The various Mario cartoons

So if any of you watch Moviebob's Big Picture over at the Escapist you probably watched the episode on bad video game cartoons. There's some everyone knows about but then there's the often forgotten ones based on Battletoads, Bubsy and Darkstalkers. Much like movies based on video games, cartoons based on video games didn't fare much better at least Western based cartoon shows. Some animes are passable at best.

Now I am old enough to remember when Mario first came out and was a huge hit. I'm old and nowadays you kids have it lucky where you can go into a Hot Topic or Specers or go on Amazon and find tons of great Mario stuff. When I was a kid, even when Mario and the NES were big, cool tie in stuff was far and few between. McDonalds had a set of Mario happy meal toys (I still have somewhere) and I had some school supplies. There was a short lived comic series that I don't reccomend but nothing like now.

But Regan era TV existed to sell us stuff. And when Mario got popular with kids, it made sense to make a cartoon show. Sadly none of Mario's cartoons were that good. As much as I love Mario, I don't love him enough to own any DVDs of his old cartoons. My nephew who's 7 has a few though and he loves them.

Saturday Supercade: Donkey Kong This gets forgotten but waaaaay back in the 1980s. there was a sort of compilation show based on several popular arcade games at the time (aka Wreck-it-Ralph's friends) in this you had cartoons based on Frogger, Q*Bert, Pitfall and DK Jr. managing the impossible in being MORE annoying than Scrappy Doo but also we had Mario and his ex girlfriend Pauline chasing after Donkey Kong. DK is sort of the Bugs to Mario's Elmer Fudd. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKHSJA_9EiI DK here is much more fun and playful compared to the King Kong like monster he was in Captain N and at least it's not horrid CG like the DKC based cartoon.

Super Mario Bros. Super Show You all have heard of this one and some have fond memories of it. You had the live action Mario and Luigi in Brooklyn where unusual guest stars would come and visit. The weird thing about Super Show was Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool and Toad didn't chase Koopa around the Mushroom Kingdom rather they went to ____Land. Basically pick a noun and slap "land" at the end of it. Supposedly Wart and Bowser were collapsed into one character making King Koopa who looked different from his game design though some think it was based on the NES sprite not Miyamoto's designs. And on Fridays they did a Zelda cartoon which is summed up in one phrase "Well Excccuuuuuuussse me Princess!" A shame because Zelda was actually pretty badass in that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA10XUaI3Mo

Super Mario Bros. 3 Sharing the hour long slot with Captain N was what I think the best of the Mario cartoons in that it tried to be true to it's game. It was in the Mushroom Kingdom and it's various worlds. Mario and Luigi got to use their powerups. Bowser had an airship though they stuck with green King Koopa. I also liked Mario voice in this and I do wish this is what he would sound like in games as opposed to that annoying Italian stereotype. Though for whatever reason the show changed the names and designs of the Koopa Kids which never made sense to me. Then again this was before the big anime boom in the US and the creators felt the need to "Americanize" the show. As anyone who has watched a 4Kids dub can vouch for. Also please to enjoy the "ear rape" that comes whenever a musical number plays. It's supposed to be the koopalings singing." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A8NjZsIiMk

Super Mario World Well after SMB3 did a fair job of trying to be accurate to it's source material, SMW basically said "pffffft!" They saw the game took place in "Dinosaurland" so they threw in giant godzilla dinos and cavemen and for you Sonic X watchers who hated Chris Thorndyke, he's likable compared to Oogtar, the obnoxious Neanderthal with wonderous catch phrases like "dino-bunga" and Yoshi was given "Elmo-speech" in that he referred to himself in the third person. This also has more ear raping music as well as the animation manages to look even worse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k3pErwQePc

Now there is a Mario anime you can watch on youtube but it was never translated to English or released on DVD and sometimes I have wondered if Nintendo would do like Sonic and allow a newer Mario anime to be made. Ever since the debacle of the Super Mario Bros. movie, Nintendo keeps a tight leash on lending out their properties and some would dread a 4Kids dub of Mario and friends. Then again Pokemon lasted over a decade and Kirby Right Back at Ya wasn't half bad. Would you watch a new Mario cartoon?

I actually like kinda like the Super Mario World cartoon. I would like it more if Yoshi would never speak.

To answer your question, I would watch a new Super Mario tv show. They have tons of new material from the games that the show runners could use. 

To answer your question, I would watch a new Super Mario tv show. They have tons of new material from the games that the show runners could use. GamerofMario1

I've seen all of the Mario cartoons. None of them were close to good. 

[QUOTE="GamerofMario1"] To answer your question, I would watch a new Super Mario tv show. They have tons of new material from the games that the show runners could use. game-ster23

They should break the no-speaking rule for Mario, or else the cartoon would be really tedious.

[QUOTE="game-ster23"][QUOTE="GamerofMario1"] To answer your question, I would watch a new Super Mario tv show. They have tons of new material from the games that the show runners could use. GamerofMario1

They should break the no-speaking rule for Mario, or else the cartoon would be really tedious.

As I said while Capt. Lou Albano (Mario's first voice) is no longer with us, whoever did Mario's voice in SMB3 and SMW I thought did a good job and personally I would've rather that been Mario's game voice than Charles Martinent which is apparently blashphemy to say. But while the cute "Let's a go" voice is fine for a game series that doesn't focus heavily to plot, TV is different. Pokemon got around this because Pokemon are basically animals and they have trainers who can talk and move the story along (though I gotta admit I did like that ep where they were separated and they talked with subtitles). I never got why Kirby didn't talk in his series because I always saw him as a high energy chatterbox though in Right Back At ya I always made the joke that Kirby could talk but the others never shut up enough to let him speak.

Or better yet they should've done a final episode where Kirby eats a piece of cake and says "Yuck! That is terrible!!" And Tiff or Tuff says "you can speak?" And Kirby goes "Of course I can speak!" And Tiff says "well why didn't you say something before?" To which Kirby says "because until now the food's been great!"

But yeah I am surprised given what gets made into a TV show nowadays that Nintendo hasn't let someone make a new Mario cartoon. Though given 4Kids is responsible for a lot of video game to cartoon productions, a lot of us fear the worst. Just ask the Sonic fans how they felt when Sega decided to drop the in game voice cast for the 4Kids so that the voices would sound consistent between the games and TV show. And the fans who pretty much blamed the low point of the series solely on the voice actors.

But honestly if someone is trying to make a cartoon based on Angry Birds then why not give a new Mario cartoon a shot?

[QUOTE="GamerofMario1"]

[QUOTE="game-ster23"][QUOTE="GamerofMario1"] To answer your question, I would watch a new Super Mario tv show. They have tons of new material from the games that the show runners could use. kbaily

They should break the no-speaking rule for Mario, or else the cartoon would be really tedious.

As I said while Capt. Lou Albano (Mario's first voice) is no longer with us, whoever did Mario's voice in SMB3 and SMW I thought did a good job and personally I would've rather that been Mario's game voice than Charles Martinent which is apparently blashphemy to say. But while the cute "Let's a go" voice is fine for a game series that doesn't focus heavily to plot, TV is different. Pokemon got around this because Pokemon are basically animals and they have trainers who can talk and move the story along (though I gotta admit I did like that ep where they were separated and they talked with subtitles). I never got why Kirby didn't talk in his series because I always saw him as a high energy chatterbox though in Right Back At ya I always made the joke that Kirby could talk but the others never shut up enough to let him speak.

Or better yet they should've done a final episode where Kirby eats a piece of cake and says "Yuck! That is terrible!!" And Tiff or Tuff says "you can speak?" And Kirby goes "Of course I can speak!" And Tiff says "well why didn't you say something before?" To which Kirby says "because until now the food's been great!"

But yeah I am surprised given what gets made into a TV show nowadays that Nintendo hasn't let someone make a new Mario cartoon. Though given 4Kids is responsible for a lot of video game to cartoon productions, a lot of us fear the worst. Just ask the Sonic fans how they felt when Sega decided to drop the in game voice cast for the 4Kids so that the voices would sound consistent between the games and TV show. And the fans who pretty much blamed the low point of the series solely on the voice actors.

But honestly if someone is trying to make a cartoon based on Angry Birds then why not give a new Mario cartoon a shot?

I also liked Mario's voice in the animated shows. It was surprising how gruff it was a first, but it still fit. Nintendo would need to find high quality actors to do the voices. They have been doing it for some of their new games lately (KI: Uprising, FE: Awakening). 

I don't get how the Angry Birds cartoon is going to work. Are they suddenly going to start talking? Will there be a mouthpiece character? At least with Mario, it was not a big surprise when he starting talking on TV because the NES and SNES has tough limitations on vocals.

I loved the Super Mario Bros Super Show. It was so unique. I don't think we'll ever see another live-action Mario. :PJBL_Fan7

[QUOTE="JBL_Fan7"]I loved the Super Mario Bros Super Show. It was so unique. I don't think we'll ever see another live-action Mario. :Pgame-ster23

I wonder what The Bowser would look like. Or The Yoshi...

[QUOTE="game-ster23"][QUOTE="JBL_Fan7"]I loved the Super Mario Bros Super Show. It was so unique. I don't think we'll ever see another live-action Mario. :PGamerofMario1

I wonder what The Bowser would look like. Or The Yoshi...

[QUOTE="GamerofMario1"]

[QUOTE="game-ster23"][QUOTE="JBL_Fan7"]I loved the Super Mario Bros Super Show. It was so unique. I don't think we'll ever see another live-action Mario. :Pgame-ster23

I wonder what The Bowser would look like. Or The Yoshi...

I only found Mario in Just Dance 3... :shock:

I would love to see a new Mario cartoon, although it would probably need to be Japanese for it to be very faithful to the games. I'm not a fan of most anime, but I'd watch a Mario series in a heartbeat.

 As for the existing Mario cartoons, they could be fun, but also could be kind of stupid and and poorly made (me and my brother still joke about the scene in Super Show where the Princess' voice comes out of Luigi's mouth). I loved Lou Albano as Mario, and some of the storylines were fun in Super Show. 

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 was definitely the weakest one. Waaay too many "human world" moments, and overall just deviated too far away from the games.

The Super Mario World cartoon was actually pretty fun. I hated Ooktar or whatever that idiot cave kid's name was. I seriously don't know why they always felt the need to introduce their own stupid characters into these shows. But it was a fun show.

I do have to say though, I've recently been watching reruns of the old Donkey Kong Country cartoon, and I have to say, it isn't all that bad. The animation is atrocious, yes, and I could even tell that as a little kid. But in all these years it faded into my memory and I just assumed it would be awful to revisit, and a lot of people talk about how awful it is. But after re-watching some episodes, it's not half bad (save for the animation). I wouldn't exactly call it great television, and being an immense DKC fan some of the liberties the show took with the nature of the games can be annoying, but it's a good kids show that has some fun stories. If I ever have a kid I wouldn't mind them watching it.