

Hidden trick: Save a two-frame animation as «シム» (Shimu, “Sim”) and that animation can be imported into SimCity 64 as a custom citizen walking around the city. Paint Studio is therefore the only way to put hand-drawn pedestrians into SimCity 64.

3D World

3D World is Paint Studio's most experimental mode, and the one that betrays the game's longer development history. Players can view and explore three small interactive worlds, each with its own set of resident creatures.

From fixed camera angles the player can simply watch the worlds tick along, or hop into the viewpoint of any unlocked creature. Choosing the «たんけんする» (Tankensuru, “Explore”) option turns the mode into a free-roam camera game: the player walks through the environment and photographs the inhabitants, very much like Pokémon Snap. Each new creature photographed is unlocked for viewing in the menu — and its texture becomes editable.

The texture editor is the secret weapon. Paint a custom skin on a Triceratops, then watch it lumber around with your handiwork wrapped on its model. It is a clever loop: photograph → unlock → paint → observe.

The Triceratops' texture being edited — redraw the skin, then return to 3D World and see it in motion.

3D World Creatures

Twenty creatures populate the three worlds, but only six are unlocked by default (marked below). The other fourteen must be photographed in Tankensuru mode to be added to the viewable menu and texture editor.

イルカ

Iruka

Dolphin

こざかな1

Kozakana 1

Small Fish 1

カメ

Kame

Turtle

サメ

Same

Shark

マンタ

Manta

Manta Ray

にんぎょ

Ningyo

Mermaid

タコ

Tako

Octopus

ブラキオサウルス

Burakiosaurusu

Brachiosaurus

プテラノドン

Puteranodon

Pteranodon

ラプトル

Raputoru

Raptor

ステゴサウルス

Sutegosaurusu

Stegosaurus

Tレックス

T-Rekkusu

T. rex

トリケラトプス

Torikeratopusu

Triceratops

ガリミマス

Garimimasu

Gallimimus

スノーキー

Sunōkī

Sunōkī

ララ

Rara

Rara

ガブール

Gabūru

Gabūru

フィルバート

Firubāto

Firubāto

ジャック

Jakku

Jakku

コロン

Koron

Koron

リンダ

Rinda

Rinda

Gallery Mode

Gallery is a simple slideshow viewer. The player's saved 2D Paint creations and 3D World snapshots play through automatically, returning to the main menu when the slideshow ends or any button is pressed.

Only images saved in the first five containers are picked up by the slideshow — later slots are invisible to Gallery mode, presumably to keep slideshow length manageable.

Development

Paint Studio is unusual for a first-party Nintendo title in that the bulk of its development was handled by a British third-party studio. Software Creations (Manchester, England — later renamed Acclaim Studios Manchester) had built up a stable working relationship with Nintendo over the early 1990s and had previously assisted with Nintendo 64 hardware development.

In 1995, Nintendo commissioned Software Creations to build a 3D sequel to Mario Paint. The project was originally pitched as “Creator” — a 3D “living playground” where the player tweaks attributes of pre-made models like dinosaurs (size, aggression, behaviour, speed, texture). Traces of this concept survive into the final game's 3D World mode.

In the final stages of development, Nintendo's Japanese departments took full control, rejecting many of Software Creations' and Nintendo of America's ideas before shipping the game on 1 December 1999. The 64DD's commercial failure in Japan meant the title was never released outside the country — Software Creations' years of work were locked behind a regional barrier and a peripheral barely anybody owned.

Both Paint Studio and Mario Artist: Communication Kit contain complete, hidden code paths to support the unreleased 64GB Cable peripheral, the Game Boy Printer, and the unreleased Game Boy Printer Color. Neither piece of hardware ever shipped, but the menus and image-transfer logic are fully implemented inside the disk.

Prototype “Gnat Attack”

In June 2020, a prototype build of Paint Studio was recovered and preserved by the gaming community. The build contained an unannounced minigame: a 3D successor to Mario Paint's Gnat Attack fly-swatter, completely removed from the final retail product.

Like the original, this Gnat Attack consists of three levels and a boss level that loops endlessly — but it has been recontextualised to take place inside a house: the levels are set in a bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, and living room respectively. The flies themselves have a different design from the SNES original.

The minigame was almost certainly one of Software Creations' contributions that Nintendo of Japan stripped in late development. Sources: Hard4Games preservation video and LuigiBlood Gnat Attack showcase.

Gallery

Cover & Packaging

Alternate Cover

Game Drive (Disk)

N64 Mouse Bundle

Jewel Case + Mouse

Artwork & Sprites

Mario

Render

Wing Mario

Unique render — never used elsewhere

Undodog

Cameo from Mario Paint

Reset Rocket

Reset icon

Save Container

Screenshots

Title Screen

Logo

Texture Edit

Triceratops getting a custom skin

Transfer Pak Workflow

Paint Studio is one of only two 64DD games (alongside Mario Artist: Talent Studio) to use the Transfer Pak — the accessory that slots into the N64 Controller's memory pak port and allows reading data from Game Boy cartridges. The killer app here is the Game Boy Camera: take a photo with the camera cartridge, plug it into the Transfer Pak, and import that photo straight into Paint Studio for editing.

Step 1

Transfer Pak options menu

Step 2

Reading data from the Game Boy Camera

Step 3

Choose the import palette

Step 4

Draw on the imported image

Step 5

Game Boy Camera without cart loaded

Step 5 note: when the Game Boy Camera is connected via Transfer Pak but no cartridge is loaded, the camera passes through a broken video feed. The screenshot shows the broken state, which is technically a bug exposed during testing.

Pre-release Screenshots

A run of pre-release screenshots survives from the years when Paint Studio was still called Mario Paint 64, Picture Maker, and Mario Artist & Camera. The Pikachu drawing screenshot is one of the earliest known pieces of marketing material for the project.

Drawing Pikachu

Early build — demonstrating the Pokémon stamp library

Pre-release: Dinosaur

Early 3D World shot

Pre-release: Dinosaur 2

Texture editor concept

Pre-release MAS3

Early build screenshot

Pre-release MAS4

Early build screenshot

Pre-release MAS6

Early build screenshot

Pre-release Gnat Attack

The cancelled minigame in marketing

References to Other Games

Trivia

• Paint Studio was the launch title for the Mario Artist series and one of the first 64DD games to ship — a flagship release for a platform that was already commercially struggling.
• Software Creations was a British studio based in Manchester. After Acclaim acquired them, they became Acclaim Studios Manchester; Paint Studio remains one of their most prominent credited works on a Nintendo platform.
• Only two of the four Mario Artist titles (Paint Studio and Talent Studio) use the Transfer Pak. Communication Kit and Polygon Studio do not.
• The N64 Mouse was bundled with Paint Studio but sold separately for the other Mario Artist games — meaning if you bought Paint Studio first, you got the peripheral your siblings would otherwise need to buy on its own.
• The F-Zero X Expansion Kit disk swap is one of the only known examples of cross-disk content on 64DD. Swapping disks in Save and Load reveals a hidden background pack of F-Zero X art.
• The maximum 35-frame Parapara Manga limit is a hard cap — longer animations need to be saved as separate flipbooks.
• The Super Mario 64 title-screen face originated as a prototype asset for this game (then called Mario Paint 3D) and was repurposed in SM64. Source: Nintendo of America's MAR10 Day 2023 Twitter post.
• The discovered Gnat Attack 3D prototype (June 2020) suggests Software Creations had built a full 3D minigame inside Paint Studio, which Nintendo of Japan removed in the final cut — alongside many other ideas from the British team.
• The cancelled 64GB Cable and Game Boy Printer Color peripherals have fully implemented code support inside Paint Studio. The menus, the UI, the image-transfer logic — all there, sitting on disk, never reachable.
• The Tankensuru (“Explore”) photo-camera mechanic in 3D World predates Pokémon Snap's release in North America (June 1999 NA vs. December 1999 Paint Studio JP) but the development overlap is clear — both games came out of Nintendo around the same era using the same core idea of photographing creatures.
• The Japanese title «マリオアーティスト　ペイント　スタジオ» (Mario Ātisuto: Peinto Sutajio) is a straight katakana transliteration — consistent across all four Mario Artist titles.
• The 3D World creature names mix straight Japanese terms («イルカ»/Iruka, «カメ»/Kame) for real-world animals with completely invented names (Sunōkī, Rara, Gabūru, Firubāto) for the Mars creatures. The Mars-world names have no clear etymology — they appear to be original Software Creations or Nintendo EAD coinages.
• Paint Studio sold poorly — not because it was bad, but because only an estimated 15,000 64DD units ever shipped. The market was vanishingly small from day one.

Reference, Information & External Links