Saturday Supercade

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Saturday Supercade was an animated television series produced for Saturday mornings by Ruby-Spears Productions. It ran for two seasons on CBS beginning in 1983. Each episode was comprised of several shorter segments featuring video game characters from the Golden Age of Arcade Games. Presumably due to licensing issues with the various companies that licensed their games for the show, Saturday Supercade has never been officially released on VHS or DVD. However, characters from Donkey Kong have reappeared in various animated series in the next two decades (i.e. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, and Donkey Kong Country).

The debut characters included:

• Frogger (from the Frogger arcade game)
• Donkey Kong with Mario and Pauline (from the Donkey Kong arcade game), featuring Soupy Sales as the voice of Donkey Kong, and Peter Cullen as the voice of Mario.
• Q*Bert with Coily, Ugg, Wrongway, Slick and Sam (from the Q*Bert arcade game)
• Donkey Kong, Jr. (from the Donkey Kong Jr. arcade game)
• Pitfall Harry with his pet mountain lion Quickclaw and his niece Rhonda (from the Pitfall! and Pitfall II: Lost Caverns console games)

Pitfall and Q-Bert rotated weekly while the other three were weekly.

During the second season, the Frogger and Pitfall Harry segments were replaced by shorts featuring:

• Space Ace with Space Ace/Dexter (depending on his form), Kimberly, and Borf (from the Space Ace arcade game)
• Kangaroo with friends and the "Monkey Business Gang" (from the Kangaroo arcade)

[edit] Story lines

Q*Bert: In a 1950's inspired world, a teenage fur-covered creature named Q*Bert must deal with the resident bullies Coily, Ugg, and Wrongway, with his girlfriend Viper.

Donkey Kong: The Amazing Donkey Kong has escaped from the circus. He is on the lam, and Mario and his niece Pauline are chasing the ape. Donkey Kong will often grab Pauline and Mario has to save her.

Donkey Kong Jr.: Donkey Kong Jr. is sad to find that his father is running from the circus and Mario, and that he can never see him. He meets a street kid named "Bones" who has a motorcycle and offers to help Junior by finding his dad together.

Frogger: Frogger is an ace reporter of the swamp. He and his friends, Shellshock "Shelly" Turtle and Fanny Frog go out in search of stories (sometimes about human behavior) to publish in the swamp's newspapers.

Pitfall Harry: Based on the Pitfall! Atari game, Harry, Quick Claw, and his niece Rhonda explore jungles for hidden treasures.

Space Ace: Space Ace/Dexter and his girlfriend Kimberly must stop aliens from invading Earth.

Kangaroo: Joey Kangaroo and his mother must stop meddlesome monkeys from making trouble at the local zoo.

Note: The monkeys' names are based on the names of the monsters from Pac-Man.

[edit] External links

• Saturday Supercade appreciation at X-Entertainment
• Saturday Supercade cartoon info, intro clip & trailers at RetroStatic
• Cartoon - Saturday Supercade at The Memory Lab
• Saturday Supercade at the Internet Movie Database