The Big Picture: Do the Mario!

[Nerdstar]

ah! good times i remember the show SO fondly and always loved it (had a VHS tape of it for awhile till it got destroyed somehow)i always loved the theme and the live action bits(but there was one live action episode that made me feel REALLY uncomfortable) and for the longest time after wards i hunted for it but could never find it(before the Internet)

 

[pandasaw]

Have to disagree. These shows were terrible and no amount of nastalgia or supposed importance to the medium will ever change that.

 

[Twilight_guy]

God, I remember how bad and outright stupid old cartoons can be. It if weren't for Nostalgia there were be so many slit wrists over old TV shows.

 

[templar1138a]

Ugh. It's seeing clips from those 80s video game cartoon shows that make me GLAD I wasn't into console gaming until the late 90s. Seriously, that's a shameful chapter in the history of video games. Probably more so than Uwe Boll.

 

[funguy2121]

Do the Mario!

You may say the Super Mario Bros. show was embarrassingly cheesy, but MovieBob says otherwise.

Watch Video

Wow. It never occurred to me to think of Moonlighting as a forbearer to Inuyasha.

It's doubtful the lady who wrote Inuyasha ever saw that show. It's just an old ass character archetype/trope.

Though I liked toon Zelda and Link a great deal more than Inuyasha and Kagome after maybe the first season, if that.

I was going to post a youtube montage of "Link" saying "Excuuuuuuuuuuse me!" over and over, and then I realized that I sometimes have to keep my inner obnoxious jackass in check. I may be guilty of simulacrum there, but I think it's fair to say that Moonlighting went far in popularizing this dynamic, so it was out there when Inuyasha was inspired and then created. I don't have any solid evidence of this - just a theory. And Moonlighting predated the birds and the bees for me, so I could be wrong. My dad let me watch it because he knew the innuendo would go over my head.

 

[JokerCrowe]

I feel really old now... I remember this being on TV in Sweden I say again SWEDEN I think it was even dubbed to Swedish. (or maybe not...)

 

[Stammer]

lol I think Bob got a little sore about last week's Extra Credits episode. I'm sure it's actually all just coincidence (as I'm sure Bob doesn't come up with an episode, write it, act it, animate it, and publish it within half a week), but it is just really funny.

And I don't really care what my 21-year-old self has to say about a children's cartoon, especially when I know that I LOVED the Super Mario Bros. Super Show when I was a kid myself. And that's coming from a guy who didn't own an NES.

 

[cfehunter]

Wow I think I must of seen these as re-runs because I would've been about 2 when the show first aired.
Still there's a definate feeling of nostalgia there, good episode bob.
(captain N should be left burried and never spoken of again)

 

[Critterbot]

OH MAI GAWD I remember that show!! And also,that I loved it...lol.

 

[Cosplay Horatio]

Oh wow, Video Power! I remember watching that show as well as The Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Captain N. My favorite Video Power Episode is when Mr. Big gets trapped in the body of that other Monster Truck and keeps filling up on gasoline. They never released Video Power on DVD but there are some videos of it on Youtube. I still have the Zelda and Super Mario Bros. box sets at home.

 

[Xander_VJ]

I remember this show. It was one of the shows I watched on TV through satelite as a kid for learning English. I lived in Spain, and we got the signal from a UK station. Sky One, if I remember correctly. Of course, it was during the early 90's. That's how things were in Europe with this kind of stuff.

The Zelda cartoon was OK... if you were a kid back in the day and didn't take the show too seriously. But now it's difficult to do that when "The Legend of Zelda" is right now the most critically praised video game franchise in history AND it has the most critically praise video game of all time, period.

I liked it back in the day. Of course, I hadn't played the Zelda games yet, so I didn't have any memories raped by the overly gooffy sense of humor and unresolved sexual tension dynamics.

And BTW, the most capable and self-dependant Princess Zelda isn't the one from the show. It was from one of the games and, yes, she didn't had to disguise as a guy either. Being a pirate was enough. Just sayin'. lol

Also, unlike the Mario show, I discovered the Zelda show dubbed in Spanish. It arrived to Spain around the mid 90's. So the catch phrase was:

"¡DISCUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULPAME, PRINCESA!".

Extra points for being dubbed in Mexico, so the accent gave it a distinctive soap opera flavor. Still annoying as hell, though.

 

[Sabrestar]

Thank you Bob, for saying in a louder-than-mine voice exactly what I've been saying, to consider these shows in the context of the time (and from the perspective of a nine-year-old). Particularly the Zelda cartoon and the positives that you point out about it. (Also the episode featuring Doppelganger!Zelda, probably the hottest rendition of Zelda ever, at least in the mind of said nine-year-old.)

The Moonlighting comparison was actually pointed out by Nintendo Power of all places, in its preview of the show before it went on the air. Surprisingly advanced subject matter for the time, at least some times. Not every episode was that well written. (Sadly, the Zelda-wielding-a-sword episode went for a little too many "girls can't fight" cheap laughs than it should have. But it's still probably the best episode of the series.)

Similarly, the lone episode of the Mario version where the Princess is the one getting the power-up and doing the hero bit. And she looks good in blue.

On the weirdness of the live-action bits (which I didn't even like as a kid), they once attempted to answer the "what's Mario's last name" question by having them identify themselves in one episode as "Mario Mario" and "Luigi Mario". And someone paid way too much attention to continuity: in an early episode, the wall of their place gets busted in, and the half-destroyed wall remains that way for the rest of the entire series. (Or perhaps it wasn't continuity at all but cheap set design. Who knows.)

It has indeed aged horribly, though, and really can't be appreciated now. Probably for the best.

 

[Mr.Pandah]

The show did not age well at all. It gave me a headache when I purchased the first season on DVD. It's awful now as is The Legend of Zelda. Don't. bother.

 

[cathou]

oh wow, i really remember that show, it was pretty good at the time. I was maybe 9 or 10 when it first air, and it's one of the first show in english that was able to understand, not totally, but at least enough to understand the story.

 

[wooty]

Makes me wonder slightly why a modern anime studio hasn't taken on creating a Zelda series, sometimes seems like a match that would work.

 

[ProtoChimp]

I'll give them the full version Bob
<youtube=65uNCLBTje0>

Sorry but I've got a better rap, I mean genuinely good.

 

[Evilsanta]

I feel really old now... I remember this being on TV in Sweden I say again SWEDEN I think it was even dubbed to Swedish. (or maybe not...)

They did? One which channel?

OT: Well...That was some weird stuff. Though I never saw them as they didn't air in Sweden at that time...I think. Maybe it was aired on an other kids channel. I only had Cartoon Network and the occisional cartoon show on the mornings on the other channels.

 

[GeeksUtopia]

yeah they say that animations, movies, etc after a video game can be a hit and miss, just didn't know that it will be both at once