It’s three for one night here at the Saturday Night Showcase.
People remember DIC’s Super Mario Brothers cartoon. The recent movie even used the show’s theme song as part of their fake ads. They also had two other cartoons, based on the Super Mario Brothers 3 and Super Mario World games. Lost in the memory hole were the other attempts by DIC to create Nintendo cartoons, which also had a Valiant comics run with Mario and Luigi as part of their “Nintendo Comics System” mini-imprint. Tonight we’re breaking those out because…I actually kind of like them.
Airing with the plumbers as the Friday alternative on The Super Mario Brothers Super Show was The Legend Of Zelda. At the time there wasn’t a lot of backstory to the Hyrule characters, so they opted to go with something akin to Moonlighting when it came to Link as Zelda. They actually love each other, but Link is the only one who will admit it. Meanwhile, Zelda is the prim and proper one, being a princess, while Link is used to the life of an adventurer, a hero. Yet here he is, protecting one magic item in one kingdom while being hit on by someone the size of an action figure while fighting evil.
Meanwhile, Captain N: The Game Master took a “Tron” approach, sending major gamer Kevin Keene into the world of Videoland, which is a world where all the games exist as separate realities connected by warp zones. The next two seasons would see the show, which was also working with games that had little backstory and no characterizations (and yet somehow still got things wrong) teamed with the NBC Mario cartoons in a programming block which hurt Captain N as the Super Mario World shorts would take one of their slots in the half-hour, and basically damaged both shows.
Tonight I bring you the first episode of each, and a second episode of Captain N from season two, that represented one of a few crossovers between Captain N and Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link. They even used the same Zelda voice actors from the other show, which I appreciated even if it didn’t make sense for the Zelda show to otherwise be part of Videoland while the Mushroom World never was. No crossovers with the Brothers. Enjoy.
Okay, the comedy wasn’t to a lot of people’s taste. Gamers still make fun of the “excuuuuuse me, princess” line. I counter with the other four days were completely questionable comedy in both the cartoon and live action segments for four days of the week, and the fifth day of The Super Mario Brothers Super Show still had the lame bottle show adventures of Mario and Luigi hanging out in their basement home business. (The less said about “Club Mario” the happier we’ll all be, especially on Fridays.) So we got to end the week with a more serious adventure that because there was some comedy didn’t feel too out of place. When the action happened it was really good. Link and Zelda made a good wizard-fighting team and I found them fun to watch despite the up-for-debate approach to their relationship. Valiant Comics did it better.
Sprite I actually could have done with out, and the king being a buffoon was not the way to go, so don’t think I’m ignoring the flaws. Ganon and his minions came off as a threat without being goofballs, and despite the comedy I believed they were a problem for the heroes not because the heroes were incompetent (when they weren’t bickering) because both sides were relatively competent compared to many kids adventure shows of the time. It’s just the heroes were that good, while Ganon’s powers were limited outside of his domain, explaining why he didn’t just do everything himself. Can’t say the same for the N-Team.
Admittedly the show has aged poorly as the video games started to ramp up how their characters were portrayed in games. Now they have their own personalities and better backstories. It’s questionable who got it worse among the heroes, Simon Belmont or Mega Man, though at least the NOT-Green Bomber would get better cartoons down the line, and it beat his first American depiction on that box art. This is pretty much it for poor Simon, though other Belmonts would get their own tales, and neither character made the Valiant comics due to rights issues. Nintendo instead allowed them to use Samus Aran as a rival for Kevin due to his gamer skills and Kid Icarus would lose the speech patternicus the show stuff on him. Again, the comic did it better, despite doing two stories a comic because kids. Or maybe to reuse them in the Nintendo Comic System tie-in anthology. I’m going with both. Credit where it’s due. Kevin doesn’t just immediately accept all this “Captain N, savior of the video game universe” stuff, at least in the first episode, and does grow into the role over time, though the show never got to finally send Kevin home for good.
Season two would improve the art quality and gave us one episode that still works, and it’s the reason I showed you those two shows. The season opener would give the Hyrule heroes a second chance as recurring characters in the Videoland adventures, setting up that Link is Kevin’s favorite hero and The Legend Of Zelda his favorite game. So when Kevin tries to show off for his hero, he actually causes more strife than he intends as they try to stop Ganon’s reawakening, borrowing the plot from Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link. It’s one of the few episodes that actually still works, but because Ganon was already a serious threat thanks to the Zelda media while the game villains in this show are just as pathetic as ever. They even brought back the same voice actors for Link, Zelda, Ganon, and the Moblins. Though sadly they don’t use the same sound effect for Link’s sword zaps. Actually, why is it the shows that WEREN’T set in the video game worlds were the ones who used the game sounds and music while the show that was in the game world used generic DIC music and sounds?
Can we talk about Game Boy for a moment? Why was he added? Okay, I know why he was added, to sell the new handheld console. It was such a lame character, but it kind of worked better than the Valiant comic, where the villains from Super Mario Land kept forcing some loser to let them out of the game to conquer the world while a tiny Mario worked with kids to stop him and try to rescue Princess Daisy. Either way, somehow Nintendo couldn’t outdo Rubik The Amazing Cube. That’s right, kids, they made a cartoon about the Rubik’s Cube coming to life. Try it out sometime. It has a Latino family in the lead.
Apparently nobody told DIC that Link is left-handed. Where The Legend Of Zelda managed to translate the video game mechanics into their fantasy world, Captain N: The Game Master just outright accepted them thanks to the plot of the series…although like Link’s dominant hand they don’t seem to have actually played the games to properly adapt even the level designs and enemies. The Moblins, despite their new look, at least was a villain they knew from the first show. The plots of the games (except Donkey Kong, and the Donkey Kong Country games were still long off) were kept, including the Moblins seeking revenge on Link here.
I really like the interactions between Kevin and Link. Apparently Kevin is in hero worship mode, and forgetting that he’s not living a game, he’s in a world roughly based on the game (or vice versa, as they don’t explain how Videoland and Nintendo games co-exist) while Link, already annoyed by his injury slowing him down enough to require back-up, deals with a bruised ego along with a pulled leg muscle. It’s not a jump-right-in style team-up but they aren’t fighting each other.
Link and Zelda would make another crossover involving the three Triforces and a cameo in the Dragon Warrior episode, and I was glad to see them. It’s not a true sequel to the cartoon, but it worked for me at the time. Nowadays neither show could be done. We know the world of Hyrule and the other games too well by now. The problem is Captain N’s adventures were a product of the time while Link and Zelda’s are still holding up for me.
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