Mario Paint isn’t really a game. It’s not really educational either. What exactly it is might be a little tough to actually define, but I think ‘creativity tool’ might be as close as anything.
Mario Paint, which was bundled with the Super NES mouse, was a glorified paint program for your Super NES, but you could do more than just doodle on the screen. You could: be the aforementioned screen doodler, create limited animations, color, make simple songs, create 16×16 pixel ’stamps’, and combine all of the above into a project. Oh, and you can swat flies.
The fly-swatting is a tutorial on how to use the mouse disguised as a mini-game. Flies of differing sizes, shapes, and dangers will appear on the screen, and it’s your job to swat them. There are a scant three stages, each with multiple waves of flies that culminates with a battle with the crazy-big mechanical boss fly thing (you have to swat it a lot before it breaks, just like real crazy-big mechanical boss fly things!). Once you win, it starts you over again from the beginning and the flies are a little faster and a little meaner.
By far the most fun part of this package is working within the limitations of the program to try and produce a scene utilizing the drawing, a repeating six-frame animation, and short 4/4 music segments.