Welcome to Saturday’s Gaming Entertainment and we now have come to the Mario cartoons. Unfortunately, I have the absolute luxury of reviewing a DIC cartoon again based on gaming’s Mickey Mouse. DIC must have had it in for gaming because every time they produced anything related to the industry the studio turned gold into absolute crap. Mario in the 80's was among Nintendo's major franchises next to The Legend of Zelda. In 1989, DIC got the license rights to use the famous Plumber much like they did with Zelda to produce a cartoon series. The plot would follow Mario, Luigi, Toad and Princess Toadstool going through many lands and foiling King Koopa's (Bowser) plans. The cartoon was mostly based off Super Mario Bros and its American released sequel. It featured both the Koopa Troopers, Shy Guys, Fry Guy, Triclyde and Mouser working for the reptilian king. Now, we already covered Captain N and Zelda to know it has DIC's seal of crap. So, will DIC redeem themselves this time or continue the same mistakes? I'll begin with the cartoon segments of Mario and friends facing King Koopa. The show opens to a ridiculous rap version of the Super Mario Bros main theme. The intro would include both cartoon characters and the live actors running through various scenes. The show hasn’t even started yet and there is a rap theme already. Why do these people have to insert rap into a classic theme?! Is this DIC's way to try to make Mario "hip" for the kiddies? I have listened to the song many times to tell you that the lyrics tries too hard to make the wording work. It is the worse theme opening I had to sit through and feels forced when compared to the remix intro of Zelda. That is the perfect way to butcher what is considered the most familiar inaugural theme in this industry. Let’s start with Mario considering he’s the leader of the four and jumps into a quest with good intentions against Koopa. The one thing that constantly annoyed me about DIC is how they always inserted puns and mannerism that comes off unrealistic. The writers seemed to assume that Italians think like this since they always made every gag possible around its Americanized culture. At the time, Mario and Luigi had no define personalities in the games. They wouldn't have any define characteristics until Super Mario 64 in 1996. Where did they get the idea that Italian people made corny gags all the time? Even Koopa would resort to these gags to insult either his forces or Mario and Luigi. Any adult characters that does patty cake can't be taken seriously especially if they are the main heroes. If that was bad enough they even make a mockery out of influential phrases like Star Wars with "Let the Pasta be with you". If DIC thinks they could easily emulate Space Balls then they are kidding themselves. The second image depicts just that as Toadstool uses the Star Wars phrase by replacing Pasta with Force. Damn that's just making it sound like a cheap ripoff. Of course, I must address this next point and it’s how both brothers are from Brooklyn on Earth. I have played the series since 1988 and not one time did the games ever mentioned Earth or Brooklyn. You want more proof that Mario and Luigi are not from Earth then watch the ending of Yoshi’s Island on the Super NES. If you don’t know Yoshi’s Island is the prequel to all the Mario titles. It was here that Nintendo finally revealed the brothers were born in the world of the Mushroom Kingdom. Now where did the American writers get the idea that they were from Earth and crossed over in a John Carter way? Well, I have a couple of theories related to that and its the fact their ethnicity was probably behind this idea. It might’ve been the marketing from Nintendo of America who seemed to spear head this further during the live action Mario movie. Another possibility is the writers need to insert their own narrative to explain why two Italian guys suddenly appeared in a fantasy world. Unfortunately, I blame this on the writers behave since one, the studio didn’t do their research and two, none of them give a damn to begin with. The only thing these people should have written is how they were just two regular guys in a fantasy world instead. The American narrative about the brothers would get used until the mid-2000s when for some reason Nintendo of America stopped spear heading it. However, whoever came up with this idea for comedy must’ve been on psychedelics. It goes even further with these two as they would do this patty cake gag as if they were children. Now, the question should revolve around grown men using a patty cake gag at their age. The Plumbers did this to distract Koopa’s idiot minions and each time they fell for it. Even Mouser is stupid enough to get tricked by this as Toad was able to get inside his hat in just the second episode. I mean how anyone can forget the third person you locked up? They even would reuse the same patty cake gag with the exact wording. The immaturity doesn’t stop there between these two as those same Italian food puns get used once again. An example is saying "Pasta Power" before running to face their enemy or an obstacle. Who the hell talks like that?! It was one thing for Link from the Zelda cartoon to have a dumb catch phrase, but to use food puns is another story. Even Koopa and Mouser used these exact insults against Mario and friends on many occasions too. Seriously, just because the show is for kids, don't mean the characters have to act so immaturely. For Luigi’s personality, it’s a little like Mario’s own as he didn’t play some hipster younger brother we see often. In fact, his mannerism Is about the same as his older brother since he too uses food gags to make a point. Next up is Toad and I can’t understand why they gave him such a snarky personality. His voice even matches that same snark and sarcasms to the point I wanted to punch him. There was an episode where Toad acted selfishly and that’s something no one could see him doing. In episode 40 titled Koopa Claus, he literally runs to protect his present instead of helping his friends. There’s a distinct thing about Toad and every time he lands on his feet or gets picked up his body makes a squeak sound. Was this DIC’s way of trying to make him funny? We move on to Princess Toadstool, and she is the smartest and levelheaded character on this show’s roster. I can’t think of one time she acted stupid or said an immature line. Toadstool kept the team together and didn’t resort to crappy one liners or cheap gags. I hate saying this, but Toadstool was a better character then DIC’s Zelda could compare. It’s hard for me to believe I even said that however, this is impossible to deny based on the Princess’ behavior. Now, half the time she still plays the damsel as the reptilian King can’t help himself in kidnapping Toadstool. Of course, Koopa is the last one to go over and the infamous villain has no define goal. At least Ganon had a define goal but King Koopa is literally all over the place. One episode he tries becoming king of Camelot then another he's a Sith lord. The next thing I know the guy is a gang leader and a robot. It's one thing for him to deviant from his plan and tries conquering someplace else. However, every episode Koopa wanted to control a new land rather than conquer the Mushroom Kingdom. I mentioned in my Pokemon Season One review how stupid Team Rocket looked in their customs. I was wrong as Koopa takes it to the next level and its hard to take him seriously if he dressing up like a baby. He even had a diaper on in one episode as seen in the first image and thought he was the next MC Hammer rapping in the second picture (the only thing missing is the pants). Remember when I said how terrible the Captain N art style was? Well, DIC goes even lower, and they are back to using the 70s Hanna-Barbera style but the difference is it’s even worse here. None of the characters have a Nintendo style design and is basically another Americanized cartoon. The studio just didn’t seem to learn from their mistakes from the last couple of times, and this is probably their worst efforts so far. The characters have a shape design to them and had disproportional body parts drawn on them. Their designs are crudely drawn together, and it’s like they wanted to cut corners at every chance given. The environments from each episode is the worst thing about the art as the artists didn’t care if they doodled these concepts on paper. An example is how the buildings have these weirdly structure shapes where the architect joints outward. It was like this in almost all the episodes especially when Mario and friends went to metropolitan lands. In episode 27, during a spanned scene of Koopa's temporary fortress, the building’s center joint’s outward and then moves up (the first image below). That doesn’t make any sense even in a magic type world and nothing in the show’s canon points to that. If it’s not the terribly designed architect that doesn’t make any sense, then the organic locations like a forest and a meadow are another thing. The landscapes in these areas were too cartoonish even for the world its intended for. That has always been the problem with the show's art as it looks absolutely sloppy in execution. None of these landscapes makes any sense and does a horrible job trying to emulate the 70s Hanna-Barbera style. The Mario games do take place in a fantasy type world like the cartoon but even those places don't have ridiculous or sloppy designs to their environments. The live acting segments had a tad effort put into them, unlike its cartoon counterpart. The late Lou Albano played the eldest brother and the late Danny Wellis played Luigi in shorts called Mario Bros. Plumbing. The segments at least would have celebrity guest stars which is the only redeeming factor out of the whole show. These celebrity guest stars would include Magic Johnson, Cyndi Lauper, Roddy Piper and Cassandra Peterson (Elvira) to name some. However, the live acting and the theme of each episode were still atrocious. To sum these up is basically Mario and Luigi messing around doing things that normally they would never do. To mention a couple, there was one starring Magic Johnson where Luigi literally is pulled into a magic hat by a rabbit. Another one had Mario get shrunk thanks to a sweat machine that holds a single person to appear fit for Sgt. Slaughter. There’s even an instance when both brothers went into a hypnosis state with making too many pizzas from a computer. If you count these as “must see” TV, then obviously you’re on something. They also had fictional characters like Frankenstein and Dracula appear for some odd reason. I guess DIC couldn’t afford anymore celebrities on their payroll. I'm also going to assume Fabio wasn't a available that weekend, so they had to use fictional beings. The only time I recalled these felt decent is when Elvira, Sgt. Slaughter and Roddy Piper came on. At least these celebrities brought some quality to what is an already terrible show, and that’s hard to do. Lou Albano should’ve either became a road agent in WWF during that time or started to act as a trainer in 1989. As a former wrestling fan seeing these two WWE legends of the late Roddy Piper and Sgt. Slaughter was the only redeeming thing about these live acting segments. Sgt. Slaughter probably had the better acting of the two as he was able to capture his same tough personality from the WWF. Its truly a shame that these people are no longer alive anymore (except for the Sgt. Slaughter who's still around). Roddy Piper and Lou Albano will be remembered for their time they put into the wrestling business. Of course, we have come to last part of the review and it’s the awful writing. The biggest issue comes from overusing satire to write the story for Koopa who seems like a failed villain in many instances. Many satires of King Arthur and Camelot, James Bond, Star Wars and Michael Jackson's Thriller were the most notable ones. The names for these lands was another subject and for a fantasy world like the Mushroom Kingdom sounded ridiculous. These included Spy Land, River World, Rotunda Land, Kingdom of Youth, Planet Quirk and Robo Land. Do you remember any of these places from the games? I sure don't and it's because they were never featured to begin with. When were any of these lands or kingdoms part of the Mushroom Kingdom somehow? The only lands besides the Mushroom kingdom that were in the games were Sarasaland of Birabuto, Muda, Easton and Chai and the Kingdom of Koopa. So, where does Spy Land, Planet Quirk and Robo Land tie in with the Mushroom Kingdom? It doesn't and got added in because the script writers thought this fit the theme of Mario. The satires are not the issue as its okay to give references to other things. The real problem is the reliance on them which I can tell they didn't do their research from the industry. That is what happens when a writer relies on satire instead of producing good writing. Again what was Koopa trying to do as he had no goal except trying to replicate good villains in the worst way possible. The first image has Koopa acting as if he's Doctor Evil (more like the Diet Coke of Evil) by pretending he's Gold Finger. The worst one was Darth Koopa as DIC tried so hard to copy Space Balls that its miserable attempts just mocks the Star Wars parody. As you obviously noticed gaming cartoons always had a terrible trend of repetitive writing. Unfortunately, Mario Supershow is the worst written gaming cartoon I have ever reviewed so far. In 95% of the episodes has Koopa capture Toadstool and try to conquer whatever themed land he enters. I also keep asking what his true goal really was as he seems to flop from one land to the next scheming his next plan. I never saw a villain have many plans and schemes go in different directions before with no true goal. With many ridiculous schemes, the only one that made sense was forcing Toadstool to marry him, so he doesn’t harm the Mario Brothers. Of course, the writers’ blotch this when they had Koopa’s mother show up. Nothing screams a major threat then a main antagonist’s mother appearing and scolding him at the end for failing. To prove how ridiculous Koopa was just compare him to the villains Mario dealt with in the Donkey Kong Arcade cartoon. It’s sad how those onetime villains were more of legit threats compared to someone that should take the hero to the limit. Here’s another interesting comparison as Mario in that same show came off more believable then his role here. In fact, the Plumber was more of a leader in that show compared to Supershow where he does a better job with puns and gags instead. Supershow is hands down one of the worst cartoons of the 80's and the awfulness is legendary. The script writers and animators should have done more research on the games. Then again, its DIC a studio that has shown every time they don’t care about quality in any form. The world in this cartoon doesn’t reflect the Mushroom Kingdom at all except the Mario type enemies being present. However, it's through terrible execution is why these personalities feel out of place in what’s supposed come off as a fantasy world. You can’t drop game characters into your own designed worlds that has nothing to do with the source material. The art is the worst I have seen using a 70s Hanna-Barbera style as both the environments and the Nintendo theme characters is a horrible mix match. The writing is not only repetitive but relies heavily on satire. None of the main cast ever grows but constantly use gags and puns as their personality while going through their misadventures. The live acting segments features Danny Wellis and Lou Albano weren’t that great either considering the ridiculousness of these shorts. The only redeeming thing about these in-between acts is the guest celebrity stars. As a ex-wrestling fan seeing those once larger then life wrestlers like Sergeant Slaughter and the late Roddy Piper was the highlight. NBC also should have given the studio a bigger budget because the execution is awful. Rating: 2.8/10 Atrocious
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Retro Gamer has over 25 years of gaming experience and played many classics since the Golden Age. She has been an avid fan since the day the NES graced her life and changed it forever.
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