Part 1: Nintendo Cartoons of the late '80s
As anyone can tell you, the '80s were a haven for cartoons. Most of them were cheesy, but they were deliciously cheesy and enjoyable. There was GI Joe, Jem and the Holograms, Heman, Transformers, Robotech, and a ton of others to boot. But this is getting off subject as there were three main Nintendo cartoon shows during the late '80s. Nintendo knew how to market their games as things rather than actual games. The characters became icons and as we all know icons become extremely marketable. Hell, they even had Nintendo cereal and Mario cases for your pair of glasses. The shows actually managed to have a little staying power, except for Legend of Zelda, but no big loss there. The shows weren't really coherent, throwing random storylines at you out of nowhere, but it was still good, clean fun. Here we go.
The writers somehow managed to fit a song into each episode that was accompanied by some kind of chase sequence. The songs were forgettable and on top of that annoying as hell considering the voices that were singing it. During the show, there'd be a live-action segment featuring '80s wrestler Captain Lou Albano and some other guy. 'Cause as we all know Albano looks JUST like Mario. Personally, the both of them were looking pretty weathered and beaten, but I guess that's what they were going for. I'm not sure if he wrestled any of the guests (usually some miscellaneous '80s celebrity), but he should've.
I don't remember much of the live-action segments, probably because like most other kids at the time I wanted them to get back to the cartoons. Most of the characters from the games were in the show, but the main villains were King Koopa and the Koopa Kids. The Kids for some reason didn't keep their original names, for example Wendy was called Cutey-Pie in the show. Super Show eventually changed into Super Mario Bros. 3, but the change was merely superficial and nothing was really different, save for the fact that the brothers would occasionally use power-ups from the game like the raccoon tail and frog suit. Then as the early/mid '90s approached, the show was again changed to Super Mario World.
In Super Mario World, the cast moved into a prehistoric realm of the Mushroom Kingdom, with dinosaurs and cavemen, naturally. Yoshi and some cavekid were the only real additions to the cast of characters. Yoshi's catch phrase was "Yoshi hungry!" or something equally dumb and obnoxious. Whenever the writers couldn't think of an original episode, they'd resort to having Yoshi piss off Mario and Luigi by eating something important and then getting kidnapped (not necessarily in that order). The cavekid wasn't much better and talked in a really stupid little-kiddy voice.
By this time, the charisma of the show had worn off for me and probably the rest of the cartoon-viewing public, so it soon got the axe. Super Mario World was the last straw. Not only had they repeatedly recycled plotlines, they also added two of the most irritating and unlikeable characters I've ever seen. They're just as bad as Paulie Shore. Plus the fact that the show had moved to The Family Channel (aka Channel 19, aka Channel Bore-The-Tits-Off-Everyone) didn't help much either. Thus, a dynasty was brought to an end.
Link and Zelda were always at each other's throat as a sort of running gag in the show, but it was never funny. I guess the Zelda cartoon's real problem was that it just wasn't like the video game, which is the biggest mistake you could ever make. The storylines would always have Gannon disguised as something or other, fool Link and/or Zelda, and then finally they all figure out and take back what he stole. Another thing that hurt the show was that they were drawn as the same size as a hobbit. Zelda and Link looked like tiny midgets compared to everything else. By this time, kids had grown tired of the irritating characters and just decided to stick with Mario and Captain N.
To be honest, Kevin looks better as a cartoon than he did in the live-action opening, not to mention he looks a few feet taller. In my opinion, they didn't really make the video game teams of good and bad guys even. There was Mother Brain but no Samus Aran, and there was King Hippo but no Little Mac. For the good guys, there was Megaman, Simon Belmont, and Kid Icarus. For the bad guys, there was Mother Brain, Dr. Wily, Eggplant Wizard, Dracula, and King Hippo. Video Game Land was divided into different areas according to each game, like Mega Land, Castlevania Land, and so forth. All the video game characters were horribly deformed and beared little to no resemblance to their actual video game forms.
Simon Belmont wasn't dressed in barbarian duds and came from the distant past, but was instead a modern adventurer/vampire hunter that was completely self-absorbed and constantly admiring himself in his mirror. Many times he bordered on being an asshole on the same level as one of the bad guys, even though he usually did the right thing in the end. He also had a strong disdain for Kevin when it came to Princess Lana, but of course Princess Lana always favored Kevin. Simon's interest in Lana wasn't really that serious, but in my opinion he probably only wanted her to be his fuckbuddy. Another difference was that Megaman's creator Dr. Light, was instead called "Dr. Wright."
Kevin's belt gave him several game-based powers like pause, jump, and so on and so forth. He even had a blaster. There was also something of a team dynamic going on with each of the characters with one of them usually getting pissed off, leaving the team, and then finally getting re-accepted into the team. But Captain N's popularity was short-lived by its second season in 1990. Captain N then became a part of the Mario cartoon and its running time was reduced to a grand total of ten minutes. To add insult to injury, different cartoonists were brought in and the animation suffered immensely. Nobody liked it, and the show soon bit the bullet.