Saturday Night Showcase> The Legend of Zelda: The Ringer

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This edition of Saturday Night Showcase goes out to fellow reviewer Ozzie Arcane of Reviewers Unknown, who feels he’s the only one to give a positive review to the cartoon based off of the video game The Legend of Zelda. Although I do text reviews instead of video reviews, this should let him know he’s not the only fan of the show on the Internet.

Even better is that I get to make it a Showcase entry thanks to Hulu.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

The Legend of Zelda aired on Fridays as part of the Super Mario Brothers Super Show, which featured the late Captain Lou Albano and Danny Wells as the titular plumbers in both comedic live-action and comedy/adventure animated segments. (The Mario cartoons aired Monday-Thursday.) The Mario toons, often parodies of other shows, movies, and genres, were fun to watch through a few times, but that was pretty much it.

Zelda, on the other hand, aired once a week and was an adventure show with some light-hearted moments (usually the Moonlighting-style rapport between Zelda and Link). The animation and character design was an improvement, as was the writing. (I’d rather watch the worst of the Zelda episodes than the best of the Mario ones. The show was actually better when it was picked up by NBC as Adventures of Super Mario Brothers 3 if you ask me.) There was also a comic, which you saw as part of yesterday’s Best of FNF: One Panel of Pain article.

Sadly, we wouldn’t see Link and Zelda again until their crossover with another video game series, Captain N: The Game Master, with the same voice actors as Link, Zelda, and Ganon and it’s my favorite Captain N episode.

I loved the action, the Link and Zelda moments, how well the game sounds were integrated into the show, and how the concepts were worked into the story. (Ganon’s inability to teleport above ground, the “evil jar” to contain his minions, and while it was only this episode, how Link had to “power up” his sword to zap things and how the magical items worked.) This show does get a lot of negativity from other reviewers, but Ozzie (who I think is planning a review because I can’t find it) and myself can tell you that you should check it out. It’s fun, adventurous, and if it hadn’t been surrounded by the live-action bits it might have had more time to make it even better. The Legend of Zelda is available on DVD as grouped episodes and a full season box set, so keep an eye out for it.

UPDATE: (7/3/2011) Ozzie’s review of the cartoon.

Related Articles

• Nintendo celebrates Legend of Zelda silver anniversary (go.theregister.com)
• Miyamoto never expected The Legend of Zelda to become a ‘mainstream’ genre (gonintendo.com)
• Super Mario Brothers Super Show review by the Nostalgia Critic (he didn’t like it)
• space reserved for Ozzie Arcane’s review once its up.