"Hey paisanos! It's the Super Mario Brothers Super Show!" Back in the day nobody really knew the origins of Mario and Luigi, so the writers came up with one. It started off with as some kind of plumbing accident and then the two Brooklyn brothers get pulled into the drain and wind up in the in the mushroom kingdom. The show started and ended with a live action segment where the role of Mario was played by former Pro-Wrestling Superstar Capt. Lou Albano. I suppose this show got ratings I know I was one of the frequent watchers. Eventually the live action segments were taken out of it's later incarnations. What I recall from the cartoon itself in the first series the main villains were King Koopa and his henchmen. I recall in some episodes what they used for firearms were these small snakes that shoot fire when squeezed. Every character had their own personality quirk which is pretty much in any DiC cartoon, for example Mouser was Koopa's kiss a** and spoke in a German accent. Luigi was the one with some kind of phobia (just think of him as shaggy with no scooby). Toad was annoying, Princess Toadstool (Peach) was in constant search to stop Bowser despite already having Mario bros. on her side (go fig), and Mario was the man. The show ran up until the 16-bit era, and along the way the Koopa Kids and then later Yoshi were added. I still don't understand why they added Oogtar.
"Well excuuuuuse me Princess." is probably the worst catch phrase to ever come from any cartoon. Luckily thats not what I remembered from watching it when I was a lad, it was the sword. I thought that sword was awesome since it could shoot a beam and even then I thought swords were cool. Weapons aside I thought it was an okay show. The main villain was of course Ganon he was basically a giant pig with magic. Although he never conquered Hyrule he did manage to prevent Link and Zelda from kissing.
Armed with a Power Zapper and an sweet belt buckle Kevin Keene defended video land from the evil mother brain. I suppose this can be considered a cross over show since it had several characters from different games. It wasn't 100% accurate, but I didn't know that back then. Two of the characters seemed to have a speech impediment fortunately no one I met ever tried talking like Pit or Megaman. Pit ended every sentence with "icus" while Megaman said "mega" before certain words. Link and Zelda made an appearance also, for some reason Link and Kevin always fought over something I forgot what. If there was anything I learned from this show its this the following. The "a" and "start" buttons will be used the most since you'll need to pause stuff or jump really high, and never swallow gum from video land or else you'll get spots on your face and need medical attention.
Banana Slama! Thats right the ape with the tie had his own show too. It aired on the family channel here in the states but it wasn't very popular. Each episode consisted of a devious plot by the villain, 2 songs from the characters, something about DK's addiction to bananas, sometimes a wish from the crystal coconut, and ape a**. As usual King K. Rool's plan always involved getting the crystal coconut, but the only plan that seemed to work was getting DK banished from Kongo bongo by making him look like a ***** (nice job Krusha). Luckly the phrase "banana slama" never caught on and the show was never on during the right time, so its like it never happened.
Gotta Catch 'em All! The most successful one of the bunch and is has been on the air for the longest time which for a while lead to an epidemic. It revolves around the journeys of Ash and his Pikachu and well do I really have to tell you how it goes. Heres how you know the cartoon is successful. 1.) Kids constantly buy the merchandise and yet have know idea how to play the game. 2.) Having more than one movie (around 11 and another to be released). 3.) Several albums that are either just made up or from the movie's soundtrack. 4.) A still ongoing collectible card game. 5.) Death over cards the kid wouldn't give up. 6) Nearly almost every religion having something against it. 7.) Getting its own airplane. 8.) A Broadway Musical.
Kirby Kirby Kirby! O.K. so it didn't really have a catch phrase, but thats probably for the better. Another good move that was done was have Kirby not talk at all, but still sound cute. It wasn't so bad but it did get boring sometimes. Kirby was portrayed as more of a glutton when he wasn't saving the world while Dedede sounded more like the Colonel, and there were other characters that were never in the games. At the very least Meta-Knight was still a bad a** but sounds like he's been watching Zorro.
Don't blink, don't think, just go go! An almost decent Saturday Morning Sonic since SatAM Sonic. I don't get why it had X in the title, but chances are they didn't have any good ideas at the time. For once it was based loosely on the games at least in season 1. Even though it did have plots derived from Sonic Adventure 1&2, and Sonic Battle there were some movie and anime references. Hell in one Episode there was a Mogura for crying out loud. When season 2 came around it was a quest to save the entire galaxy from the Metarex meaning they had to resort to using more characters that were never in the games. At the same time there was a little bit of a sub plot of Tails having a crush on Cosmo. The only ones who seem to notice this crush were Team Chaotix which lead to a comical hook-up scheme (poor Knuckles). At least it was better than Sonic Underground.
Thats all I'm going to cover for the entry basically none of these shows are high quality, but it'll at least keep the kids distracted for a while. As long as there is money to be made video games will always end up getting a show, and the fans will go nuts over what is wrong with it. I practically grew up watching most of this and lets face it these things hold no real value what so ever. Just like with movies based on books the Game is better since you yourself actually have a hand in the outcome. Now the only thing left to do is to wait for the next abomination to come on down.
