The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
Genre	Animated series, Adventure, Comedy
Starring	Lou Albano Danny Wells
Voices of	Lou Albano Danny Wells Jeannie Elias John Stocker Harvey Atkin Cyndy Preston Jonathan Potts Len Carlson Colin Fox Allen Stewart-Coates Elizabeth Hanna Paulina Gillis
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	65 (52 Mario, 13 Zelda) (List of episodes)
Broadcast
Original channel	first-run syndication
Original run	September 4, 1989 – December 4, 1989
Chronology
Followed by	Captain N & the Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! was the first American TV series based on the Super Mario Bros. NES series of video games. It was originally broadcast via first-run syndication to mostly independent TV stations from September 4, 1989 to December 4, 1989, repeating episodes and Club Mario re-edited episodes until September 6, 1991. Reruns then aired on The Family Channel in the United States from September 23, 1991^[1] to August 26, 1994.^[2] The show was produced by DiC Entertainment and was distributed for syndicated television by Viacom Enterprises.

Contents 1 Format 1.1 Live-Action Segment Guest Stars 1.2 The Super Mario Bros. animated segments 1.3 The Legend of Zelda animated series 2 Club Mario 3 Featured Songs 4 Super Mario Bros. cast 4.1 Legend of Zelda cast 5 Home Video Releases 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Format

[edit] Live-Action Segment Guest Stars

The first and last parts of each episode were live-action segments which showed Mario (played by "Captain" Lou Albano) and Luigi (Danny Wells) living in Brooklyn, where they would often be visited by celebrity guest stars. These parts were taped before a live studio audience. Some of them were popular TV stars, such as Nedra Volz, Norman Fell, Donna Douglas, Eve Plumb, Vanna White, Jim Lange, Danica McKellar, Nicole Eggert, Clare Carey and Brian Bonsall or professional athletes such as Lyle Alzado, Magic Johnson, Roddy Piper and Sgt. Slaughter. Occasionally, the main actors would be playing guest stars themselves, forcing their regular characters to leave when it came time for their other characters to show up. The main characters also regularly played female versions of themselves, Marianna (Mario and Luigi's mother) and Luigianna (their aunt), and also 2 hillbilly cousins, named Mario Joe and Luigi Bob. In the fifth episode, Ernie Hudson appeared as a parody of his Ghostbusters persona, a Slimebuster, using his own name rather than Winston Zeddemore.

[edit] The Super Mario Bros. animated segments

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After a brief introduction of the sitcom segment of the show, a commercial would air and a ten-to-13 minute cartoon ^[3] broadcast next, featuring characters and situations based upon the NES Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2, as well as several sound effects and music numbers of the two games. The characters featured therein would be Mario, Luigi, Toad and Princess Toadstool defending the Mushroom Kingdom from the reptilian villain King Koopa, often in a movie or pop-culture parody. Getting into the spirit of these parodies, Koopa often used alter egos fitting the current theme. Wart, the main antagonist of the second game, was never in any of the episodes, yet most of his minions appeared in the show.

The cartoon series was meant to take place after the events and situations of the Super Mario Bros. game when the Princess was rescued, with borrowed elements, situations, concepts, and characters from Super Mario Bros.. The theme song for the cartoon segments revealed that the Mario Brothers were accidentally warped into the Mushroom Kingdom while working on a bathtub drain in Brooklyn, New York. Upon their appearance, the Mario Brothers accidentally defeated Koopa's army and saved the Princess and stopped Koopa's plan to rule Mushroom Land/Mushroom Kingdom. This terminology is noted by many gamers^[who?] as canon^{[citation needed]}. The Mario Brothers and Toad have to protect the Princess, as they believed she had the power to save Mushroom Land from Koopa and send the Mario Bros. back to Brooklyn.^{[citation needed]} Every episode starts with Mario doing his "Plumber's Log," similar, yet different to the Captain's Log from Star Trek.

[edit] The Legend of Zelda animated series

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! cartoon was shown from Mondays through Thursdays, while On Fridays, The Legend of Zelda animated series would air as a stand-in on the same timeslot utilizing the same opening and closing scenarios, as well as featuring live-action segments of its preceding days show.^{[citation needed]} The series was based on The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link NES video games, in which the elf-like hero Link and Princess Zelda battled against the forces of the evil wizard Ganon. Scenes from each episode of the show were shown during the live-action segments on the preceding Super Mario Bros. Super Show! daily-week broadcast as sneak peeks. The Zelda cartoons, however, only lasted for a total of 13 episodes, which ended nearly as its preceding Super Mario Bros. Super Show! final daily-week air, though the characters of Link and Zelda, along with their respective voice actors (Jonathan Potts and Cynthia Preston), were later featured as crossovers within episodes of Captain N: The Game Master, another animated series based on NES video games, also produced by DiC Entertainment around the same period, airing on NBC as part of the Saturday morning cartoon lineup.

[edit] Club Mario

During the summer of 1990, Club Mario^[4] replaced the Mario Brothers live-action segments. This featured "extreme" Mario-obsessed teenagers (Chris Coombs, Michael Rawlins, and Victoria Delany) goofing around, and in at least one episode, running around the DiC studios and harassing Andy Heyward. Mr. Coombs and Miss Delany played siblings Tommy and Tammy Treehugger, respectively. An additional added segment was a one-to-two-minute viewing of Space Scout Theate, hosted by Princess Centauri, a green alien woman, which was edited from the sci-fi TV series, Photon.

Cast of Club Mario;

• Chris Coombs as Tommy Treehugger
• Michael Anthony Rawlins as Co-MC
• Michael Anthony Rawlins as Evil Eric
• Kurt Weldon as Dr. Know-It-All
• Victoria Delaney as Tammy Treehugger
• Jeff Rose as The Big Kid
• James Abbott as The Band
• Shanti Kahn as Princess Centauri

[edit] Featured Songs

At some point in the cartoon segments, a song would be played to go along with the scene. These were usually notable singles from artists and groups such as The Trashmen, The Beach Boys, Kenny Loggins, Los Lobos, Carl Douglas, Billy Idol, The Bangles, Johnny Rivers, The Fat Boys, and other famous singers, songwriters, and musical artists of the era. When the program was either re-broadcast or re-releases within a home medium such as videotape or DVD, the songs weren't usually included, without rare exceptions or mistakes of the version authored.

[edit] Super Mario Bros. cast

• "Captain" Lou Albano as Mario
• Danny Wells as Luigi
• Jeannie Elias as Princess Toadstool (most episodes), Birdo, and Shy Guy
• John Stocker as Toad, Koopa Troopa, Mouser, Beezo, and Flurry
• Harvey Atkin as Bowser Koopa, Tryclyde and Snifit

[edit] Legend of Zelda cast

• Cyndy Preston as Princess Zelda
• Jonathan Potts as Link
• Len Carlson as Ganon, Goriya, Gleeok, Moblin, Stalfos
• Colin Fox as King Harkinian
• Allen Stewart-Coates as The Triforce of Power
• Elizabeth Hanna as The Triforce of Wisdom
• Paulina Gillis as Spryte, Sing

[edit] Home Video Releases

• From 1989 to 1991, Kids Klassics released NTSC and PAL VHS videos of the show. These videos contained two, one, or no live-action segments, and are the only commercially available versions (in the US and Australia) of the episodes to feature the cartoon segments as they were originally produced and aired (meaning they included the featured songs that were edited out in later airings). On these videos, the "Super Mario Bros." theme was not included before the cartoon segment. Later, The VHS Companies Switched from Kids Klassics to GoodTimes Home Video in 1991 and started their first release "Hooded Robin Plus Other Stories".
• The animated episode "Koopa Klaus" and the live-action segment "Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush" were featured, along with Super Mario World's "The Night Before Cave Christmas" on the 1996 VHS release Super Mario Bros. Super Christmas Adventures!
• The show made its DVD debut in February 2002 with the single-disc release Mario's Greatest Movie Moments, which combined the adjacent new VHS releases Mario's Action Adventures and Mario's Monster Madness. This DVD features a bonus episode only viewable after correctly answering questions in an interactive quiz. The episode, "The Adventures of Sherlock Mario", also features the final segment of the accompanying live-action segment, "Plumbers of the Year", complete with a preview for the next episode of "The Legend of Zelda" and the ending credits. Strangely, the first half of "Plumbers of the Year" is not shown; also, there is a strange glitch in the middle of the animated segment that causes the video to go back to the scene following the commercial fadeout, and the audio for speaking roles shifted to the left side. This was corrected later in the release of the US Volume 1 DVD set.
• Shortly after the show began its run on Yahooligans! TV, another single-disc release was put out, titled Mario Mania! and featuring the first week's worth of episodes. The DVD used the same prints that had been featured on the Yahooligans! website, and as a result did not include the Legend of Zelda previews for reasons unexplained.
• Shout! Factory released two four-disc volumes of the show in 2006 which featured the episodes with the Zelda previews, with the exception of King Mario of Cramalo, and custom-made commercial indents reinstated, but with the featured songs still replaced. For the second volume four of the animated episodes are presented as "bonus episodes" without any of the sitcom segments. With the exception of the four "bonus" episodes, the other episodes were arranged in production, not broadcast, order.
• Since 2008, DIC Entertainment Inc. and Nintendo of America, Inc. have allowed distribution and sale of the episodes via the Apple iTunes Store of both the Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, Season One, and selected episodes of The Legend of Zelda cartoons.

DVD Name	Ep #	Release Date	Additional Information
Volume 1	24	March 28, 2006	New interviews with Captain Lou Albano (Mario) Original art gallery Storyboard-to-Screen: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show Opening Title Sequence
Volume 2	24	October 31, 2006	4 Bonus Animated Episodes "Meeting Mario: A Fan's Tale" Featurette Super Mario Bros. Fan Costume Gallery The Worlds of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! Concept Art Galleries Interactive Tour Of The Mario Bros. Plumbing

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• NCircle Entertainment: Buy Super Mario Bros. Super Show on DVD
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! in Jump The Shark
• Do The Mario!
• A Look at Several Episodes
• Retrojunk Entry
• Club Mario Segments for "The Ten Koopmandments"
• Club Mario Segments for "Koopas are Coming! Koopas are Coming!"
• Club Mario Segments for "The Trojan Koopa"
• Club Mario Segments for "Sting a Stinger"
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! at the Internet Movie Database
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! at TV.com

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