The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

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The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
Genre Animated television series
Starring Lou Albano
Danny Wells
Country of origin United States
No. of seasons 2
No. of episodes 65 (List of episodes)
Broadcast
Original channel PAX Network
First shown in first-run syndication
Original run September 4, – December 1, 1989
Chronology
Followed by The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3
External links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! is the first American TV series based on the Super Mario Bros. NES and Super NES series of video games. It was broadcast in syndication from September 4, 1989 through December 1, 1989. The show was produced by DiC Entertainment and was distributed for syndicated television by CBS Television Distribution. (Though it was called Viacom by that time)

Contents

[edit] Format

[edit] Guest Stars

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[1][2], Clare Carey and Brian Bonsall[3] or professional athletes such as Lyle Alzado[4], Magic Johnson, Roddy Piper[5] 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. The main characters also regularly played female versions of themselves, Mariana and Luigina. In the fifth episode[6], Ernie Hudson[7] appeared as a Ghostbuster using his own name rather than Winston Zeddemore.

[edit] The Super Mario Bros. cartoons

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The second part of each episode was a 13-minute cartoon[8] based loosely on the Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 NES video games, where Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool (she would not be called Princess Peach until the release of Yoshi's Safari for the Super NES in 1993), 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 cartoon was meant to take place after the timeline of the Super Mario Bros. game when the Princess was rescued. It was revealed that the Mario Brothers were accidentally 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. (It's commonly referred to as "The Mushroom Land" or simply "Mushroom Land", whereas "The Mushroom Kingdom" is the land and events of Super Mario Bros. 3. This terminology is noted by many gamers as canon and also by the theme song of this series stating "...gave the princess a hand, in the mushroom land") 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.

[edit] The Legend of Zelda on Fridays

Main article: The Legend of Zelda (TV series)

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! cartoon was shown on Mondays through Thursdays. On Fridays, the show would air the The Legend of Zelda (TV series). Based on The Legend of Zelda, and Zelda II: Adventure of Link NES video games, 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. The Zelda cartoons lasted a total of only 13 episodes, but the characters of Link and Zelda, along with their original voice actors (Jonathan Potts and Cynthia Preston), were later transplanted into Captain N: The Game Master, also produced by DiC Entertainment.

[edit] Club Mario

During the summer of 1990, Club Mario[9] 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" (hosted by a green alien woman), which was edited from the TV series, Photon.

[edit] Featured Songs

At some point in an animated episode a song would be played to go along with the scene. These were usually notable singles from artists and groups such as The Trashmen, Michael Jackson, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Kenny Loggins, Los Lobos, Carl Douglas, Billy Idol, The Bangles, Johnny Rivers, etc. However, the songs were often performed as covers.

[edit] Cast

[edit] 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. Later, The VHS Companies Switched from Kids Klassics to GoodTimes Home Video in 1991 and started their first release "Hooded Robin Plus Other Stories".
  • 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.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Nicole Eggert - Super Mario Wiki
  2. ^ Filmogallery of Nicole Eggert-Super Mario Bros-Picture Gallery
  3. ^ Brian Bosnall - Super Mario Wiki
  4. ^ Lyle Alzado - Super Mario Wiki
  5. ^ This is just the live action segments from an episode of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. Don't worry, I'll have the cartoons up soon enough. But for now enjoy the antics of Captain Lou and Rowdy Roddy Piper!
  6. ^ X-Entertainment: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show -- Halloween Episode
  7. ^ Ernie Hudson - Super Mario Wiki
  8. ^ Super Mario Bros. - Cartoon Resource Website entry #76
  9. ^ Club Mario

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Mario television series (Episodes)