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.
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