Part 2: Tying Some Loose Ends
I am pretty sure most of you have watched cartoons as a child, or at the very least some point in your life. Hell you could be watching some right now while reading this, and if this is true congrats on being able to multitask. Took me awhile to just get over to the computer to type this motherfucker, and even then it was hard not to just get lost in the wonders that is watching random cartoon openings on YouTube.
(How many times can one watch the Thundercats theme? The answer, not enough!)
I however can remember a time when you'd wake up dirt early on a Saturday, fill your face with surgery cereal, then watch cartoons. Hours of entertainment, which soon would be followed with (unless you were one of those outdoor children) video games! If one thing was used to get us to watch and buy their crap it was cartoons, and much like action figures-cartoons would soon be used to get the attention of would be gamers.
One could even say there is a link between the two? Eh? Eh?!
Pac-Man The Cartoon!
PAC-MAN was one hell of a popular game, ported pretty much to anything that has a screen its one of the most well known video games ever known. During the era of Pac-Man fever ABC and Hanna-Barbera created a cartoon of everyone's favourite, whatever the hell Pac-Man is.
(I also don't know why some sort of Darth Vader like creature is commanding ghosts, just roll with it)
The overall plot to this show (seeing as the game was pretty much, eat till you win) was Pac-Man and his family of Pepper (Ms.Pac-Man one would assume) and Pac-Baby, would go on wacky adventures. Did I mention their cat and dog, Chomp-Chomp and Sour Puss? Did I also mention that they were voiced by Frank Welker and Peter Cullen?! That's right, Pac-Man's cat and dog were in fact Megatron and Optimus!
(One shall stand, one shall fall)
Now during these said adventures the Pac family have an ongoing battle with their only known enemies the Ghosts, who are lead by Mezmeron. Yes Mezmeron that was his name, the bastard son of Darth Vader and Gargamel. This guy's sole mission was to get his hands on and control the source of the “Power Pellets” you know those larger dots that allowed Pac-Man to royally fuck up the Ghosts' shit.
(I can't wait to eat these fucking ghosts)
Apparently the Power Pellets powered the city of Pac-Land, honestly they are just pulling a story out of their ass. Can you blame them? Its fucking Pac-Man! Its hard to make a story about eating everything in sight without adding an intervention at the end.
Saturday Supercade!
Seeing how ABC was doing so well with their Pac-Mac cartoon, CBS decided to create a video game show of their own known as Saturday Supercade. It ran for two seasons in 1983 and was a cartoon made of short segments featuring various video game characters from the golden age of video games. Featuring Donkey Kong, Frogger, Space Ace, and Q*Bert. Honestly all I know of this show is whatever I could find on Youtube, simply put its just characters from games getting into various misadventures. Oddly enough this show was created by Ruby-Spears Productions who also worked on the Megaman cartoon.
This kinda show is what is commonplace when it came to making adaptations of video games into cartoons. Most games really had a simple story, which translates well into making a really simple cartoon. Most of them however really just shoehorned whatever information on the game they could gather on a weekend into a “script” and somehow and ta-da! The best example of this would be the Captain N and Super Mario cartoons.
Speaking of which...
Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
When most of us think of video game cartoons, we look to Captain N The Game Master and the Super Mario cartoon that followed it. Not to mention the syndicated Super Mario Super Show, which had live action segments which featured Lou Albano as Mario.
The Super Mario Super Show always started and ended with sitcom like skits with Mario and Luigi living in Brooklyn and having various guest stars showing up. These segments were preformed with a live studio audience, and all of the dialogue was pretty much improvised which is pretty cool. Not to mention a good chunk of said guest starts were wrestlers like Lou Albano himself. Hell they even had Winston (using his actual name of Ernie Hudson) playing the role of a Slimebuster which is an obvious parody of Ghostbusters,
and Inspector Gadget played by Maurice LaMarche the voice of Gadget!
But you didn't watch it for that crap did you? No (well maybe you did, what the fuck do I know), you watched it for the Mario cartoon that was shown during the episode.
Each cartoon used characters, sounds, music cues and situations from Mario 1 and 2. Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool would defend the Mushroom Kingdom from King Koopa through the means of various movie or pop-culture themed worlds. Koopa would always has some sort of odd alter ego to fit the world's theme and then Mario and company would stomp a mudhole in his ass. While Wart from Mario 2 never showed his face, his various minions would make various appearances in the show. It was as formulaic as you can get. Mario would introduce the episode in a Captain Kirk like way.
(Plumber's Log can only mean one thing!)
Now Monday through Thursday you dealt with Mario and his merry band of retards fighting Koopa. However when Friday came, it was time for Zelda! The Legend of Zelda follows Link and Zelda fighting the pig-wizard Ganon.
There were 13 episodes total of this "gem" which featured Link as a womanizing asshole being the hero while trying to get into Zelda's pants. The episode would be shown on Friday while previews a snippets would be shown during the week. Now if you lived in Canada like myself the Super Mario Bros Super Show normally fell like once or twice a week so when you saw an episode of Legend of Zelda it was a fucking event!
(This man was a douche, seriously)
Oddly in Canada Super Mario Super Show came later, it actually was aired first in the US market and as I mentioned before was shown Monday to Friday, where as I remember seeing it airing once or twice a week on YTV here in Canada. The show I remember more fondly, would be Captain N and The Adventures of Super Mario Bros.3. Next time we conclude with Captain N and talk some Sonic and Megaman as well.
~Kevin "The Bourne Trilogy" Macneil
"Did you notice how the title is like a pun?! I bet you did!"
