Videogame Cinema: The Mario Cartoon Shows.

I’ve reviewed just over a dozen movies on Videogame Cinema so far. Covering various different games and genres, but they all universally had one thing in common, they all fucking sucked. Ok, some of them are so bad they’re entertaining, and I will admit that Mortal Kombat and the Fatal Fury anime are legitimately decent. At least if you’re a fan of those series.

The rest though? They’ve all been different flavours of awful, and in some cases they’ve been the absolute worst garbage I’ve ever witnessed. Videogame movies are well known for being terrible. Even today when videogame adaptations are getting better it’s still not great. For every Sonic movie there’s a Minecraft or a Borderlands. It feels like every time a good videogame adaptation gets made and we finally make some progress, something comes along to fuck everything up again.

But movies are not the only medium videogames have been adapted to. Videogames have been adapted to a variety of different mediums. Comics, novels, porn parodies, and of course television. In fact, videogame adaptations have arguably been more successful on the small screen than they have on the silver screen. In more recent years we’ve even seen prestige tv series based on videogames like Arcane and The Last of Us, and those were great. You know as long as you ignore the second seasons.

But those are recent. These days we’re more aware videogames aren’t just for kids. Adults can enjoy them too and they can even have mature stories and themes. That wasn’t as widely accepted in the 80’s and 90’s. Back then videogames were strictly viewed as kids’ stuff, so a lot of the adaptations were aimed primarily at a younger audience. Which is my long-winded way of saying, a lot of them were Saturday morning cartoons.

Now there are a lot of cartoons based on videogames. Going back all the way to the old Pac-Man cartoon by Hannah Barbera. I could have started with that, but if I’m going to start looking at videogame tv shows there’s only one logical starting point. When I started Videogame Cinema it was with the live-action Super Mario Bros movie, when I expanded into movies about videogames it was a movie centred around Super Mario Bros 3, it only makes sense to continue the pattern.

So today we’re going to look at the Super Mario cartoons from the 90’s. The Super Mario Bros Super Show, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros 3, and Super Mario World. That seems like a lot, but these shows aren’t too long, and it just made sense to look at them all together.

First things first though, who made these shows? That would be DIC Entertainment. If you were a kid growing up in the 80’s and 90’s then DIC should be a name you’re familiar with. DIC was one of the biggest animation studios during those decades. Pumping out show after show and a lot of them were fairly popular. The cartoon they’re most associated with is Inspector Gadget, but they had a hand in a bunch of other shows too. Ulysses 31, The Real Ghostbusters, M.A.S.K, Heathcliff, The Littles, Street Sharks, Madeline, lots of different stuff. They were even responsible for bringing over Sailor Moon to the west with the help of Saban. So they do have a place in animation history.

Whether it’s a good or a bad place is up to interpretation. While DIC did have good shows under their belt, they also had a lot of crap too. Honestly most of their library is middling to bad. It definitely seemed like a company that was more focused on quantity over quality. These days they often get clowned on for their cheap animation and cheesy writing, but they did play a part in a lot of people’s childhoods.

Mine included. I never sought out their shows, but I would often stumble across something they made every now and then. Unavoidable really given the amount of shows they produced. I still remember their old logo of the kid in the bed and the zoom in to the star in the night sky. I think a lot of people do because there’s a shit ton of videos on YouTube dedicated to DIC’s logos. It seems like there’s more nostalgia for the logos than there is the actual shows.

This isn’t the place to go into the long history of DIC. All you need to know is that they were a French American production studio, they were very prolific in the 80’s and 90’s, lasted all the way until 2008 where they merged with Cookie Jar which was then bought up by Wild Brain. That’s the shortest version I can give. Trust me there is a lot to their history, but I recommend looking that up in your own time.

Wild Brain is still around today, although based on recent news it’s not looking good for them, and they have done a good job of making DIC’s old shows available on DVD and streaming platforms. In fact, all three shows I’m reviewing today are streaming legally for free on YouTube and FreeVee. So if you want to check any of them out you can do it right now.

As for why these shows were made, well it was honestly just to piggyback off of the success of Mario. That was the thing with DIC. They made a lot of licensed cartoons back in the day in an effort to cash in on the latest craze. Cartoons based on movies, cartoons about celebrities, comic adaptations, and of course a bunch of toy cartoons. Which was the style at the time. Nintendo meanwhile agreed to license out their characters since they thought it was a good opportunity to promote them outside of the videogames.

Fun fact, DIC was actually planning to do an animated Mario movie based on the cartoon series, but Nintendo turned them down in favour of the live action movie. I don’t care how that movie would have been, I guarantee you it would have been 1000X better than the movie we got. Fortunately we got an animated Mario movie years later and it was decent, so I guess it all worked out in the end.

But I have three cartoons to review, so why don’t we finally dive into things.

The Super Mario Bros Super Show

I’ve never reviewed a show before. I’m not entirely sure where to start. Actually, the best place to begin might be the intro. After all, cartoons like this usually put their best animations in the intro in order to get the kids to keep watching. Like Thundercats, that’s a good example of that. So why don’t we take a look at the intro for this show.

Oh dear sweet lord. What have I gotten myself into now. I’m going to ignore the weird animation, but I will say if this is indeed the best the show offers then we are truly up the creek with this one, and instead I’m just going to focus on the music. Credit where it’s due, it does use the main theme from Super Mario Bros. That’s good, it gets you in the right mood and makes it feel a bit like the games.

But why in the name of all that is sacred would you make it into a rap. I just don’t get it. Was Mario popular in hip-hop circles or something. It just doesn’t fit. I wouldn’t mind it if the lyrics weren’t so lame. I know it’s a kids show so I shouldn’t expect much, but even as far as kid show rap goes this is way too corny. It’s like Will Smith if he gave up.

And why are there live-action Mario and Luigi running around. I remember watching this show as a kid and I don’t recall any live-action stuff in it. Then again, I was very little at the time and never actually saw the show on TV. I only watched it via VHS compilations which I’m guessing only focused on the cartoon. Because indeed, there are live-action segments in this.

The way the show is formatted is it’s bookended by live action segments with a cartoon in the middle. The strange part is that after the first live-action segment there’s a second intro for the cartoon.

This confuses me. Why have a second intro for this? Especially since the second intro plays very close to the first. Did they think we would forget what show we were watching. Maybe this made more sense with commercial breaks. I’ll give it this, it is better than the first intro. The animation still isn’t great, but it is more consistent at least, and while it uses the same song it is much shorter, so it isn’t as bad.

Since the show begins with the live-action segments I might as well start with them. These segments star the late “Captain” Lou Albano and Danny Wells as Mario and Luigi respectively, who also voice the characters in the animated segment. Albano is best known as a professional wrestler and manager, having worked with the WWF, now the WWE, from 1964-1987. Danny Wells meanwhile has appeared on a bunch of different tv shows, most notably The Jeffersons where he played Charlie the bartender.

The live-action segments usually involve the Mario Bros messing around in their home/business in Brooklyn. Often dealing with a rotating cast of guest stars. Well, I say guest stars but that’s not entirely accurate. Sometimes they’ll have an actual celebrity on, but most of the time it’s someone random like an Elvis impersonater, Frankenstein or Inspector Gadget,

No, I did not make that last part up. There is an official crossover between Super Mario and Inspector fucking Gadget. Sadly, Gadget isn’t played by Don Adams, but he is played by Maurice La Marche, which actually makes this even stranger. Not only seeing La Marche in a live-action role but also seeing the voice of Brain play a live action Inspector Gadget. What the hell is this show?

To La Marche’s credit though, he does a spot on impression of Don Adams. In fact, after Adams passed away La Marche became the official voice actor for the character. Which makes this the most accurate live-action depiction of Inspector Gadget we’ve ever gotten, it’s certainly much closer than the movies ever got, and it comes from a Super Mario cartoon. Of all places to get a proper live-action depiction of Inspector Gadget, The Super Mario Bros Super Show shouldn’t be one of them.

You know what the strangest thing about this segment is though, the first one anyway since Gadget appears twice on this show, the ending has Mario and Luigi playing doctors. One year before the game Dr Mario. Meaning this show is the origin point for Dr Mario as a concept. I repeat, what the fucking hell is this show?

If you think that’s weird, they also got Elvira to appear on this show. How in the hell did they get away with that. I bet a lot of kids had a very strange awakening while watching that episode. Also the name of the segment she was in was called “Mommies Curse”. They knew exactly what they were doing with that.

As weird as all of this is, these live action segments are surprisingly uninteresting. Its just typical kids show stuff, and it’s not very good kids show stuff either. I will give the actors credit that they are trying their best, but there isn’t anything here to work with. Most of these are just a bunch of bad puns and slapstick. Very little of it is funny, although I will admit it occasionally got a surprise laugh out of me, but these only happened once in a blue moon.

Most of the time it’s just very awkward. Even the dreaded laugh track is done poorly in this, mainly because it doesn’t show up half the time. Sometimes they’ll have a laugh track and sometimes they won’t. It’s strangely inconsistent. Make up your damn mind show, do you want a laugh track or not.

These segments are also super short too and often end in extremely abrupt fashion. It’ll sometimes cut away right in the middle of a scene, like they just want to get it over with and move on to the cartoon segments. It makes me wonder what the point of them is. Is this meant to be a variety show? I guess it is, but shouldn’t the individual segments be given equal screentime if that is the case.

I just don’t understand these. At least they’re short, and to its credit it is a better live action Mario Bros than the movie, but that’s a bar so low dust mites could walk over it. There’s little to these. While it is weird seeing Mario interacting with people like Magic Johnson, Sgt Slaughter, Elvira and Inspector Gadget, something I will never get over, these are the worst part of the show.

So that leaves the cartoon to pick up the slack. And I guess it kind of does. Honestly my main take away from these is that they’re fucking bizarre, and considering what we’ve talked about that’s saying a lot.

The premise of the cartoon is… actually I don’t know what it is. The intro shows the backstory of the games. Mario and Luigi are plumbers in New York and they accidentally find a warp pipe to a magical mushroom land where they rescue a princess from a turtle dragon. You’d think that would be it, just Mario’s adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom. But no, it doesn’t really have any kind of core premise.

The show never sticks to one scenario. One moment they’re in a world that is somewhat like the games, the next they’re in ancient Rome, the next they’re in a Camelot like setting with a Jewish version of Merlin, and the next they’re in a river race with Mark Twain. Yet another weird crossover I didn’t think I’d ever see. This show has the weirdest combinations since Charles Barkley and Godzilla. It makes Mario’s Time Machine look like it made sense.

It’s never consistent. It just seems like the writers did whatever the fuck they wanted. The basic premise that I think they’re going for is that Mario and Luigi along with Princess Toadstool and Toad are looking for something to free the Mushroom Kingdom from King Koopa and send the brother’s home. That’s the one given to us in the first episode, but again they never stick with this. We never even see what Koopa did to the kingdom, was it like the game where he turned everything to bricks? I don’t know it’s annoyingly vague.

You may have noticed I didn’t name him Bowser. For some reason they named him King Koopa in this despite the character’s name having always been Bowser in the west. The only other instance I remember them doing this is the live action Super Mario Bros movie. Why does bad Mario media keep getting the villains name wrong? Also no, they didn’t get Peach’s name wrong. She was named Princess Toadstool at the time in official media; she wasn’t called Peach until Mario 64. That was accurate, I’ll give it a pass.

But because the show never keeps to a singular premise, it gets weird. Like, really goddamn weird. I know the games were strange too, but those were strange in a fantastical kind of way. This is like a drug induced hallucination. Some of the imagery feels like it comes from a Newgrounds parody from the early 2000’s. I don’t know what I’m looking at half the time.

Honestly, most of this is just them parodying a bunch of movies. Like there’s an Indianna Jones parody with a guy named Indianna Joe. Oh, come on, you didn’t even try with that. At least call him Montanna Joe or something. Could you at least pretend like you gave a shit. The weird part is he doesn’t have a face. I don’t know why, he just doesn’t have one. That’s just how he is. How does he eat? Why does no one bring that up. He’s a guy with no face; someone react to this. It’s not a normal thing!

But yeah, most of this stuff is just them parodying things from movies to fairy tales. It jumps around with no real structure to ground it all. Even Koopa is different in each episode. Sometimes he’s a giant, sometimes he’s a robot, and sometimes he’s a Darth Vader wannabe who dresses like he just walked out of an S&M dungeon.

Regardless of what he looks like his base design is a little off. He kind of looks like the game character, but it also shares a lot of similarities with Wart. Like some bizarre fusion of the two. Which actually fits with the cartoon itself since it mixes together elements from Mario 1&2. It’s a little weird seeing this since Mario 2 was never originally a Mario game, but there is some novelty to it.

I mean I don’t know what I expected. It’s not like the games had much of a story to begin with. It was just rescuing a princess from a wizard turtle. Even now there isn’t much to it. But even the games had some grounding. It at least had a setting and a basic premise to follow. This is just whatever the writers came up with on whatever drug induced bender they were on. Alright play the clip.

I think my favourite part of how inconsistent it is, is when it contradicts itself. Like there’s one episode where the gang goes to Ancient Rome for a charity event to raise money for the Mushroom Kingdom orphanage, only for the next episode to be a Jack and the Beanstalk parody where they’re trying to raise money for the same orphanage. What happened to the money from the last episode. Are the orphans running some kind of money laundering scheme?

The animation is pretty bad too. It’s very stiff and there’s a ton of animation mistakes. I already mentioned the guy with no face, but this show has a ton of other corner cutting moves that were pretty much DIC’s calling card. Sometimes it can look ok, but it often times makes the animation from the games look like it was done by Disney. It’s a very cheap looking show.

The animation for this, as well as the other shows I’m looking at, was done by Sei Young Animation. A South Korean studio that doesn’t exactly have the best track record. I mean they did work on The Smurfs, G.I Joe and Transformers, but they worked on some bad stuff too like Pro-Stars and that failed Bubsy pilot. Sei Young doesn’t exist anymore. They merged with Dong Woo Animation in 1998 and that studio worked on some great shows like the 2003 Ninja Turtles series. So they seem like they ended up in a good place. It’s just a shame Super Show didn’t give a good first impression of their work.

While we’re on the technicals I might as well bring up the voice acting. I already brought up Albano and Wells earlier, so I’ll focus on the supporting cast. The Princess is voiced by Jeanie Elias who has mostly done a lot of side characters in various cartoons, games and anime. She’s had a pretty decent career from what I can see even if she hasn’t had any big roles. Elias also had a cameo appearance in the Illumination movie as the woman in the Mario Bros Plumbing commercial, which also used the Super Show theme song. Say what you want about that movie but it went hard with the fan service.

Another person with a ton of credits to their name is Toads voice actor, John Stocker. Again, nothing major, but he’s done a shit ton of gigs over the years. Sadly, Super Show is not a good showing from him because Toads voice is super annoying. It’s so nasally I keep yelling at him to blow his non-existent nose. Granted Toad is supposed to have a bit of an annoying voice, but at least in the games I don’t have to hear much of him. Hear he speaks in every episode; it’s a lot harder to ignore.

And finally, we have Harvey Atkin as King Koopa. He’s another VA with lots of credits, but a notable role I found for him was the voice of Sam in the 90’s Sam and Max cartoon. Which is a cartoon I WANT to look at for this segment, but it sadly doesn’t qualify. Check it out sometime though, it’s a very underrated show.

I’ll give the show this, the voice acting is at least decent. It’s nothing spectacular, but everyone is at least professional and performs their roles well. The only one I didn’t like was Stocker and I can’t blame him for that. It’s just the way his character is.

But even the best voice actors couldn’t save this writing. The characters are given next to no personality. Princess Toadstool is just the girl, Toad is the annoying sidekick, Bowser is the generic antagonist, and the Mario Bros are Italian. That’s it, they’re personality is they’re just Italian. Actually, to give some credit, Mario and Luigi are depicted similarly to how they are in the modern games. Where Mario is more of the outgoing adventurous type while Luigi is the well-meaning coward. It’s weird seeing that dynamic this early in the series.

I could forgive a lot of the shows issues if it was at least funny, but no such luck. I hope you like bad puns and pasta jokes because that’s pretty much all there is. It’s literally nothing but pasta jokes and bad Italian stereotypes. Look I’m not one of those guys that frowns on racial or cultural humour. You can joke about anything you want as far as I’m concerned so long as it’s not hateful or done in poor taste.

I don’t think this show qualifies as that, it’s just very lazy. You see Mario and Luigi are Italian, so they eat a lot of pasta. That’s it, that’s the joke. There isn’t anything more to it than the most basic Italian stereotype you can imagine. This could be funny if they actually went completely over-the-top with it, which they come close to doing at times, but the show isn’t clever enough to do that.

Honestly the only thing that kind of got a chuckle out of me was King Koopa’s insults. Because at least those felt like a miniscule amount of effort went into it. The writing is just lazy, which is probably the worst kind of bad you can get. I can forgive something being bad if there’s some effort put into it, but if it’s lazy then there’s just no salvaging it.

Even the pacing doesn’t feel right. For a show that is supposedly an action comedy with an emphasis on slapstick, it’s shockingly slow paced. It feels like each episode is just about three minutes too long. I know that doesn’t sound that bad, but you can feel the extra minutes. It feels like you can cut a good chunk of the episodes out and not lose much.

It makes everything just feel that little bit more off. The jokes aren’t funny to begin with, but when you add on the weird timing they have thanks to the pacing, it just makes everything feel awkward. That’s the best word to describe this cartoon, awkward. Things just never feel right. It’s not funny, it’s not well animated, the story is all over the fucking place, and it’s just plain weird most of the time.

But I will give it this, it does feel like the videogames to a certain extent. The music for example is either taken directly from the games or sounds similar to the music from them. Even the sound effects are from the games. Granted that does add to the awkward weirdness of the whole thing, but at least they tried. They did more to make it feel like the game than the movie did.

While we’re on the subject of music though, I should mention that the show used a lot of licensed music. Mainly covers but they still had to license a bunch of music for this. Due to the licensing expiring, this music is replaced in a lot of the official re-releases like the ones on YouTube. But a youtuber by the name of Ninja 4561 has versions that restores the original music. He even includes more of the commercial break stingers and includes episodes not included in the official playlist. So if you want to see an uncut version of the show you can check out his channel.

I don’t think the show gains that much from these. I mean the covers aren’t awful, they’re just really short. If you never watched the show when it initially aired, you wouldn’t realise the show originally had them. I only noticed it because I vaguely remembered the Count Koopula episode had a Thriller cover and realised it was missing when I went back to it.

Even the show shifting premises and settings every episode you could argue is them trying to emulate the experience of going to different levels in a videogame. It doesn’t work, especially since most of the settings are not from any of the games, but an argument can still be made that was the intent. As poor as the cartoon is, I can at least call it a more accurate depiction than the live-action movie.

This show isn’t very good. I get it’s aimed at young kids, but that just means there’s nothing in it for adults. For what it’s worth I do remember liking this when I was little, so it might be ok for its intended audience. It still has some nostalgic attachments for some and there’s no bad messages in it or anything. It’s just stupid harmless fluff for fans of the videogame.

The show only ran for one season of sixty-five episodes. I did not watch all of them for this review. I only watched a handful of them and honestly that was all I needed. Maybe there’s some hidden gem buried in there, but I doubt it. I will say there is a so bad it’s good quality to a lot of this, and seeing the bizarre crossovers is a special kind of high, but the weird pacing makes it kind of boring to sit through. I can’t recommend this unless you’re a little kid or a hardcore Mario fanatic.

If you are going to watch it though, I would recommend the unofficial restored version since it’s the show as originally aired. I do find it funny when unofficial fan releases are better than the official ones, but in this case it’s because of unavoidable copyright issues. This is why shows these days try to avoid licensed music. Just makes it a pain in the ass to re-release it later.

Not a good start, but hopefully the next show improves upon things.

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros 3

Ok, before I get into this, what is up with that title. I get that it’s based on Super Mario Bros 3, so it makes sense to have that in the title, but why is it called The Adventures of Super Mario Bros 3. If there were previous shows called The Adventures of Super Mario Bros then it would make sense, it would have been the third instalment. As is it looks like the show is about the adventures of a guy named Super Mario Bros 3. It makes no sense.

Anyway, this show debuted a year after Super Show. Just to be crystal clear, while these shows are all connected to each other in some way, they are still different shows. As such this show had several big changes. The biggest one being the removal of the live action sequences. It’s purely focused on the cartoon, which was probably for the best. I don’t think anyone is going into this wanting a Mario sitcom. They just want to see his adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom.

The cast also saw a big overhaul. Aside from John Stocker and Harvey Atkin, the entire cast was replaced. Mario and Luigi are now played by Walker Boone and Tony Rosato respectively. These two weren’t professional voice actors but they did have several acting credits to their names. Mostly in film and TV, Rosato was even a cast member on Saturday Night Live.

Princess Toadstool is now voiced by Tracey Moore who, fun fact, was the original voice for Sailor Moon. Yeah, she was the voice actor for the first eleven episodes before she was replaced by Terri Hawks. She also voiced Emma Frost in X-men and was the original singing voice for Strawberry Shortcake. This is why I love looking up voice actors filmographies, they take you on a wild ride.

I think all the replacement actors do a good job. Honestly, I like Mario and Luigi’s voices in this a lot more than in Super Show. Mario actually does sound like he’s from Brooklyn in this. The voice cast was also expanded since we have the Koopalings. Some of the actors you might even recognise. Tara Strong and Tabitha St Germain are veteran voice actors with a ton of roles to their names, but some of you might recognise them for a certain equine based animated show that was surprisingly popular in the 2010’s.

Honestly though, the Koopaling voices I do find annoying, but I can’t be too critical since that’s intentional. They’re meant to be brats so them being annoying actually does make sense. Plus, since they are intentionally annoying, that means they make them just irritating enough to get the effect across, but not so much that you want to stop watching.

All this is to say that this isn’t the same show. It is very different in structure and style from Super Show. Something that is made abundantly clear in the intro.

Alright, that is a massive improvement over the original intro. No cringy rap or awkward green screen, it just gives you the premise of the show and shows off some action. The animation is better, not great but it is more consistent and looks decent for what it is. The only issue is that it’s a bit short and the theme music isn’t as catchy. It was the 90’s, you needed a catchy intro song.

Getting into the show itself, the biggest improvement is that there’s now an actual grounded story. Or as grounded as Mario can get. It takes place in the Mushroom Kingdom and follows Mario and Luigi’s adventures as they try to stop the evil Bowser Koopa from taking over the kingdom. And yes they do indeed call him Bowser in this at one point. They actually got the name right this time. Although to make up for that all the Koopalings got different names. One step forward, seven steps back.

It isn’t just random nonsense that changes the set-up based on whatever the writer wanted; there’s an established setting and story that the show follows. It still has the heroes visiting different locations, but they’re all areas from the games so it still all feels like the same world.

Super Show just felt like a random bunch of bullshit that was more preoccupied with making lame movie parodies than it was on following the games. This show actually does follow the games. It’s got the different kingdoms, all the different power-ups and enemies, and like Super Show it even uses a lot of the same music. It even opens each segment with a curtain call like the game, and the splash cards are made up of footage of the Mario 3 world map. It feels like the videogame.

The show is formatted as two shorts per episode. As I said they’ve ditched the live-action sequences and focused squarely on the animation. This makes the formatting a lot better. There are no awkward transitions between segments, you get one cartoon and then you get another one. You still get awkward edits within the cartoons but that’s a separate issue.

The cartoons are also a lean eleven minutes which greatly helps the pacing. It doesn’t feel nearly as awkward and the stories actually flow pretty nicely. The tighter run times actually forces them to use their time more effectively, which makes the stories a lot more engaging. Mind you I’m just grateful it actually has stories and doesn’t just feature Mario in a bunch of random crossovers. Except when he meets Barbara Bush. Yes, that actually happens. It’s never going to end is it.

That’s the strange thing about this show. It doesn’t just take place in the Mushroom Kingdom it also takes place in the real world at times. Which is fine since Mario and Luigi do come from Brooklyn, but the strange thing is that they specifically call it the real world. That creates some very interesting implications.

Is the Mushroom Kingdom a fictional world within the setting. Does it exist as a storybook or as an actual videogame. And how do the residence of the Mushroom Kingdom feel about this. They are aware of it; they do mention the real world but none of them seem to mind. Are they ok with their status as fiction, or do they recognise that they are still conscious beings with free will despite their status and have simply moved past it. They’re clearly real to themselves so perhaps they have become real. “Cognito, ergo sum”, as they say. But if that’s the case then what constitutes a “real world” exactly. How can we call it the real world if the Mushroom Kingdom is also real. How do we know if we’re real or merely a fictional creation from higher dimensional beings beyond mortal comprehension, and what if they themselves are also fictional creations that think themselves real. When does it end? What is reality? What is fiction? Is free will real or are we all just puppets being toyed with by forces outside of our control. Why was Inspector Gadget in the live-action segment in Super Show when that takes place in the real world. Is Inspector Gadget real? Oh God, is Mathew Broderick real? Am I real?! Someone please tell me!

I apologise for my impromptu existential crisis. I think it’s obvious that I’m overthinking this. This show isn’t trying to be that deep. It basically just boils down to a lot of typical Saturday morning cartoon fare. One episode has them babysitting a kid who gets involved with Bowser’s schemes, another has the plumbers favourite tv hero come out of the tv to fight them, another has the brothers fighting, another has Peach and Bowser in an election for the Mushroom Kingdom which doesn’t make sense since royalty isn’t elected.

You get the idea. A lot of stories you’ve seen in other cartoons. It’s not exactly breaking the mould in terms of storytelling, but nothing is done badly. At least it tries to tell a story with actual cause and effect. It isn’t just the characters going to a new place and then shenanigans happen. There’s an actual plot with a beginning, middle and end.

There’s also a lot less Italian stereotypes and pasta jokes. The humour is much better; it even managed to get a laugh out of me. It still has plenty of bad puns and groan worthy lines, but it does have jokes that do work and show some degree of wit. I at least felt like they were trying with this one.

Look, the writing is nothing special in this. It’s very by the books as far as these types of shows are concerned. The stories and humour are done well enough, but there’s not a lot of characterization for the main characters. The main characters are still a little flat. They’re likable enough, but there’s not a lot to them. Which in fairness is an issue with the games too.

The villains are done better. Bowser is a lot of fun in this, as he should be since he’s the best character in the franchise, and the Koopalings do have distinct personalities even if they’re one note. Ludwig is the crazy inventor, Roy is the brutish bully, Wendy is the spoiled brat, you get the idea. And yes I know they have different names in the show, but I can’t remember them all and I’m too used to the names in the games. Shut up.

Then there’s the animation which is sadly not very good. It is better than the last show. The backgrounds do look a lot nicer, probably helped by the more consistent setting, and it is colourful and expressive, but the animation is pretty stiff and there’s still a metric ton of mistakes. This is still DIC we’re talking about. You shouldn’t expect super high-quality stuff.

Judging it strictly as a cartoon it’s not great. It’s not terrible, I’ve certainly seen much worse, but it’s nothing particularly good. But this isn’t just a standalone cartoon, it’s a cartoon based on Super Mario Bros 3. The people who are going to watch it are doing so because they’re fans of the game. And judging it as a take on the games, it’s not that bad.

It does manage to faithfully adapt a lot of the videogame into a cartoon. The world is very similar to the one depicted in the games, right down to the power-ups being found in blocks or the coins floating in the sky. You know how the Illumination Movie was lauded for faithfully recreating the whimsically abstract world of the games. This show does the same thing, only with a much more limited animation budget.

Even the music and the sound effects are taken from the games. Which is the one thing I gave Super Show credit for and I’m happy it continues here. But since the world actually does resemble the games, it fits a lot better. It can still be a bit awkward, but at least it doesn’t contribute to the show being a fever dream.

Speaking of music, like with Super Show there was some licensed cover songs in the original broadcast that was removed from most re-releases. From what I can gather there is a DVD set that includes some of the episodes as they were originally aired, but the YouTube playlist did not. Instead it replaced them with original songs that were from the German dub. Which are ok, a little annoying but they aren’t too long or frequent enough so they didn’t get on my nerves too much.

I suppose what it all comes to is, is The Adventures of Super Mario 3 good for fans of the game? I’d say it’s good enough. It adapts the world well, and the stories are told decently even if a lot of it is derivative of a lot of other shows at the time. Even the characters, for as little characterisation they’re giving, do feel more like the ones in the game. They aren’t just walking Family Guy Italian jokes.

If I was a kid and I loved Mario, I would probably like this. I found it decently entertaining for what it was. I would never call it a top-tier cartoon, even for the standards of when it came out it was middle of the road, but as a fan of the games I got a kick out of it. Even when the show is bad, it has a sort of awkward charm to it that makes it funny as hell.

There’s an episode where Mario goes to a Milli Vanilli concert. Now, I’m going to repeat that because it bears repeating. Mario, Super Mario goes to a Milli Vanilli concert. This is already the most poorly aged thing imaginable, but this episode is amazingly bad.

See the reason they go to the concert is because Toadstool is apparently a massive fan of them. Which raises some troubling questions regarding her taste in music. And the episode has the crew trying to rescue them from Bowser because Wendy is a huge fan too and wants her own private concert. Every part of that premise is so wrong that the jokes write themselves. It’s hysterical, especially since, due to the licensing running out, they can’t even use any Milli Vanilli songs. Which may actually make the episode better, which makes the celebrity worship even funnier.

So this one I actually liked. When it works it’s a decent enough cartoon for kids, especially if they’re a Mario fan, and when it’s bad it’s a fun kind of bad. I’m not done yet though. I still have one last cartoon to get through so let’s finish this trilogy off shall we.

Super Mario World

The last and least of the Mario cartoons, Super Mario World acts as a continuation of the previous cartoon. Keeping most of the cast and the same basic story structure, but now basing it on Super Mario World since it was the most recent game at the time. Strangely though, Super Mario World didn’t air as a standalone show. It was packaged together with another Nintendo related property, Captain N. Even the official YouTube playlist has the two together.

I’m not here for Captain N though, not yet anyway, I’m just going to look at the Super Mario World segments. Of which there aren’t many of them. When I said this was the least, I mostly meant it because it’s the shortest one. It only had thirteen episodes, which might not sound so bad since Mario 3 also had thirteen episodes. But Mario 3 had two segments per episode, so it was more like twenty-six. Meaning Mario World is only half the length of the previous show, and it’s not even worth comparing it to Super Show.

Again though, it wasn’t a standalone show, so it being half the length makes sense. Despite that though, we still got an intro.

Well, I’ll give it this, the theme song is catchy. I wouldn’t call it good, but it will certainly get stuck in your head. I mean I wouldn’t associate Mario with… actually what genre is this music? Reggae? Ska? Whatever it is, it works better than rap at least.

Super Mario World’s story is basically the same as the last show. It’s about Mario and Luigi’s adventures to stop King Koopa, only instead of it taking place in the Mushroom Kingdom it takes place in Dinosaur World. That wasn’t the only change. The real world was removed, so no more existential crises for me, and Toad was removed since, well he never appeared in Super Mario World.

Instead, he’s replaced by Yoshi. Although Toads voice actor is still part of the show since he voices some of the side characters. But it really does feel like a continuation of the previous show. It’s just a shame it’s also a big downgrade from it too. In fact, it might be the weakest of the Mario cartoons. Super Mario Super Show is probably the worst of them on an objective level, but at least that one could be entertainingly bad. This show is just annoying.

I’ll start with the positives though. The show does still try to feel like the videogame. It still uses the music and sound effects from the games, and the world is a good representation of the one from the games. It’s not exactly the same, it leans more into the pre-historic theme which isn’t something the game actually had, but it works well enough and it still has enough familiar elements from the games for it to be recognisable.

And that’s it for the positives. Everything else is a step down. For one thing, the writing is a lot worse. And that’s bad because the writing in Mario 3 wasn’t exactly top tier. But at least the writing there was decent enough for what it was, and even when it didn’t work it had a so bad it’s good quality to it that made it entertaining to watch.

This one is just dull. The stories aren’t as interesting, and the humour is just painfully dry. I got maybe two laughs in all eleven episodes. It’s not so bad it’s funny nor is it legitimately entertaining. It’s just bland. Inoffensive I’ll grant you, but still bland. The only interesting part is that it actually tries to be educational. Now, if you know this series well then you should be aware that Mario and education are not a good mix. Need I remind you all of the absolute madness that was Mario is Missing.

But yes, Super Mario World does try to have some educational content. The reason? Politics if you can believe it. See around the time this show came out, the Children’s Television Act had just come into effect. This was a law that was meant to combat the rampant commercialisation that was prevalent in many kids shows at the time. A noble goal, but like most laws that the US government passes, it came too late, did jack all to help, everybody hated having to work around it, and it was made irrelevant just a few years later thanks to cable tv and the internet. And that kids is why government is fucking useless.

The important thing in regard to this is that Super Mario World was forced to have some educational value for kids. You know, instead of being one long video game commercial. Most of it deals with social issues, the dangers of fast food, school bullying, peer pressure, sharing, street gangs? Tv addiction? What the fuck.

You read that right, this show tried to tackle street gangs and tv addiction, phone addiction too actually. I’ll admit those last two aren’t that far out there, it’s just weird seeing a Mario cartoon trying to tackle this kind of thing. I mean Sesame Street or something of higher educational value I could maybe see doing this, but Mario? It just feels wrong.

The weirder one is the street gang’s episode. Unfortunately it doesn’t have anything too crazy. We don’t see Mario and Luigi wielding gats and getting involved in inner city gang violence, it’s just Yoshi joining a biker gang and getting taking advantage of. Which is strange but still more grounded. It’s just that, again, Mario is trying to tackle this. This simply doesn’t work. It would be like if Captain Planet tried to deal with aids, somethings just don’t go together. Oh wait.

Now does it do these topics well? What the hell do you think. You think Mario is giving us the rundown on street gangs or how addiction to media causes dopamine overdoses. I don’t think the writers even knew what dopamine was. You can tell they were forced to do this, they clearly didn’t care. Honestly if they wanted educational content, they should have just done a PSA at the end like The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog did. Hopefully not doing one on stranger danger. Seeing Sonic do it was weird enough; Mario would have been nightmare inducing. Not that Mario is a stranger to weird PSAs.

One weird by-product of the CTA was what it did to Princess Toadstool. Because of the guidelines she had to take on a more maternal role in the show and wasn’t as active in the adventures. Unlike in the Mario 3 cartoon where she did save the day on occasion. It’s just a big step back. The weirdest bit is what they did to her voice. About halfway through the show, they autotune her voice to be lower pitched so she sounds sterner. I have no idea why they did that, it just feels insulting to the voice actress. Could she not rerecord her lines?

Also, they kind of make Toadstool out to be a bit of a bitch in this. In one episode the gang gorges on fast food and gets fat, so Toadstool decides to get them on a diet by locking them in the house and starving them out. That’s not good, that is very not good. It’s cruel and unusual punishment. It is not a healthy way to lose weight. Which is ironic in an episode that tried to teach kids to eat healthy.

The worst part about Super Mario World though is that it’s annoying, and the big culprit of that is Yoshi. Yoshi in the game is just a cute animal sidekick, this Yoshi is like an annoying 80’s cartoon sidekick. He talks and acts like a baby, he’s a complete idiot and coward, and they match him up with a cave boy named Oogtar who is just as obnoxious and for some reason sounds like a surfer dude version of Krusty the Clown. Why do these Mario cartoons make me write the weirdest sentences.

A lot of it is down to Yoshi’s voice. He sounds too much like a baby and it’s far too high pitched. The thing is Yoshi’s voice actor, Andrew Sabiston, is not a bad actor. He’s won awards for voice acting before and has appeared in a lot of other stuff. It’s just this direction they took with the character doesn’t work. I hope Yoshi in the Galaxy Movie isn’t this annoying.

I don’t have much more to say really. Super Mario World isn’t a very good show, and the worst part is it’s in very uninteresting ways. The stories aren’t that engaging, the jokes don’t land, it’s annoying, the educational content is tacked on, and the animation is still really poor. Honestly, I think it looks cheaper than Mario 3 which was already cheap looking to start with.

Even the sound isn’t all that good. I give credit for trying to sound like the game, but the sound effects aren’t as well integrated. Then there’s the music which is just bad. Not the music from the games, that shit rocks, I mean the original songs. Every episode has an one and they are not very good. The vocals sound grating, and they’re not memorable at all. I just finished watching the show and I can’t remember a single one of them.

I didn’t like this show, but there is one thing I can’t take away from it and that’s its impact. Not on animation or on the Mario series, but on internet culture. This thing was a great source for a lot of memes and YouTube Poops back in the day. The final episode “Mama Luigi” even became something of a meme classic. To the point that there’s a full reanimated collab of the episode.

And after seeing it I can see why. For as bad as this show is, the final episode is entertaining for how rampantly insane it is. They throw so much at you that you’re liable to get whiplash from it. I wouldn’t recommend the episode but check out the reanimated collab sometime. A lot of talented animators worked on it and it makes for a fun watch.

But that’s all the Mario cartoons. A mixed bag to say the least. The only one I would really recommend is The Adventures of Super Mario Bros 3. It’s not a great show, but it’s a perfectly decent cartoon for the time and it is entertaining for fans of the game. The other two I would just skip. Granted, Super Show does have some entertainment value in how fucking batshit it can get, but Super Mario World is just middlingly bad. I didn’t enjoy that one at all.

Not the best start when it comes to looking at these cartoons is it. But I can’t shake the feeling I’m forgetting something. Something people would crucify me over if I didn’t bring it up. Oh, that’s right, I didn’t talk about “Do the Mario”.

I mean I don’t know what to say, it’s just Captain Lou awkwardly dancing over a green screen while a song with the vaguest dance steps play in the background. Song is pretty catchy though. I mean it is the Super Mario theme and that is an ear worm.

That’s not all though is it. No, there’s actually something else that was connected to The Super Mario Bros Super Show that I haven’t talked about yet. But I think I’ll save that for next time. It only makes sense given it is the franchises 40^th anniversary.