Mario Paint + Christian Music = Youtube Gold

If you are my age, you probably remember Mario Paint. While it may seem outdated nowadays, given the powerful art and music programs that many people have on their computer, it was a blast when I was kid. Draw your own pictures and make your own songs on the TV? Simply amazing.

And while Mario Paint may have faded away for many people, it seems that the music portion of it is alive and well. Do a search on Youtube and you'll find people still using Mario Paint (or the PC program Mario Paint Composer, which technically is a PC program, but it's a near replica of the SNES Mario Paint) to create covers of popular songs.

Which got me thinking, how many Christian songs have been "covered" using Mario Paint? Here are a few that I found on Youtube, along with a short description and what game SNES game they'd match up with best. I'll admit, I'm tempted to copy some of them to my iPhone: the quality is just that good. And while many of these songs aren't explicitly "Catholic," they still glorify God, and that's something we can all get behind.



My favorite part of Jars of Clay's Liquid is the drums. And I think they are faithfully converted in this song.
Game match: Mega Man X.




Red is a great Catholic rock band. Kayla from Sirius XM's The Message introduced me to the band when she appeared on Lino Rulli's The Catholic Guy Show a few years ago.
Game match: Any fight scene from a Japanese RPG.



Kudos to this composer for getting the guitars to sound great in Switchfoot's Meant to Live. Game match: For some reason, I keep thinking this would sound great in Killer Instinct.



I wanted to feature something from Matt Maher, who might be the most well-known Catholic musician in Christian music circles, but all I could find was this medley. He pops up at 1:23. Game match: Background music to standard RPG towns and maps.



And what feature on Catholic music would be complete without Ave Maria? If I could, I'd sub in this song for the Opera scene in Final Fantasy VI. Actually, finding Christian music that had been redone in Mario Paint was a little difficult. I have the sheet music to Matt Maher's "Your Grace is Enough" and when my new copy of Mario Paint arrives in the mail sometime in the next few days, I know how I'm spending my free time!