257: The Worst (and Best) Videogame Cartoons

[Crimson King]

The worst video game cartoon (as I'll call it here), is that animated movie they made based on the Dante's Inferno game.
Every single chapter is animated by a different design team and some of them are very similar, but this is never explained until you figure it out towards the end. Until then you'll be stuck asking, "Wait, why does Dante suddenly have long hair?" This is especially confusing because they never change voice actors and some of the character designs from chapter to chapter that you have to figure it out, whoch you do in time for it to end and for everyone to shapeshift again!
The only things that kept me suckered in was:
1.) to see how further naked Dante's love interest (whose name I forgot) will go.
2.) how much Dante would completely destroy the workings of hell, which I'm fairly certain might cause some sort of universal collapse on some level.

AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!

 

[FreedanZero]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTGMS3jDxV0

I'm surprised no one mentioned Donkey Kong Country, if they even remember it.

(I can't figure out how to show the video so just click the link)

 

[tsu-money]

I loved a lot of these cartoons as a kid. It's unfortunate that now I have lost the nostalgia factor for most of them.

 

[GamerFromJump]

I bet Dini and Timm could do great things with some of the IPs out there today.

(Visions of Bionic Commando: The Animated Series)*

* The first one, not the PS3/XBox one

 

[The Tingler]

Sonic SatAM was superb, and really surprising that they could get that dark with Sonic. It's still good now.

Earthworm Jim however is the best. It also has the greatest, most catchy theme tune of any cartoon ever. Yes, even beats Duck Tales.

 

[darthricardo]

Bioshock cartoon = yes, PLEASE!!! I would love to see something in the style of the Sin City graphic novels, or something like that.

 

[Shadeovblack]

Who says it needs to be a cartoon?

 

[Cosplay Horatio]

The Worst (and Best) Videogame Cartoons

Many early videogame characters had their escapades translated to the small screen in the form of weekly animated shows. Unfortunately, most of them were awful. Nadia Oxford chronicles the highs and lows of cartoons based on videogames.

Read Full Article

My favorites are owned on DVD like The Super Mario Bros. Super Show and The Legend of Zelda. It happened upon playing the Final Fight Double Impact game I unlocked the full episode of the Street Fighter episode Final Fight and it happens to be my most favorite and memorable episode especially the part when DamD takes the electric wires and puts it to his tongue shocking himslef while yelling, "YEAH! GIMME DA JUICE!", or something similar to that. Old school Sonic is cool but faded and Captain N is great but not enough for me to buy it's DVD set. Mega Man in the US is his version of super badass hero and the Japanese one is basically the game coming to life with Mega Man and Roll...well all the Mega Man characters evil and good learning about Japanese Culture. Darkstalkers was cool and it didn't run for a very long time.

It wasn't in the article but there was another show available before Capcom shows were made. I don't remember the title and the best description I can come up with is it was around during Wake Rattle and Roll, it had some guy in his late teens or early 20's talking about all that is Nintendo and the cartoon show featured the following Nintendo Characters who pall around and adventure with the chosen human gamer friend;

The Barbarian from Iron Sword

The Tomato from Princess Tomato and The Salad Kingdom

The Blue Guy from N.A.R.C.

Bigfoot the Monster Truck from the similarly titled game

and for some reason the main Baddies are all from N.A.R.C. except for one who was a different Monster Truck from the Bigfoot game.

They would go on adventures returning escaped game baddies to the game cartridges themselves and sometimes the game world would be in the real world and only based on the main characters game plots and playthroughs.

There was also another Street Fighter cartoon from Japan called Street Fighter 2 V which is like an awesome legal steroid induced version of the Street Fighter Cartoon in the 90's.

Perhaps the future will have a Little Big Planet cartoon what with the plushies already available and another video game cartoon I'd like to see for sure is No More Heroes.

 

[KingKamor]

Some game-to-cartoon adaptations weren't mentioned. Of course, the ones I am about to mention are in anime form, and those are a dime a dozen these days.

There are several anime series based off of games from the 'Tales of...' series, including Tales of Phantasia (4-episode OVA), Eternia (weird off-shoot storyline that doesn't appear in the game), Symphonia (5 episodes of OVA so far, predicted 8 or more total), and Abyss.

The adaptation of Tales of the Abyss, however, was actually a weekly series over in Japan, and contained a full 26 episodes. In addition, the fans rejoiced at how true it stayed to the original game. This would be a good example of a "Saturday Morning Cartoon" version of a game gone perfectly right.

 

[Rad Party God]

The american Street Fighter cartoon was god awful, specially with dubbing problems that issued that time for us mexican audiences. If you thought the cartoon was already bad, try to watch it (or listen to it) without cringing in pain for the horrible voices the actors had. It was simply annoying.

Around that time, somewhere in south america (or Miami?) there was a studio (still running today with the exact same annoying actors) that made both the translation and dubbing for a dime and mostly everyone wanted that studio to do all the dirty work for them, but at the expense of zero to none quality from it.

Around that time, the Canal 5 (channel 5) imported a lot of quality anime, still with it's original japanese intro and outro and made a lot of quality translations and dubbing them (I dare you to deny and say the mexican version of the entire Dragon Ball series doesn't have better voice acting than the US version). Even if the intro was modified, it was for the better, they left the entire intro intact with only dubbing the vocals with quality singers --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsdE3o1Rh_Y --- this one --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmXohMjbKeQ&feature=related --- and this one is my favorite --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS73Ki3uJn0 .

For a short time, the Street Fighter anime was being aired and it was a much darker version of the american cartoon, Ryu and Ken were the protagonists, instead of Guile and it even featured Akuma right from the start, making it the second main villain along with Bison. It had amazing fight sequences and thankfully it had nothing related to the american movie. Here's a little taste from what have you've been missing --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qXFunYSsc8&feature=related .

 

[saintchristopher]

I don't know if anyone remembers, but there was a short-lived Mortal Kombat animated series that I was a big fan of for reasons I can't recall. But it was all pretty much based on the plot of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. So... it kind of stank out loud.

And I used to love the Sonic weekday cartoon. I had no idea Urkel did the voice, but somehow that makes total sense.

 

[CopperBoom]

Earthworm Jim was my *FAVOURITE* cartoon [it was on the WB during the ANimaniacs/Hysteria/Pinky And The Brain era so it had still competition] when it was on.
So funny.
"GAAAA-ROOOVY!"

 

[Iron Lightning]

"I decided to make her a character, and make her cute, because, like many males working in the animation business at the time, my first sexual fantasy character had been Tinkerbell. That scene where she stands on the mirror worrying that her butt is too big? Still gives me wood."
-Bob Forward

Wow, that's quite an insight into animators' minds. If only the Nintendo 64 had the polygons we might have seen Navi as a naked broad with a huge rack. That's certainly something to think about.

 

[TheMatt]

You're on crack. Captain N didn't fail at ANYTHING. It was made of pure win topped with a citrus epic sauce.

Yes, I had my own controller belt that I made. Eat me.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Pacman cartoon, that is all.

 

[DeAvatar]

Wow, that was a trip down memory lane, though I don't remember watching Zelda. (Probably for the better.) and Sonic was always awesome. I expected it to go further with the final episode with Snidley (Snively?)becoming bossman #1 but Nooooo.

 

[Pinstar]

I went back and watched the old Earth Worm Jim shows. On one episode where Jim is diving into the Sun, Peter Puppy begins to recite the Litany against Fear from Dune. I almost peed myself laughing.

 

[The Random One]

Even though I almost never watched the Mario show, I'd always considered canon the fact that they lived on New York. Although the movie made that same claim. Note that by that time the only gaming I had done was Prince of Persia and Lemmings on my father's PC when he came around.

Back in the eighties, (I think) cartoons were more important because there were less forms of entertainment as you grew up. So you went from cartoons to more fighty cartoons to live action series to regular TV shows. Now, with the Internet and video games, the importance of TV shows is highly decreased. And someone mentioned the Dante's Inferno anime, which reminded me there's a series of Halo shorts, so video game cartoons still exist, they just found a (better, I think) place in the niche of the überfan.

I'd watch a Team Fortress 2 cartoon religiously, though.

 

[Misterian]

I do belive you skiped over kirby right back at ya. The 2nd greatest videogame cartoon ever made.

It's original un-dubbed version, anyway.

I find it good, yet wierd that video game TV shows have come out good more often than video game movies did.

What's up with that?