Videogame Cinema: Captain N The Game Master
I didn’t plan on covering this so soon. Honestly my original plan was just to cover the Mario cartoons and then cover the Zelda series. And I only did the latter because it was directly connected to Super Mario Bros Super Show. I had intended to then move on to something else, but in the process of researching Super Show for the Zelda review, I found out that it was connected to another show that was also connected to Zelda
At that point it was too perfect not to look at this now. I mean everyone loves a good trilogy right, and I don’t know when I’d get to look at this anyway, so it just makes sense to get this out of the way now. Captain N The Game Master is obviously what I’m talking about. I mean it’s in the title after all. What did you think I was talking about, the Sonic cartoons. I’m not brave enough to touch that franchise just yet.
But let’s back up a bit. Where exactly did this show come from. Well I went over this in the Zelda review but it’s worth repeating that the original idea for Super Mario Bros Super Show was for it to be more of an anthology. It would still have the live action Mario segments, but every episode would have a different cartoon segment based on different games on the NES.
There would be a Castlevania cartoon, a Metroid cartoon, a Double Dragon cartoon and a California Games cartoon for some fucking reason. I know that game was popular but really? California Games? Anyway, that idea for whatever reason didn’t go through and only the Mario and Zelda cartoons wound up being made.
But around the time DIC was making Super Show for syndication, NBC came to them looking for a new cartoon for their Saturday Morning lineup. For the gen alpha’s out there who have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about, back in the day most animated series were often aired on Saturday mornings. Usually in some sort of programming block like Fox Kids or Kids WB.
This practice doesn’t really exist now because cable, streaming services and the internet rendered them irrelevant. Although this was long before those became more mainstream, or in streaming services case existing in general, and DIC were one of the major players in the Saturday morning cartoon game. So since DIC had a bunch of ideas for gaming cartoons laying around they weren’t using, they decided to just combine these ideas together into one show.
Now the actual premise of the show has two possible origins. The first was a pitch called Buddy Boy, which was about the main character of Paperboy, renamed for legal reasons, going on adventures in various video game worlds. The second being a two-part prose story in Nintendo Power called Captain Nintendo which was about a guy who got sucked into the videogame world and went on adventures with other videogame characters.
DIC looked at both and decided to combine them together to create Captain N The Game Master. It was originally going to be called Captain Nintendo, but because of increasingly strict regulations regarding advertisements in children’s television it was renamed to Captain N to avoid it being seen as too much like a commercial. I mean, it WAS a commercial, but at least it wouldn’t look too much like one on the surface.
Captain N would air for 3 seasons between 1989 and 1991. It wasn’t as big a hit as DIC or Nintendo were hoping for, in fact DIC would express disappointment on the show’s performance, but it has gained a cult following among Nintendo fans who grew up with it.
It’s not hard to see why. I mean the idea behind the show is basically one massive crossover between all your favourite game characters. That basically sells itself. I mean it’s basically Avengers Endgame but for Nintendo, an Avengers N Game if you will. That was terrible I apologise.
But hey this whole idea is basically what Super Smash Bros is, and everyone loves that when they don’t announce a new Fire Emblem character. I can see why a lot of kids who were big Nintendo fans would get into this. It’s just a shame the show itself isn’t very good.
Let’s first start as we do with these shows and talk about the intro.
Alright, this isn’t awful, but it isn’t great either. The animation is ok, and spoiler alert it’s far better than the animation in the actual show, and it does give you the basic premise of the show. It does its job, but it’s unremarkable. There isn’t anything all that memorable aside from the odd live action sequence and the weird green CGI thing. Seriously what in the fuck was that. A reject from the Money or Nothing video? Why was that there.
I know this is only an intro, but cartoon intros are important. It’s how you grab kid’s attentions and make them keep watching. A good intro can make or break some shows. Just compare this to another DIC cartoon and you’ll see what I mean. Let’s look at the intro to Inspector Gadget.
See how much more energy there is to this one. It’s a lot more exciting and it has that kick ass theme-tune to get you hyped up. Everyone loves that theme song; it’s the one thing everyone remembers most about the show. I think that’s what the Captain N intro lacks. The music is just a standard orchestral arrangement. It doesn’t do much to get the audience hyped up and so the intro doesn’t do much to stand out.
You can also see one of the major issues with this show almost right away. Namely that for a show about videogames it doesn't do a good job of portraying said videogames. I mean you can already see that right. None of the characters look like they’re supposed to.
Kid Icarus is probably the only main character who actually resembles his in-game counterpart, and yes he’s called Kid Icarus not Pit in the show. He was going to have his proper name, but Nintendo wanted it to be Kid Icarus to sell more copies of his game. Which I can’t blame them for since, let’s be honest, before Sakurai got a hold of it no one gave a fleeting fuck about Kid Icarus.
But then you have Simon Belmont and Mega Man who are nothing like their original designs. Mega Man is green instead of his trademark blue and is way stockier than he should be, and Simon is… I don’t know actually. He’s got a chin that would make Bruce Cambell and Jay Leno green with envy, and it looks like he’s wearing a blue aviator jacket.
I don’t know how you screwed this up. The original Simon Belmont was just Conan the Barbarian with a whip. This shouldn’t be that hard to screw up. I mean all you had to do was look at the front cover of the game and then draw something that looked just like it.
Now I am willing to give them a little leeway with this. This was at a time where games were a bit more abstract. We were far beyond the Atari days where everything was a square and circles had yet to be invented, but games still weren’t advanced enough to look just like the concept art. You still had to use a lot of imagination.
It’s worth noting too that Nintendo didn’t provide the team with any sources. No concept art or design documents the team could draw from to help make the characters resemble how they look in the games. Mega Man’s colour scheme was also due to a colouring mistake in the initial concepting phase that never got fixed. So the inaccuracies aren’t entirely the creators fault, but some of these designs take the phrase creative liberties a bit too far at times.
Regardless, you can see the issue right. This is a show entirely sold on your favourite videogame characters teaming up, and half of them don’t look like how they did in the actual game. It would be like if you went into Who Framed Roger Rabbit to see Mickey and Bugs on screen and you got Ace Bunny and Mickey from the Ethereal Snake videos. It’d be kind of false advertising. And trust me, without that this show doesn’t have much to offer.
The story of Captain N takes place in the creatively named Videoland, where the evil forces of Mother Brain from Metroid are trying to take over the Palace of Power. The main governing body of Videoland currently ruled by Princess Lana. Lana being a completely original character made for the show who looks like every 80’s cartoon chick who ever lived.
Since Videoland doesn’t seem to have a standing army, and because Lana’s current protectors are bumbling morons, they consult the Power Glove who tells them the prophecy of a game master in the real world who can save Videoland. You got to love how the Power Glove is this super important relic in this universe capable of dispensing deep wisdom and opening portals to other dimensions yet in the real world it could barely play Tetris. Really shows the lengths they had to go to sell that piece of shit.
This game master is a boy named Kevin, who gets transported to Videoland along with his dog Duke, because every show needs a cute animal sidekick, and he becomes the titular Captain N. Armed with his trusty Zapper and Power Pad available at the nearest Toys R’ Us, he defends the Palace of Power from the forces of the evil Mother Brain and visits a bunch of different game worlds along the way.
Now I will admit, as dumb as this show gets, and trust me it gets very dumb, if I were a kid watching this at the time I would love it. I mean it’s a show about getting to be this great hero while playing videogames. Hell throw in a harem of anime babes with inexplicably large tits and it basically becomes 50% of all modern anime. It’s the ultimate power fantasy.
Sadly this is where the appeal of the show begins and ends. Because the writing is pretty bad. Aside from dialogue so corny you’d think it was grown in Minnesota, the stories don’t really go beyond typical Saturday morning cartoon fare. I mean it’s got all the classics, the one where a character gets bonked on the head and forgets everything, the body swap episode, the evil doppelganger episode, time travel episode, all it’s missing is the shrinking episode and it would have the complete set.
I mean come on. This shit was cliché even at the time. You have a show all about visiting these cool videogame worlds, a premise with endless possibilities, and this is the best these chuckle fucks could come up with. Give me a break.
Basically, if you’re going into this for any kind of strong narrative, what’s wrong with you. This is purely here to sell you on these Nintendo games. Something it would do a lot better if any of the game worlds looked like the games they were supposed to be based on. Yeah, when I said the show doesn’t represent the games I wasn’t just talking about the characters. The worlds themselves also suffer from being wildly different from the source material.
Now I will again give them the benefit of the doubt that some of these game worlds were far less defined. Like Mega Man’s world Mega Land (again real creative naming there) is just a generic future city area. Which is fine I guess. It’s not like there was much there to pull from and it does kind of resemble the North American cover for Mega Man 1. You know the cover that looked nothing like the actual game. I should probably stop now.
But Castlevania and Kid Icarus’ world are pretty close to what I’d imagine. Castlevania is a gothic horror setting and Mount Icarus is based on Greek mythology. I mean that’s basically what those games were based on so it was next to impossible to fuck those up, but I will give praise where I can with this show.
But then you have settings that just feel like they took the generic ideas of the game and based the world on that. Metroid is just a floating brain shaped space station. We don’t really see the actual planet Zebes from the game, in fact why isn’t it just called Zebes? You know besides wanting to sell more copies of Metroid.
But at least Metroid vaguely resembles the game it’s based on. Unlike Kongo Land which is just jungle themed level because Donkey Kong is big ape and big ape live in jungle. I mean the original arcade game was a bit abstract, but it clearly took place in a construction site. Maybe this takes more from Donkey Kong Jr, but I feel like that is giving it too much credit since Donkey Kong Jr never actually appears in the show. Honestly it feels more inspired by King Kong than Donkey Kong. Which is really, REALLY fucking funny if you know the history between the two.
Now that I think about it though it is strange that Donkey Kong is even in this show. I know he’s a well-known gaming icon, but he wasn’t all that relevant at the time. This was well after the original arcade game and years before Donkey Kong Country reignited interest in the franchise. He had games on the NES, but they were pretty old by 1989, and he didn’t have new games at the time.
His inclusion makes the show feel like it’s caught between eras. Like you have all these new NES franchises, well new for the time anyway, and then you have the ape from the golden age arcade game your dad played. I don’t mind the older games getting some representation, you need it in the kind of setting this show has, but there needs to be a balance. Don’t just have one old character in there, throw a few more in. Throw fucking Q*Bert in or something. Or Dig Dug, let’s give Dig Dug some more love. No one talks about Dig Dug enough.
Then you have worlds where you can clearly tell the writers didn’t even bother to look into the games let alone play them. Like Dragon’s Den, which if you live here in the UK is not based on the entrepreneur show but on Dragon Quest, or Dragon Warrior as it was named in the US at the time.
This is a fantasy world where humans live with dragons. Because Dragon Warrior had Dragon in the name so it must involve dragons, right? Well, yes but not really. Like they’re in the game but it’s not like they’re that important to the story. It’s just a typical DnD inspired fantasy setting. The dragons are just an enemy type. There’s nothing about them living in harmony with people, they’re just another monster to fight.
Even Dragonlord, the main villain in the first game, wasn’t a dragon like he is in the show. He was a wizard who transformed into a dragon. Did they really just look at the name and think it was all about dragons. Is that all they did.
This is unbelievably lazy. I can understand not matching the art style of Dragon Warrior since the anime style it had wouldn’t be popular until, ironically enough, Dragon Ball Z would come out. But to base the entire worldbuilding simply around the title is a kind of lazy even Garfield wouldn’t stoop to.
I mean they at least understood the generic fantasy setting. That was largely what Dragon Warrior was, a Japanese take on western fantasy tropes. So it looking like a generic fantasy world isn’t a critique it’s a compliment. That part is accurate. The problem is that every other fantasy setting also looks like super generic fantasy, so it doesn’t really stand out.
This is something that bugs me. A lot of the game worlds they visit are based on fantasy titles. Dragon Warrior, Wizards and Warriors, Final Fantasy, even Zelda has a few appearances. In the games these are all very distinct setting with their own style, but in the show the worlds are all simple generic fantasy worlds that blend into one another.
I guess that’s what happens when you make all these worlds have the same general art style. One way a game can stand out is its art direction. Just compare Dragon Warrior’s art by Akira Toriyama to Yoshitaka Amano’s art for Final Fantasy and you can see how the two stand apart from each other. But when everything has to have the same art style then they aren’t going to be that distinct.
You can get around this by having some iconic elements of the games. Which does happen in some instances. I won’t say they didn’t pay any heed to the source material because they did at least include some elements from the games, but in keeping with almost everything else in the show, none of them resemble their original designs. Let me put like this, this is the classic Slime enemy from Dragon Quest.
An iconic design that anyone who has played the games will remember. Hell it’s become the series mascot it’s that iconic. Now, here’s how Captain N handled them.
Absolutely nothing alike. They just look like every generic Slime enemy from any other game. If you told me this was a clip from the Faxanadu episode I wouldn’t doubt you for a second. They look like the Hogwarts sorting hat if it got dipped in toxic waste.
A lot of the game worlds depicted have this issue. Even if they do have iconic characters or enemies they’re so different from the original source material it’s hard to tell that’s actually what they’re supposed to be. Add on the more general art style, and this show doesn’t provide a good depiction of any of the games presented in it.
I suppose if I were a kid this wouldn’t bother me too much. I would probably just love seeing my favourite series on TV in animated form. It is cool to see a lot of these different series, even some more obscure ones like Bayou Billy or Faxanadu make an appearance. But that novelty wears off quickly, and without it you’re left with writing so weak Glass Joe could knock it out.
Basically, the writing isn’t strong enough to hold the show together. It’s a show entirely dependent on showing off as many games as possible so you can just enjoy the fanservice. But since the show fails to properly represent any of the games the fanservice just doesn’t work. And really, why watch a show featuring all your favourite games when you could, you know, just play the games.
That’s the other issue isn’t it. Even if the show was a perfect representation of the games, relying too much on fanservice still means it wouldn’t have much longevity. As the Illumination Mario movies showed, fanservice can only take you so far. Unless there’s substance behind the fanservice the audience is just going to tune out.
Look at Super Smash Bros. That game is also one big videogame crossover, but even after the initial hype of seeing all these series crossing over wears off you still have a fantastic fighting game with great core mechanics to enjoy. Captain N is not Super Smash Bros, Captain N is more like a low-grade Smash Clone. A Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion or a Nickelodeon All Star Brawl. Games where the mechanics aren’t nearly strong enough to hold it together. So once you get over the crossover, well there’s not much else to enjoy.
Captain N just doesn’t have the writing chops to sustain interest for very long. There are some interesting ideas it teases, like it throws an idea out that Kevin will forget his time in Videoland when he returns home. That could have been an interesting story to explore if the series had gotten a proper finale. Since it didn’t though it’s just a weird detail that never goes anywhere.
A lot of the writing ends up like that. The show does attempt to have some kind of character development in some episodes, and honestly it doesn’t do too bad a job at it, but because there isn’t much of an overarching narrative a lot of the character development winds up being kind of pointless. The show is episodic with very little serialisation. Even the one two-parter it has doesn’t feel that cohesive. So what little story it does have winds up feeling underbaked.
Now is it the worst writing I’ve ever seen? No, and there are a few episodes I do like. I like the episode where Kevin deals with a robot clone of his bully. A standard enough idea, but the ending goes in some unexpected directions that makes it a bit more interesting. The lost City of Kongoland is a good Lana centred episode, and it also doubles as a good guy turning evil episode. I always love those.
And then there’s the Zelda crossover. This is the episode everyone remembers and it’s easy to see why. It’s a decent adventure episode that also serves as a semi-crossover with the Legend of Zelda cartoon. I say semi-crossover because while the voice actors for that show return to voice the Zelda cast, their designs and personalities are very different. Being more based on the games than the show.
There are actually a few Zelda episodes, and they are some of the better ones in the show. I think my favourite is the Puss n’ Boots episode. both because it’s a fun time travel story with a lot of action, and also because it somehow involves the mascot for Toei Animation. I’m not kidding. Some of the games they included have some weird connections to other media. It’s like six degrees of Kevin Bacon at times.
So it isn’t like there wasn’t much to enjoy. There’s plenty of action at least, and the stories aren’t awful just very standard. I didn’t hate what I saw, but it still had some serious issues. Even ignoring the cheesy one liners and bad jokes the writing suffers from a very “and then” kind of problem.
What I mean is that the stories don’t feel like there’s any flow to them. Sometimes events don’t lead into one another. Which can make things feel like they happen just because they need to so the story can continue. Instead of the story happening because of cause and effect, it just happens because a wizard did it. It makes even the enjoyable episodes choppy and disjointed.
That’s not even getting into how the worldbuilding doesn’t make a lick of sense. So, in this series they establish that they use warp zones to get around. Like the ones in Super Mario Bros. That isn’t just me making that reference as an example, it’s something the show actually brings up. Well they reveal early on that the heroes and the villains have a warp into each other’s lair.
Well wait a minute, what’s stopping the villains from just invading the castle. They have an army while the heroes don’t. So just go in and take it over. It’s never explained why they can’t do that because the warps themselves are never elaborated on. They’re just a weird esoteric element from a videogame.
That’s an issue with adapting videogames into other mediums, sometimes the more gamey elements don’t translate well. You either need to actually create some internal lore to explain how they work outside a videogame, or just not include them at all. Otherwise it just raises too many questions.
Mind you the heroes are equally as stupid with their resources. See Kevin’s Power Pad is broken. Aside from giving him enhanced speed and reflexes, it also lets him stop time. Yeah, the dude has fucking Chaos Control at the push of a button. So why doesn’t he just warp into Mother Brain’s room, freeze time, and then just shoot her in the face. Or spin kick the back of her head. That works too.
They do try to give Kevin some kind of weakness. His powers have an energy supply that goes down when he uses them. But not only is it unclear how this works, the show kind of forgets this is a thing after a while. It’s only brought up when it’s convenient. The rest of the time they have to nerf him through stupid shit like his powers short circuiting or losing his weapons. Kevin’s as effective at keeping his shit as Samus Aran is.
Speaking of which, I find it odd that Samus isn’t in this show. I mean Mother Brain is her foe and yet Samus never appears. She’s in the comic book tie in but never appears in the actual show itself. Then again considering how inaccurate most of the characters are maybe that’s for the best. You know they’d probably make her a man if she appeared and that would have just been blasphemous.
As you can see, neither good nor evil can triumph because both sides are equally dumb. It’s like political parties really. Most of the plot only happens because the characters are idiots. And not in an endearing way where it’s intentional, I mean in a lazy and boring way. It’s hard to get invested in the action since neither side feels all that competent. Especially the villains who aren’t intimidating or competent enough to be threatening.
I also find the shows choices of villains to be bizarre. Mother Brain makes sense I guess. They couldn’t use big names like Bowser or Ganon and she is recognisable enough that it makes sense to use her instead. Dr Wily also makes sense as the villains mad scientist. I mean who else were they going to use? The Duck Hunt dog. Does he count as a villain? He looks like one with that big stupid grin and his annoying laugh. Fuck that guy.
But then there’s the main henchmen, King Hippo from Punch-Out and Eggplant Wizard from Kid Icarus. That’s just frigging random. Were there really no other characters they could use for henchmen. Was Abobo unavailable or something? He would have made more sense than King Hippo. I don’t even think Hippo was a bad guy he was just an ugly boxer. Is that why he’s evil? because he’s ugly. That’s just beauty profiling is what that is.
There are a few more baddies that show up on occasion. Mostly one-off villains based on the games they’re dealing with, but some are recurring like Dracula. Who is named the Count for some reason in this. I don’t know why, it’s not like kids don’t know who Dracula is. Now it makes me think the Belmont clan is in a war with Sesame Street.
Even these guys aren’t that effective. Most of the bad guys are dealt with pretty easily and often in very stupid ways. I know it’s a kids show and I shouldn’t expect too much, but I’ve seen kid shows from around the same time period with some awesome villains. Thundercats had Mumm-Ra and he was pretty intense, and then you had guys like Shredder who wasn’t as intimidating but was very entertaining in how bumbling he could get. These villains aren’t threatening enough to be cool, and not funny enough to be entertaining. They’re just annoying.
The main cast is better, but only because of the leads. Mind you Kevin and Lana aren’t great characters, but they serve there purposes well. Kevin is meant to be the audience proxy. He doesn’t have much of a personality, but that’s because he’s more a blank slate for the audience to project themselves onto. Not to say he doesn’t have a personality or identifying character traits, but’s he’s more or less a standard cartoon hero.
It works though. Kevin is a likable enough protagonist, and he certainly is shown to be a capable hero despite him not taking advantage of his broken time stop ability. Mind you this is consistent with his character since I have to question Kevin’s claim of being a pro gamer. I mean it took you fifty tries to get to Cut Man in Mega Man 1 Kevin? Really? Even if I assume you didn’t start with Cut Man, as you shouldn’t since Bomb Man is the ideal starting point, it shouldn’t take you fifty tries to get to him dude. I know Mega Man 1 is tough but come on.
Lana is also pretty likable, but she’s also the token girl character. The Smurfette of the show if you will. That said there are episodes that deal with her struggling to rule over Videoland and those are some of the more interesting episodes of the show. Actually, a lot of the Lana centric episodes are a cut above most others. So she winds up being more likable for that reason alone.
Everyone else though are ungodly annoying. Except Duke, he’s just the animal sidekick. There’s not much to him but that’s not a bad thing in this case. Because the other characters grate on me like they’re in a contest for most aggravating side character in history.
Part of it is that they’re all comic relief. But their comic antics provide no relief at all since they all rely on a single joke. Mega Man says Mega in front of every other word, Simon Belmont is an unholy fusion of Gaston and Zapp Branigan, and Kid Icarus says icus at the end of every other word. On their own they would be bad enough, but when you have all three of them it doesn’t take long for them to grind on your gears.
There should be a limit on comic relief characters, because this show has way too many of them. The fact they aren’t funny doesn’t help matters either. I mean the writing is already super corny, but corny dialogue can have its own charm. Hell most 80’s cartoons were like 60% cheesy one liners, and I still like a lot of them. This lacks any charm though. It’s just unfunny and lame.
Season 2 saw an addition to the cast in Game Boy. As in the actual Game Boy but now it’s alive. He’s basically the Slimer of the show. A mascot style character they can put on all the merchandise. Only in this case the merchandise was a new handheld console they were trying to sell.
Because let’s be honest that’s all this show really is. It’s just one big advertisement for Nintendo products. Like The Wizard only without any pretence of it being an actual story. I guess I can’t be too mad at it then. It clearly knows what it is and doesn’t pretend at being anything else, and there is something admirable about that. I mean if you’re going to be a corporate shill just own it you know. It works for Nintendo fanboys after all.
But the thing is there isn’t much to enjoy about Captain N outside of the things it’s advertising. It’s not like other shows like Masters of the Universe or Ninja Turtles where there’s at least an attempt to give the kids a story or some kind of moral lesson. I won’t say there was no effort in trying to tell a story, and there aren’t any harmful messages or anything outside of blind consumerism, but any effort it has never pushes it beyond what it is. A giant Nintendo ad.
All of which is compounded by the shows most glaring issue, it’s fucking ugly as sin. I already talked about how the characters look nothing like their original designs, but that’s not the only problem. The big problem is how horrible the animation is. There are times where it actually looks pretty good. Sequences that clearly had more time and money put into them. But then there are times where the animation is so horrendous they forget to draw in the fucking backgrounds. And more often than not it leans into the latter than the former.
Although in fairness it doesn’t go to those extremes too often. In unfairness this thing still has all the trademark animation mistakes you’d expect from a cheap children’s show. Stiff awkward movements, perspectives never looking right, character models being more of a suggestion than an actual rule, items mysteriously disappearing. If there were a bad animation bingo card you would finish it within the first episode. It’s got all the classic fuck ups.
Even the editing is rough. It’s hard to describe but it feels like some things are missing. Even some commercial break transitions feel off. Like they just gave up and decided to end it there. Combined with the poor animation and it makes everything incredibly awkward. Like bringing up politics at Christmas Dinner levels of awkward.
Even by DIC standards this is a bad looking show. Mind you I’m only talking about the animation for seasons 1 and 2. Because Season 3’s animation is somehow worse. And not in a minor way, I mean in a “holy hell what the fuck happened here” kind of way. The art was already not the best, but season 3 makes seasons 1 and 2 look like Batman the Animated Series. It looks cheaper than a Channel Awesome production.
Any good things I could say about the show go out the window in season 3. The animation looks even cheaper, the writing got way goofier and even dumber than before, episodes were cut in half, so the stories wind up feeling even more half-baked, and there’s only seven total episodes. In every single possible way season 3 is a huge step down. Which is bad because the quality of the show already wasn’t that great, but the first two seasons had their moments. Season 3 is just plain bad.
To be honest season 3 is basically an afterthought. It’s pretty obvious by that point that they didn’t have any confidence in the show. Ratings were never that great, and with the SNES coming out around that time a show based on the now outdated NES was feeling a bit outdated itself. Technically Captain N never even got a third season. Instead they made a new show that packaged Captain N with the equally underwhelming Super Mario World cartoon.
I also think by this point Nintendo was getting weary of this kind of advertainment too. I mean two years after this the live-action Mario movie came out and put them off doing adaptations for years. I think they just wanted to wipe their hands and be done with it.
I’ve been hard on Captain N and not for entirely undeserved reasons. It’s just a dumb kids show that exists for no reason other than to sell you Nintendo products. There’s not much value in watching it these days. Especially since gaming culture has moved far beyond it.
I will say this though, at least it sounds ok. The music is decent and incorporates a lot of music and sound effects from the various games. Which does help the show feel a bit more like the games. Not much mind you, but it does help a little bit.
The original music is ok too. In season 1 they even used covers of popular songs at the time, at least in the original broadcast. The rereleases removed them and added a remix of a season 2 song in their place, season 2 having insert songs of its own that were more legally distinct parodies that are included in the re-releases.
Sadly I couldn’t find any of the original broadcast episodes. I could find them for Super Mario Bros Super Show, but Captain N was a no go. Kind of a shame, it would be nice to see the show as it was intended, but that’s the risk you run with outside licenses.
The voice acting is good for what it is too. With the exception of Mega Man and Kid Icarus whose voices are grating to listen to. Mega Man sounds like a constipated Popeye, and Kid Icarus sounds like he went through puberty but gave up halfway through. Not pleasant to listen to.
Everyone else does a decent job though. You know despite the material they’re working with. They even got some recognisable voice talent for this. Matt Hill voices Kevin, and he’s a voice actor who has done a ton of work over the years. We actually went over a production he was in before. He was Laocorn in the Fatal Fury Movie. That character is canon now by the way, which combined with the recent announcement of Dead or Alive 7 makes me think I am cursed to accidentally will things into existence.
Then you have Frank Welker as Game Boy, and I don’t need to explain who that is. Welker is one of the most prolific voice actors of all time with hundreds of roles to his name. Man is an absolute legend. I mean he’s the voice of Megatron and Scooby-Doo, need I say more.
One of the stranger cast members is Levi Stubbs as Mother Brain. He’s more known as an R&B singer, but you may know him best as Audrey II in the Little Shop of Horrors remake. Now what the fuck he’s doing here I have no earthly clue. He must have been paying off a parking ticket or been involved in some sort of crime. That’s the only explanation I can think of.
I think it’s safe to say I didn’t like Captain N much. It’s a product of it’s time and it hasn’t aged all that well, but I will say it was interesting seeing the original major gaming crossover. Even if nothing is accurate, I can imagine this was mind blowing for kids in the eighties. Of course, since then we’ve had more gaming crossovers that are a lot better, and that does make going back to Captain N a harder sell.
I mean if you want to see this idea done right then check out Wreck-it-Ralph. Not only are its depictions far more accurate but it’s also a well written movie that serves as a massive love letter to the golden age of arcades. Meanwhile Captain N is just a shameless advertisement for the NES. That can make for an interesting watch on its own, but not necessarily a good one.
That said I don’t regret watching this. It is a bit of a fascinating relic of a bygone era at least. It was fun seeing just how shameless Nintendo was in whoring themselves out back then. If you’re interested in checking it out for yourself you can find the entire series on YouTube for free. I wouldn’t really recommend it unless you have any nostalgia for the show or if you’re a massive fanboy who needs to consume any and all things Nintendo. I can’t imagine there’s much interest in this outside those circles.
Captain N certainly did leave a unique legacy though. As Smash Bros showed massive gaming crossovers are a big thing, and while it’s a stretch to say Captain N is responsible for that, it did create fan interest in the idea at least. It still gets referenced and parodied in some fan works, and there was even a web series partially inspired by it called Captain S. Which is a story for another day. So it definitely had an impact, even if the show itself isn’t great.
But that’s me done with these cartoons for the time being. I thought this would be a break from shit, and it just wound up being a different flavour of it. So next time why don’t we look at something good for a change, and I just mentioned something good earlier so let’s look at that. Yep, next time is Wreck-it-Ralph. Because God knows I need a good videogame cartoon afte
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