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A number of television programs based on the 'Super Mario Bros.' video game series have been created. After appearing alongside Donkey Kong in 1983 and starring in a few anime specials released only in Japan, the protagonist Mario starred in several American animated television series, produced by DiC Entertainment. Three series were produced by DiC, each with a different title and based around a different game (or games).

Contents

Before DiC

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

Cast

Trivia

Home Video Releases

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3

Cast

Trivia

Broadcast history

Super Mario World

Cast

From Game to Cartoon

Broadcast history

Mario All-Stars

King Koopa's Kool Kartoons

See also

External links

References

Before DiC

Prior to having his own animated series, Mario starred as a regular character on the ''Donkey Kong''-based segments of CBS's'' Saturday Supercade''. Voiced by Peter Cullen, Mario, along with Pauline (who was his niece as opposed to his girlfriend, as she was in the game) was constantly on the trail of escaped circus gorilla Donkey Kong (his primary nemesis in the game).

In 1986 Mario was the main character of a theatrical anime movie, titled ''. This film is very obscure, even in Japan where it was released, and not much is known about it; even the video release of the movie has become hard to find. The video was produced by Japanese animation company Grouper Productions, and it marked the animated debut of Mario's brother Luigi, damsel-in-distress Princess Peach, and his nemesis, the reptilian Bowser (Koopa in Japan). The plot, based off of the first ''Super Mario Bros.'' game, revolves around Mario and Luigi entering a parallel world in order to rescue Princess Peach from Koopa.
An unrelated anime OVA trilogy was also released only in Japan. The trilogy was released on August 3, 1989, about a month before ''The Super Mario Bros. Super Show'' began airing. These three direct-to-video 15-minute films feature characters from ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' retelling classic fairy tales - ''Momotaro'', ''Issunboshi'', and ''Shiroyukihime'' (''Snow White''). Chronologically, these films would mark the actual animated debut of the Koopalings and several other enemies from ''Super Mario Bros. 3'', excluding the Japanese commercial for the game.

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

'''The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!''' is the only one of the three American Mario animated series to air in syndication. The first and last parts of each episode were live action and showed Mario (played by "Captain" Lou Albano) and Luigi (Danny Wells) living in Brooklyn, where they would often be visited by celebrity guest stars. Some of them were popular TV stars, such as Nedra Volz, Norman Fell, Donna Douglas, Eve Plumb, Vanna White, Jim Lange, Danica McKellar, Nicole Eggert, Clare Carey and Brian Bonsall or professional athletes such as Lyle Alzado, Magic Johnson, Roddy Piper and Sgt. Slaughter. Occasionally, the main actors would be playing guest stars themselves, forcing their regular characters to leave when it came time for their other characters to show up. In the fifth episode, Ernie Hudson appeared as a Ghostbuster using his own name rather than Winston Zeddemore.
The second part of each episode was a 13-minute cartoon based loosely on the ''Super Mario Bros.'' and ''Super Mario Bros. 2'' video games, where Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool (as Peach was called in North America until the release of ''Yoshi's Safari''), and her loyal mushroom retainer Toad battle against the reptilian villain King Koopa,a.k.a. Bowser, often in a movie or pop-culture parody. Getting into the spirit of these parodies, Koopa usually had a different outfit for each one. Wart, the main antagonist of the second game, was never in any of the episodes, yet most of his minions appeared in the show. The cartoons were meant to take place after the timeline of the Super Mario Bros. game where the Princess was rescued. It was revealed that the Mario Brothers accidentally were warped into the Mushroom Kingdom while working on a bathtub drain in Brooklyn, NY, and in appearing presented a challenge to King Koopa's plots to overtake the kingdom. The brothers and Toad had to protect the Princess, as they believed she had the power to save her people as well as to get the Mario Brothers back to Brooklyn. It was never explained whether the live action segments were meant to be the Mario Brothers before they found the Mushroom Kingdom, or if they had successfully made it back to Brooklyn and returned to operating their plumbing business as before.
The ''Super Mario Bros.'' cartoon was shown on Mondays through Thursdays. On Fridays, the show would air the ''Legend of Zelda'' cartoons based on the game of the same name, in which the elf-like hero Link and Princess Zelda fight against the forces of the evil wizard Ganon. Scenes from the episode were shown during the live-action segments on the preceding days as sneak previews.
During the summer of 1990, Club Mario replaced the Mario Bros. live-action segments. This featured rock and roll and Mario obsessed teenagers (Chris Coombs, Michael Rawlins, and Victoria Delany) goofing around, and in at least one episode, running around the DiC studios and harassing Andy Heyward. Coombs and Delany played Siblings Tommy and Tammy Treehugger. An additional added segment was a 1-2 minute viewing of "Spaced Out Theater", which was edited from the TV series, ''Photon''.
The show ran from September 4 to December 1 1989. DVD box sets of SMBSS were released on March 28, 2006 (Volume 1) and October 31, 2006 (Volume 2) by Shout! Factory.

Cast

★ Lou Albano as Mario

★ Danny Wells as Luigi

★ Jeannie Elias as Princess Toadstool (most episodes), Birdo, and Shy Guy

★ John Stocker as Toad, Koopa Troopa, Mouser, Beezo, and Flurry

★ Harvey Atkin as King Koopa, Tryclyde and Snifit

Trivia

★ The show was sponsored by Domino's Pizza.

★ The theme song for the show was called "Plumber's Rap".

★ The cartoon shared much of its background music with the first season of ''Captain N'' and the music that did not come from Captain N were remixes of music from ''Super Mario Bros.'' and ''Super Mario Bros. 2''.

★ When shown in reruns after cancellation, DiC took out all the song covers played during the action/chase sequences, and replaced them with instrumentals of songs featured in ''The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3'' and ''Super Mario World'', presumably because of music licensing issues for each of the songs. The original songs have only been reinstated in the UK DVD volumes, but not on the Region 1 DVD releases, nor even the two box sets released by Shout! Factory in 2006.

★ Mario's "Plumber's Log" narrations at the beginning of each episode is reminiscent of William Shatner as Captain Kirk in the original ''Star Trek'' and Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in , which was on the air at the time.

★ While Jennie Elias was the voice behind Princess Toadstool, there were at least eight episodes where she did not provide her character's voice for unknown reasons. At least two un-named voice actresses provided the Princess' voice in those episodes.

★ Almost all "Super Mario Bros. 2" enemies were represented in this cartoon series, except Pansers (fire throwing flowers).

★ For the first two episodes and the first half of "Butch Mario and the Luigi Kid", Toad's color scheme is more or less inverted. He had a red mushroom hat with white spots, red shoes, a white vest, and red pants. No official explanation was given for this anamoly, but when Toad used a Fire Flower in "The Fire of Hercufleas", he donned his old color scheme.

★ According to the interview on Shout! Factory's first DVD box set, Captain Lou Albano had stated that he was not interested in portraying Mario and voicing him at first due to his popularity from the WWF (now WWE), but was talked into it by his wife. Albano's role as Mario is arguably his most notable performance outside of wrestling. Lou Albano was even more reluctant to part with his famous goatee because Mario is not bearded, so he overcame his reluctance by shaving off his goatee on the Regis and Kathie Lee show.

★ In the episode "Stars in Their Eyes", the song sung/buzzed by the alien Quirks is the theme to ''The Legend Of Zelda''. Similarly, in the ''Zelda'' episode "Doppleganger", Link is whistling the ''Super Mario Bros.'' theme while practicing his swordsmanship.

★ The episode "Little Red Riding Princess" (an obvious parody of the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood") indicates that the Toadstool name in Princess Toadstool is a family name, not a personal name, because her grandmother is known as "Grandma Toadstool." The Princess' personal name, however, is never revealed in the cartoon series.

★ There was a View-master three-reel set based on the show (but labeled as "Super Mario Bros. 2"). The "A" reel showed various scenes from the live-action segments, while the "B" and "C" reels were an adaptation of the episode "The Bird! The Bird!" Oddly, although the picture descriptions say "King Koopa," the villain featured in reels "B" and "C" is clearly Wart.

★ In the Koopa Pirates episode, when Mario gains the star, he gets his Fiery color scheme.

★ During the Club Mario era, every episode concluded with Tommy Treehugger's distinctive farewell to the viewers: "Peace! Love! Recycle!"

Home Video Releases

★ From 1989 to 1991, Kids Klassics released NTSC VHS videos of the show. These videos contained two, one, or no live-action segments, and are the only commercially available versions (in the US) of the episodes to feature the cartoon segments as they were originally produced and aired (meaning they included the featured songs that were edited out in later airings). On these videos, the "Super Mario Bros." theme was not included before the cartoon segment.

★ The animated episode "Koopa Klaus" and the live-action segment "Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush" were featured, along with ''Super Mario World'''s "The Night Before Cave Christmas" on the 1996 VHS release ''Super Mario Bros. Super Christmas Adventures!''

★ The show made its DVD debut in February 2002 with the single-disc release ''Mario's Greatest Movie Moments'', which combined the adjacent new VHS releases ''Mario's Action Adventures'' and ''Mario's Monster Madness''. This DVD features a bonus episode only viewable after correctly answering questions in an interactive quiz. The episode, "The Adventures of Sherlock Mario", also features the final segment of the accompanying live-action segment, "Plumbers of the Year", complete with a preview for the next episode of "The Legend of Zelda" and the ending credits. Strangely, the first half of "Plumbers of the Year" is not shown; also, there is a strange glitch in the middle of the animated segment that causes the video to go back to the scene following the commercial fadeout, and the audio for speaking roles shifted to the left side. This was corrected later in the release of the US Volume 1 DVD set.

★ The episode "Do You Princess Toadstool Take This Koopa...?" was included as a bonus feature on the ''Sonic Underground'' DVD ''Dr. Robotnik's Revenge''.

★ Shortly after the show began its run on Yahooligans! TV, another single-disc release was put out, titled ''Mario Mania!'' and featuring the first week's worth of episodes. The DVD used the same prints that had been featured on the Yahooligans! website, and as a result did not include the ''Legend of Zelda'' previews.

★ Shout! Factory released two four-disc volumes of the show in 2006 (distributed by Sony), which featured the episodes with the ''Zelda'' previews (except on "King Mario of Cramalot") and custom-made commercial indents reinstated, but with the featured songs still edited out. However, on the second volume, due to legal issues, four of the animated episodes were presented as "bonus episodes" without their respective live-action segments. Other than the four "bonus" episodes, the other episodes were arranged in production, not, broadcast order.

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3

'''The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3''' was the second Mario animated series produced by DiC. Based on the ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' video game, the cartoon shows Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and Toad fighting against Bowser Koopa and his Koopalings, who went by different names on the show. On the show, the Koopalings were called:

★ Cheatsy Koopa (Larry)

★ Bigmouth Koopa (Morton)

★ Kootie Pie Koopa (Wendy)

★ Hop Koopa (Iggy)

★ Bully Koopa (Roy)

★ Hip Koopa (Lemmy)

★ Kooky Von Koopa (Ludwig von Koopa)
Although the reason for their name change is disputed among fans, it is most likely that DiC did not have access to their real names during production of the show, for the company was probably using the Japanese version of ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' as reference. In the game, the Koopa Kids were not originally given names until it was brought over into the US, shortly before ''The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3'' went on air. The made-up names were added in place. Apparently, DiC was never informed of the add-on at first glance. Oddly enough, bits from the American version of the game were inserted ("Kooky ''von'' Koopa" or referring to King Koopa as "Bowser"), which clearly shows DiC became aware of the change later. DiC likely retained the show names to avoid confusion among viewers.
Like the previous Mario cartoon series, the animation was done by Sei Young Animation Co. Ltd, however this show was co-produced by Reteitalia S.P.A., hence the slight differences in character design.
Since the show was based on ''Super Mario Bros. 3'', the enemies and power-ups were also seen in the show. In addition to being more faithful to the Mario gameplay, the series was given an established sense of continuity, something that the previous series lacked. The show was also known for having many of its episodes set in "the real world", with "actual" human beings appearing from time to time. Episodes took place in locations such as London, Paris, Venice, New York City, Cape Canaveral, Los Angeles and even Washington, D.C.. One memorable episode entitled "7 Continents for 7 Koopas" was about the seven Koopa Kids invading each of the seven continents.
This cartoon was shown in an hour-length time slot on Saturday mornings on NBC with the second season of '' in its original run in 1990. All further airings of the series separated it from ''Captain N''.
It has more recently been released on DVD in Australia in a full box set made by MRA Entertainment, Europe which one volume out of the four has only been released in Germany, and one single DVD release in the US by Sterling Entertainment Group in 2003. Due to the success of the DVD sets of ''The Super Mario Bros. Super Show'', Shout! Factory released a 3-disc box set of ''The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3'' on June 26 2007.

Cast

★ Walker Boone as Mario

★ Tony Rosato as Luigi

★ Tracey Moore as Princess Toadstool (Peach)

★ John Stocker as Toad, Boomerang Bros, Fire Bros, Thwomp and Paragoombas

★ Harvey Atkin as King Bowser Koopa

★ Tara Strong as Lemmy "Hip" Koopa and Iggy "Hop" Koopa (credited as "Tara Charendoff")

★ Paulina Gillis as Wendy "Kootie Pie" Koopa

★ James Rankin as Larry "Cheatsy" Koopa

★ Dan Hennessey as Roy "Bully" Koopa, Angry Sun and Sledge Bros

★ Michael Stark as Ludwig "Kooky" Von Koopa

★ Gordon Masten as Morton "Big Mouth" Koopa Jr.

★ Louise Vallance as Ptooey

★ Ernie Anderson as Opening Narrator

Trivia

★ A few times in this series, King Koopa was addressed as Bowser Koopa ("Bowser" being the name Nintendo of America usually used in the games, and "King Koopa" being the name usually used in Japan and the cartoons).

★ Tanooki suits (a rare power-up from the game) never appeared in the show, nor were Hammer Bros. suits. However, in the episode "Reptiles in the Rose Garden", Mario and Luigi disguise themselves as Sledge Bros., a possible allusion to the rare power-up.

★ Then-President George and First Lady Barbara Bush are featured in "Reptiles in the Rose Garden", albeit without their actual names (Mario addresses Barbara as "Mrs. President", instead of "Mrs. First Lady") or George's face actually being seen (he spends the episode on the telephone).

★ Except for "Kootie Pie Rocks", every episode's title card features the episode's title superimposed on a world map screenshot from the game. Usually the world shown was also the setting for the episode, with World 1 (Grass Land) as the default setting for episodes taking place elsewhere, such as on Earth. Desert Land appeared in "The Beauty of Kootie," "Mind your Mommy, Mummy Mario," and "The Venice Menace." Water Land appeared in "The Ugly Mermaid." Giant Land appeared in "Sneaky Lying Cheating Giant Ninja Koopas." Sky Land appeared in "A Toadally Magic Adventure" and "Up, Up, and a Koopa." Ice Land appeared in "Life's Ruff." Pipe Land appeared in "Oh Brother!" and "Misadventures of Mighty Plumber." Dark Land appeared in "Never Koop a Koopa," "Do the Koopa," "Recycled Koopa," and "Super Koopa."

★ Of the four hero characters (Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and Toad), only the voice of Toad was unchanged for this series.

★ The various Koopa airships are represented in the cartoon by the Doomship, a huge flying battleship that Bowser frequently uses to travel around in and cause chaos. The Doomship appeared in many episodes. The Koopa Tanks and Koopa Air Force only appeared in one episode each, and the Koopa Navy was never shown (The Doomsub, a Bowser/plesiosaur-like submarine, was featured instead).

★ Oddly, Koopa Troopas never made an appearance in the show. However, the Para Troopas made a brief apperance in the episode Do the Koopa.

Broadcast history

★ USA

★
★ NBC (1990-1991)

★
★ PAX Network (1999)

★ UK

★
★ Channel 4

★
★ The Children's Channel

★
★ POP! (2004–)

★
★ ITV2 (2005)

Super Mario World

'''Super Mario World''' (also sometimes referred to unofficially as '''The Super Mario World Show''' and originally known as '''Captain N and the New Super Mario World''' when it was originally aired with the last 7 episodes of ''Captain N'') was the last of the three American Mario cartoons. The show was based largely on the Super Nintendo game of the same name, but with small yet noticeable changes.
The show takes place in Dinosaur Land (called "Dinosaur World" in the series), and features the then-new character Yoshi, as well as a preadolescent caveman named Oogtar (who did not appear in the games). This time, Toad was not in the cast, as he was not in the game itself. Unlike in the game, Yoshi's Island was populated with cavemen (who were the comic relief of the show) instead of Yoshis, and many of the locations had different names. For example, the Forest of Illusion was called the Enchanted Forest while the Vanilla Dome was referred to as the Lava Pits ^[1]. Also, enemies featured in the game were rarely called by their in-game names on the show, but rather by whichever real-life creatures they resembled. Also in the show were minor aspects that were never shown in the game, such as Yoshi's aquaphobia (although tropical Yoshis could not survive in water on the later game ''Super Mario Sunshine''). Also, in this show, as in ''The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3'', Mario and Luigi still used their red and green overalls, respectively, with a blue shirt when Nintendo already started depicting them with blue overalls.
Another noticeable difference is that it was animated by a different animation studio, Pacific Rim Productions, Inc, hence the difference in character designs, not only for Princess Toadstool (the most obvious), but also for Mario and Luigi. An intro animated by the Japanese was also conceived for the series (due to the better resources and production values, it was better than the show's actual western animation) Like the third season of "Captain N: The Game Master," (which aired the same year), the animation and writing quality suffered, perhaps due to a smaller budget. The theme song was written by Mark Mothersbaugh, who also wrote the ''Rugrats'' theme music, which coincidentally, premiered in the same month and year.
It was the only Mario cartoon to air on Network Ten in Australia. This was on Cheez TV from Monday to Wednesday. In the UK and Australia, "King Scoopa Koopa" was aired before "The Night Before Cave Christmas" as when it was aired in Australia, it followed the Captain N production order and the UK followed the original production order.
All the episodes are currently available on DVD in Australia. However, except for part of a Christmas videotape released in 1996, it has never had any NTSC home video releases (thus far). All of the episodes except The Night Before Cave Christmas and A Little Learning have been released on VHS in the UK. At first, the chances of a DVD release of Super Mario World were slim, due to copyrights on Yoshi's character. But, it has been announced that both Super Mario World and the final season of Captain N will be released on DVD on November 13, 2007. ^[2]

Cast

★ Walker Boone as Mario

★ Tony Rosato as Luigi

★ Andrew Sabiston as Yoshi

★ Tracey Moore as Princess Toadstool (Peach)

★ John Stocker as Oogtar, Magikoopa, Monty Mole and Charging Chuck

★ Harvey Atkin as King Bowser Koopa

★ Tara Strong as Lemmy "Hip" Koopa and Iggy "Hop" Koopa (credited as "Tara Charendoff")

★ Paulina Gillis as Wendy "Kootie Pie" Koopa

★ James Rankin as Larry "Cheatsy" Koopa

★ Dan Hennessey as Roy "Bully" Koopa, Green Dinosaur and Purple Dinosaur

★ Michael Stark as Ludwig "Kooky" Von Koopa

★ Gordon Masten as Morton "Big Mouth" Koopa Jr.

From Game to Cartoon

★ In the game, the neon sign on Koopa's castle reads "Bowser" but in this series, it's "Koopa" (as it is in the Japanese version). The castle was also referred to as Koopa's "Coney Island Disco Palace" by Mario, or more often and perhaps more appropriately, "Neon Castle."

★ Two of the episodes ("Send in the Clown" and ("Mama Luigi") were somewhat related to the games. "Send in the Clown" marked the only cartoon appearance of the Koopa Clown Car, along with all the methods for fighting against Bowser at the end of the game except the swooping back and forth as well as the fireball storm between rounds. "Mama Luigi" provides a more detailed version of the instruction booklet's story.

★ Larry Koopa's hair was changed from blue to light green, as his game counterpart had also been colored differently.

★ In the original "We'll be back" and "We’re back" commercial bumpers shown during the original NBC broadcasts with ''Captain N'', the show was constantly referred to mistakenly as ''Captain N & Super Mario Bros. World''. This error was never corrected.

★ Over the credits of the previous show on the original NBC airings, the announcer would tell the viewers to "stay tuned for ''Super Mario Bros. 4''". (This mistake might've been made due to the fact that in Japan, the game was also known as ''Super Mario Bros. 4'').

★ The Super Mushroom only appeared once in this series during the episode "King Scoopa Koopa" (in a roulette block), but it was never used by Mario or Luigi.

★ Several episodes of the series, most commonly the 13th and final episode of the cartoon, "Mama Luigi" are featured in on the video website YouTube as a fad known as YouTube Poop, which consists of various edited clips from the cartoon series as well as other media.

Broadcast history

★ USA

★
★ NBC (1991-1992)

★
★ PAX Network (1999)

★ UK

★
★ Channel 4

★
★ POP! (2004–)

★
★ ITV2 (2005)

Mario All-Stars

'''Mario All-Stars''' was released in 1994 on cable television, first airing on The Family Channel (now ABC Family), then later in edited reruns on the USA Network. It featured 39 episodes of the animated segments from ''The Super Mario Bros. Super Show'' and all the ''Super Mario World'' episodes with time-compressed footage. Oddly enough, the commercials aired for this show featured clips from ''The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3'', which was never actually featured on this show, and claimed to feature the Mario Bros. in "40 brand-new adventures".

King Koopa's Kool Kartoons

'King Koopa's Kool Kartoons' was a local, live-action children's television show broadcast in Southern California during the holiday season of 1989/1990. The show starred King Koopa (also known as Bowser), the central arch-villain from Nintendo's popular Super Mario Bros. video game series. The 30-minute program was originally broadcast during the after-school afternoon time-slots on Los Angeles-based KTTV Fox 11.
Because of its limited broadcast area and brief appearance, the show is largely forgotten in the greater Super Mario Bros. series.

See also

★ The Super Mario Challenge

★ List of Super Mario episodes

★ List of television shows based on video games

External links

★

★

★

★

★

★ The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! at TV.com

★ Super Mario World episode coverage

References

1. ''Super Mario World'' episode "The Wheel Thing"
2. http://tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=7838