Do The Mario!

October 24, 2009 1:24 PM

Hey Paisanos! It's the Super Mario Brother's Super Show! Hosted by Captain Lou Albano ( previously ) as Mario and Danny Wells as Lugi, the show boasted an unusual list of guest stars including Elvira, Magic Johnson, Erine Hudson, Moon Zappa, Regina Williams (with Capt. Lou in drag) , and in a meta-twist, Cyndi Lauper trying to find Captain Lou himself.

Extra SMBSS Goodness

The First Episode of the Legend of Zelda cartoon (1 2)

The First episode of Captain N: The Game Master ( 1 2 3)

posted by The Whelk (32 comments total)

I used to write for the Legend of Zelda cartoon; my brother did quite a few, and I contributed a couple of episodes and helped with some others.
posted by The otter lady at 1:32 PM on October 24, 2009 [18 favorites]

Then you had a disproportionate effect on my childhood obessions , The otter lady. Well done.

okay, now dish. What was it like?
posted by The Whelk at 1:34 PM on October 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

I loved this show and was so sad to hear of the passing of Captain Lou. That is so cool that a mefi member wrote some of the Zelda cartoons!
posted by theButterFly at 1:37 PM on October 24, 2009

Well, excuuuuse me, Princess!
posted by knave at 1:38 PM on October 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

So, The otter lady, were you responsible for the running "excuuuuse me, Princess" joke or was that an ad lib by an uncredited Steve Martin doing the voice?
posted by wendell at 2:04 PM on October 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

I loved this show, and actually liked Club Mario better than Captain Lou (to the point that a grammar school buddy and I still sometimes end our conversations with "peace, love, recycle").

I always thought it was curious that Janet Jackson swiped her lick for Black Cat from the Club Mario Theme - or maybe the other way around - and nobody got busted for it.
posted by AgentRocket at 2:05 PM on October 24, 2009

I guess I was about 15 or 16, seems like I was younger, but my brother, Bob, had been writing for DIC for awhile, and I think he jokingly suggested I “help” by writing a show, and he taught me the format and so forth. Because it was very low-key and rather silly, we had a good time. Several times my brother had to edit my work and take out the violence, though. I was particularly pleased, at the time, with the opening sequence in “The Moblins Are Revolting” where the two teams end up destroying one another while Link remains comfortably in bed. The “Excuuuse me, princess” was something that one of the producers or someone (I forget who) thought we should include in every episode as a running gag, along with Link always trying to get Zelda to kiss him.
posted by The otter lady at 2:08 PM on October 24, 2009 [27 favorites]

I guess I was about 15 or 16, seems like I was younger

I have a friend who adamantly refused to believe her Mom when she said that Nintendo was run by adults and not cool older kids. This was apparently a big fight for a 7 year old, so I think she'll appreciate this story.
posted by The Whelk at 2:23 PM on October 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

So you wrote for one of my favorite cartoons when you were a teenager?

Wow, Fate, thanks for making me born into this stinkin' life.
posted by Avenger at 2:25 PM on October 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

`The Moblins are Revolting' was totally my favorite episode. Best in-thread Metafilter cameo ever.
posted by shadow vector at 2:27 PM on October 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

The Moblins Are Revolting
posted by The Whelk at 2:46 PM on October 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

This is one of the shows I remember watching afterschool as a kid. I personally preferred the animation from the Super Mario 3 based cartoon, but I loved the live action bits on this.

Anyways, turns out they eventually thought it was better to replace Mario and Luigi as hosts with...these guys
posted by champthom at 3:30 PM on October 24, 2009

Loved this show so much when I was six. Had a few nightmares featuring Mouser that I remember distinctly.

"He who Koops and runs away, lives to Koop another day!"
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 4:06 PM on October 24, 2009

Hey Cyndi, I think I found Captain Lou over here!
posted by bunnytricks at 4:29 PM on October 24, 2009

I find this post offensive. By saying "Super Mario Brother's Super Show!" rather than the proper "Super Mario Brothers' Super Show!" you imply directly that only one of the Brothers was, in fact, Super. I'd like to know: which one is it, then? Who are you saying is not Super?

For shame.
posted by koeselitz at 4:33 PM on October 24, 2009

I haven't seen these things since I was a kid and I know its impossible, but King Koopa seriously sounds like he was voiced by Vin Diesel.
posted by Nyarlathotep at 5:42 PM on October 24, 2009

The Zelda cartoon was weird. It was much better than the Mario cartoons (any version), or that Captain N thing. It wasn't great mind you, but I am perfectly prepared to put that down to that obnoxious "Excuse me, princess" line.

Is it even possible for a 16-year-old to write a syndicated cartoon these days?
posted by JHarris at 6:21 PM on October 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

I loved both the Mario and Zelda shows. Whenever I saw VHS tapes of the Mario show in the store, my mom would let me get them.

I remember REALLY liking the shows based on Mario 3 and Super Mario World though because there wasn't any of the live action stuff. (As an adult the live action stuff gives the show a weird charm, but as a kid I just thought it was annoying.) I could never find the other Mario cartoons playing consistently anywhere, though.
posted by Nattie at 8:31 PM on October 24, 2009

I had forgotten how horrible and unfunny this show was (even for kids). Thanks for reminding me! Although my sister and I were (and still are) huge gamer geeks, we always hated this show.
posted by Eclipsante at 8:33 PM on October 24, 2009

Jesus. I had forgotten these even existed.

(How much TV did I watch when I was a kid, anyway? Things keep popping up that I'd completely forgotten about, but that, once my memory is jogged, I vividly remember.)
posted by ocherdraco at 9:25 PM on October 24, 2009

Watching the first part of the first Zelda cartoon, something occurs to me.

Link simply refuses to use that sword for what its there for. Slicing monsters to death. Any devoted Zelda fan, while playing one of the games, has no hesitation in hacking moblins, usually pressing the attack button a few more times than necessary just to here that satisfying swish swish swish swish noise a few times after the explosion sound that signifies an enemies death. Cartoon Link, however, simply dodges the Moblins attacks, missing several opportunities to slice one of the fuckers arms or head off, and getting hurt in the process.

And then eventually he decides to use the sword to shoot the Moblins dead. Obviously shooting monsters dead is deemed better than hacking monsters dead in kids cartoons. But how is this possible? In the game, you can't use the shooting power of the Master Sword unless you have full life. Link took some hits; therefore this isn't possible.

Then again, computer Link never said "Excuuuuuuuuuuse me Princess" so I guess some differences between the source material and the toy-selling cartoon tie-in are bound to happen...
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:29 PM on October 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

We couldn't have Link actually HACK monsters with a SWORD, god no!! That was VIOLENT. What if children decided to take Mom's cleaver and play "Zelda" with baby brother? But shooting beams of pretty light, that made the monsters go poof, that was OK. You'll notice that, for example, He-Man also never hacks with his sword. And even in GI Joe, every plane that got blown up had parachutes come out safely. (I think it was probably someone's job to know what the normal operating crew for each vehicle was, so as to get the requisite number of parachutes out.) As I said, I had a couple of scripts 'edited' for violence; smashing monsters under a falling bookcase, for example, was a no-no. Also for some reason we were forbidden to show or mention sugar.
posted by The otter lady at 9:41 PM on October 24, 2009 [2 favorites]

The otter lady: "We couldn't have Link actually HACK monsters with a SWORD, god no!! That was VIOLENT. What if children decided to take Mom's cleaver and play "Zelda" with baby brother? But shooting beams of pretty light, that made the monsters go poof, that was OK. "

That's all well and good and understandable, but did the censors ever consider what might happen if Mom just so happened to be a Weapons Development Engineer or Crazy Mad Scientist who had invented a sword that killed things with beams of pretty light? What would happen to baby brother then? Eh? EH???

The otter lady: "You'll notice that, for example, He-Man also never hacks with his sword."

Yeah but given he's The Most Powerful Man In The Universe, a dude who can lift Castle Grayskull with his bare hands alone, I always thought He-Man must have thought the need for a sword was fiarly superfluous, despite the fact that he needs it to become He-Man in the first place.
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:19 PM on October 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

I always noticed that on GI Joe, no one ever actually got hit with a laser blast. It was always their vehicles, and they had always ejected well before the explosion. My dad blew my mind one time by telling me "each one of those planes costs 30 million dollars."

There was an episode where GI Joe are trapped in a funhouse run by Cobra and Bazooka gets hit in the (helmeted) head with a laser. The degree of realism in that episode nearly blew my mind. I couldn't believe one of them had FINALLY aimed their guns correctly.

As for the Super Mario Bros. Super Show...well, as a kid, there were a ton of shows and movies that I loved that I have not enjoyed nearly as much when I've tried to revisit them as adults. And then there were those shows and movies that even as a kid I knew were being written by people who didn't care if they hewed to the story developed by the games that I loved and played obsessively. No disrespect, Otter Lady, but SMBSS definitely falls into the latter camp. However, I did have one on tape and remember finding it hilarious if you fast forwarded through Captain Lou "Doing the Mario!" in the credits.
posted by orville sash at 10:54 PM on October 24, 2009

Even my mom got to help write an episode. "Fairies In The Spring" was hers, although they misspelled her name as "Marsha".

And I would make some comment about Prince Adam needing to brandish his sword a bit in order to feel manly enough to strip down to a posing pouch and a metal breastplate, but that kind of thing is totally immature and oh my god you should have seen some of the filthy things the storyboard guys would draw when they got bored.
posted by The otter lady at 10:57 PM on October 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

no worries Orville. Honestly I wasn't even aware there WAS much of a story to the game at the time. I didn't even own a Nintendo; never played the game. I just was told to go from the "Bible" which was about 20 pages of rough text explaining the characters and what we could and couldn't do.
posted by The otter lady at 11:01 PM on October 24, 2009

Ah! So my instincts were correct! It's still great to have you come into the thread and talk about this stuff. It's always interesting to get a behind the scenes perspective from the adolescent, non-gamer writers of the Super Mario Brothers' Super Show(!!!) It blows my mind a bit.
posted by orville sash at 11:15 PM on October 24, 2009

Honestly I wasn't even aware there WAS much of a story to the game at the time.

No, you're bang on. The Zelda games have never really had a good, fleshed out story. It's almost always some variation on "you need to defeat Ganon, but you need to go through a bunch of temples and solve a bunch of puzzles first for some reason. Also, sometimes you have a fairy who follows you and annoys the hell out of you with pages of dialog you can't skip and sometimes you get to play a flute". Don't get me wrong, I love the Zelda games, but it's a pretty shallow series story-wise and always has been.

In conclusion, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for SNES would have been a thousand times better if Link actually had dialogue, and if the only thing he said was "Well, EXCUUUUUSE ME, Princess!" as often as possible.
posted by threetoed at 2:07 AM on October 25, 2009

Oh God I actually wrote a Zelda-Movie summary (AND example scene) back when I was less employed.
posted by The Whelk at 8:52 AM on October 25, 2009

I want to say "Oh God" also, but as a precursor to saying that I couldn't stand the Zelda cartoon. What is it with TV/movie adaptations that compel producers and writers to completely butcher the source material? The live action Street Fighter movie is another example.

I'm sure none of the people who spent hours playing the Zelda games ever envisioned him as a wiseass teen slacker who wanted to get it on with the princess.

And I never gave much thought about whether He-Man actually used his sword in combat, but I'd guess that if he did, it'd probably have an effect on the victim that resembled a club more than a sword. A couple of the Ninja Turtles had swords and knives too.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 6:04 PM on October 25, 2009

Link simply refuses to use that sword for what its there for. Slicing monsters to death.

This was even worse in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. The writers must have been exhausted from the contortions they had to go to make sure a weapon never hit flesh. Making the Foot all robots helped, but they couldn't avoid living enemies completely. And so, they chopped down chandeliers to drop them onto foes, threw their weapons at crucial levers to make doors close in their faces, and performed many other feats of logistical ninjutsu in the pursuit of using their weapons, but not directly.
posted by ignignokt at 7:41 PM on October 25, 2009

I prefer this Legend of Zelda inspired work.
posted by heathkit at 10:02 PM on October 26, 2009