Music

12 amazing Mario Paint covers of popular songs

by Tyler Munro

A cover of Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” we stumbled upon last week really opened our eyes to the world of Mario Paint’s Composer, a remake of the music maker from SNES’s Mario Paint.

We get the technicality—it’s a computer emulation of one of the Super Nintendo game’s most popular modes. But the emulation comes with some additional perks, too: added lines to drop notes and a bit more polyphonic diversity. It’s still a lot of fun. The composer allows users to really roll with the original game’s core features, like when “Get Lucky” turns into a barrage of digital cat noises.

We couldn’t help but get lost in a Youtube hole of other covers. Some are more obvious than others, with Dragonforce’s “Through the Fire and the Flames” making its hyper-speed mark, but we never expected to hear oddly convincing digi-guitars in “Sweet Home Alabama” or Neil Peart-ian tones for “YYZ.”

Here are 12 of the best Mario Paint (Composer) covers we came across.

1. Dragonforce – “Through the Fire and the Flames”

We’d try to estimate how many 8-bit or 8-bit inspired covers of “Through the Fire and the Flames” this makes, but there’s only so many hours in a day.

2. Michael Jackson – “Thriller”

All of the best without the drawn out narrative and still this manages to be nearly four minutes long. In Mario Paint, this sounds oddly like “Get Lucky,” though maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

3. Carly Rae Jepsen – “Call Me Maybe”

Yes, of course Carly Rae’s voice would be replaced with cats. It makes perfect sense.

4. PSY – “Gangnam Style”

Here’s the viral hit of 2012 arpeggiated to almost unrecognizable extremes.

5. Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Sweet Home Alabama”

Maybe having the planes in here is in poor taste, but you can’t argue with how great the “guitars” and “piano” sound.

6. Rush – “YYZ”

Can’t decide if this fits best for an end-of-game boss battle or one of the infamously hard Battletoads speeder bike sequences, but the biggest catch with this rendition of “YYZ” is how perfect these drum tones sound like something off one of Neil Peart’s weirder drum kits.

7. Lipps Inc. – “Funky Town”

Okay, this is insane. Aside from the cats you’d be lying if you said this was far off from the original.

8. Survivor – “Eye of the Tiger”

The cymbals are a bit much, but that doesn’t matter when it’s… the… EYE OF THE TIGER IT’S THE THRILL OF THE FIGHT.

9. Toto – “Africa”

Aside from the original, this is the only other version of “Africa” that needs to exist. Fuck you, Jason Derulo.

10. Black Eyed Peas – “I Gotta Feeling”

Sure, the song still sucks, but wouldn’t you have rather had your 2010 New Years Eve parties ruined by this version over the original?

11. Michael Jackson – “Beat It”

Another Michael Jackson song. Unlike “Thriller,” this is a cover of a good one. Yeah, I went there.

12. Lady Gaga – “Bad Romance”

Shy Guy’s allover this one, which has a bit of a reggae bounce, some of a clubby backbeat and a real 80s groove.