The Charge

Be sure to take your frog suit!

Opening Statement

Everyone thought King Koopa had left the Mushroom Kingdom. And then, his Doom Ship attacked! King Koopa was back, with the greatest danger ever known: his Koopa Kids!

Facts of the Case

In 1990, Nintendo's fame was not yet about clubbing family members with motion-sensing remotes. Thanks to its wildly successful NES console, the Japanese company all but owned the video game market. While legions of screaming kids made sure the popular characters were household names, none were better known than legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto's jumping plumber pair: the Super Mario Bros.

Following the winter release of the smash hit third game in the Super Mario series, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 debuted in the fall of 1990, airing alongside Captain N: The Game Master, as the second half of Nintendo's hour-long NBC Saturday morning cartoon block. It expanded the Bros.' animated universe by incorporating characters and settings from the new game—most notably King Koopa's seven nasty kids. More than 17 years after Super Mario Bros. 3's release, it regularly lands on video game critics' "top ten" lists. Does the animated series fare as well?

There are 13 episodes, each divided into two shorter storylines:

Disc One
• "Sneaky Lying Cheating Giant Ninja Koopas"/"Reptiles In The Rose Garden"
The series opener features a Ninja wand, a Poodle wand, and George and Barbara Bush.
"Help! The President can't swim!"

• "Reign Storm"/"Toddler Terrors of Time Travel"
Learning can be fun: Cutter the beach bum teaches Princess Toadstool to surf, and Mario finds out babies come from Brooklyn.
"Quick! Crawl after me!"

• "Mind Your Mummy Mommy, Mario"/The Beauty of Kootie"
A Desert Land double-feature: Mario gets wrapped up in a case of mistaken identity, and the Koopa kids are bubbling crude.
"AAAAHHH! I've been kissed by a plumber!"

• "A Toadally Magical Adventure"/"Misadventures In Babysitting"
Tempted by a magic wand, Toad goes on a wild ride; Mario and Luigi find out babysitting can be tougher than overcooked lasagna.
"From now on, I'm leaving magic to the experts."

• "Oh, Brother!"/"Misadventure Of Mighty Plumber"
This two-fer finds our heroes all wet: fed up with his brother on a rainy day, Luigi storms out of the house, and the Mario Bros. are in a fix when TV hero Mighty Plumber gets zapped into the Mushroom Kingdom.
"Eenie, meenie, miney, Mario."

• "Princess Toadstool For President"/"Never Koop A Koopa"
An impromptu election between the Princess and King Koopa raises an important question: should mushrooms be allowed to vote? Oh, and never look a gift Koopa in the mouth.
"I can turn it into a retirement home for elderly mushrooms."

• "Dadzilla"/"Tag Team Trouble"
Just in time for summer, two blockbusters: convinced King Koopa's not their real dad, two Koopa Kids seek their paternal fortunes on the set of the latest "Madzilla" movie; and the Mario Bros. enter a tag team wrestling tourney to save the Mushroom Kingdom orphanage.
"Outta my lap plumber, or I'll charge ya rent!"

Disc Two
• "Do The Koopa"/"Kootie Pie Rocks"
Did someone yell "Freebird"? First, Mario's world is rocked by the legendary Doom Dancer Music Box, then Kootie Pie Koopa kidnaps sync-meisters Milli Vanilli. Seriously!
"If we don't change those accountants back to Milli Vanilli, I'll never hear my favorite music again!"

• "Crimes R Us"/"Life's Ruff"
It's a dog's life: Koopa enlists real world baddie Crimewave Clyde to teach his Koopalings about treachery, and Luigi's got fleas after meeting the wrong end of a poochifying Koopa wand.
"I'm a super criminal, not an animal trainer!"

• "Up, Up And A Koopa"/"7 Continents For 7 Koopas"
King Koopas do the darndest things: after his plan to levitate the population of Mushroom Kingdom up to Sky Land gets carried away, he tries taking over the real world by sending each Koopa Kid to conquer a different continent. Who gets Antarctica?
"Someone must have repealed the law of gravity."

• "Mush-Rumors"/"The Ugly Mermaid"
When a real world family accidentally drives through a warp pipe on their way to Wild Waldo's One-of-a-kind Amusement Park, the Mushroom Kingdom is gripped by fear of an alien invasion, and during Koopa's attack on Mertropolis, Mario gets saved by a marriage-minded mermaid.
"Wait, you can't do this! I belong to the auto club!"

• "True Colors"/"Recycled Koopa"
It's "divide and conquer" as Koopa and the kids paint half the Mushroom Kingdom's citizens blue and the other half red, and Spring cleaning turns toxic as Koopa's garbage seeps into the real world, turning ordinary people into reptile zombies.
"Hey! My old plumber's periscope!"

• "The Venice Menace"/"Super Koopa"
Mario's European vacation: A pizza-delivering gondolier's pleas for the Mario Bros. to protect Venice from Koopa's Doom Ship uncovers a Mario-sized mystery, and can our plumber heroes save Paris from Koopa and a magic pendant that gives him Mario and Luigi's powers?
"Filet mignon! We are being dive-bombed by a live reptile raccoon!"

The Evidence

Let's face it: not only are video games more fun to play than to watch, the stories don't usually make much sense. I figure that's why most video game adaptations bear only a loose resemblance to their source material. The result? Some rather infamous "creative" decisions, like the re-imagining of Simon Belmont as a vain pretty boy in Captain N, and Dennis Hopper's ridiculous dino-turn as King Koopa in the Super Mario Bros movie.

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, on the other hand, is a bizarre experiment in what happens if you make the rules of a video game—in this case, Super Mario Bros. 3—the basis for storytelling. At times it feels like an animated instruction manual: Mario and Luigi need to break blocks to find power leaves that turn them into flying raccoons, and if they get touched by an enemy they lose their "super" powers. Too much for you? Hey, the game's about high-jumping plumbers who need mushrooms to grow large enough to stomp winged turtles. The writers manage to shoehorn most of the game's power-ups into the series, though they favor the most useful: flying "raccoon power" leaves, flame-throwing fire flowers, and swim-enhancing frog suits. Nothing underscores the Super Mario games' weirdness like seeing these powers in action—wait 'til you see them use the Karoobi Boot; it's a giant boot!

The characters are no less colorful. The Koopa Kids' introduction in Super Mario Bros. 3 saves King Koopa from being the show's only heavy. Most episodes center around Koopa and one or more of his kids hatching a plan befitting their particular talents: Kooky the inventor; Bully the muscle; Cheatsy the conniver; Kootie Pie the token spoiled girl; twins Hip and Hop; and Big Mouth the…well…can you guess? For some odd reason, though, the koopalings' names differ from their video game counterparts—I guess they thought "Kootie Pie" was more evocative than "Wendy." On the other side, the heroes are less interesting: Mario and Luigi are so Italian they practically ooze pasta sauce; poor Toad is the typical "little guy"; and Princess Toadstool rocks early-'90s Girl Power. The supporting cast includes just about every enemy from the game, from Paragoombas, Bloopers, and Hammer Bros. (here called "Sledge Bros."), to fire-breathing ! Piranha Plants, Chain Chomps, and Dry Bones. As with the power-ups, enemy variety feels like fan service.

Most episodes take place in one of Super Mario Bros. 3's eight new "lands" (including Desert Land, Dark Land, and Pipe Land), the corresponding 8-bit overworld map appearing under every title screen except "Kootie Pie Rocks" (apparently there's no "Milli Vanilli Land"). Some of the best episodes, though, take place in the "real world." Thanks to handy warp pipes, the Koopas have no problem wreaking havoc in Paris, Venice, Brooklyn, Hollywood, and (in possibly the strangest episode) Washington D.C.

Variety is The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3's saving grace. Though the stories follow a basic pattern, the absurdly constructed scenarios—often involving impossible inventions or extensive use of magic—require the deus-est of ex machinas for resolution: Someone always manages to find a magic wand or situation-specific machine after about 11 minutes. If you can leave logic at the nearest warp pipe, though, there's fun to be had. Most of the show's humor is aimed at kids, but they throw in the occasional adult reference ("7 Continents for 7 Koopas" makes a joke based on the Marcel Duchamp painting Nude Descending a Staricase, No.2, and "The Venice Menace" name-drops both Annette Funicello and Federico Fellini).

As for the DVD set, it's clear no one broke the bank. The packaging, while colorful and attractive, is minimal (slimline cases without booklets). The episodes are split over two discs, with a third containing a disappointing slate of extras. These bonus features, for some reason called a "Writers Bible," include limited concept art and character profiles. "The Back Story" and "The Series" are little more than recaps of the opening intro and plotline generalities—neither offers anything new if you actually watched the episodes. The most interesting feature is a collection of original songs—performed by the Koopa Kids' voices actors—which appear near the end of almost every episode. These bizarre tunes have titles like "My Karoobi," and "The Frog," which features the lyrics "Do the Frog/Croak croak croak/Do the Frog/It's no joke/When you think you're gonna sink/It's more easy than you think." Heady stuff.
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The video quality is about as good as can be expected of a cartoon from 1990, with plenty of scratches and dust (I didn't find them distracting), and colors which are bright, if occasionally uneven. The audio has about the same quality, but with enough catchy music and sound effects from the game to please fans. The only serious problem I encountered was in the final episode, where the sound and picture dropped out at least twice. A potentially more serious problem (for Milli Vanilli fans, at least) is Shout! Factory either couldn't afford, or didn't care to pursue, the rights to include the German pop stars' original music in "Kootie Pie Rocks," replacing "Girl You Know It's True" with generic '90s synth rock. I didn't mind.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Reviewing the release of an animated kids show from nearly twenty years ago is no easy task. I can't help feeling no matter what I write about The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Complete Series, I'm the wrong person to write it. I probably enjoyed The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 when I was a kid (I know I played the game). Now, though, I'm just a stuffy old grown-up. It'd be no use recommending it to modern kids, though—they wouldn't know a Koopa from a hole in the ground. That's the problem with crossing the TV-on-DVD phenomenon with childhood nostalgia: shows that aren't as good as you remember them get gussied up and shoveled out as box sets marketed to grown-ups they weren't written for.

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Complete Series is the latest in a recent outpouring of Nintendo-related re-releases, from ad-movie The Wizard, to animated series Captain N:The Game Master, The Legend of Zelda, and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. I think the timing has a lot to do with the zeitgeist of Nintendo's wand-waving Wii console. Not only has the hard-to-find, easy-to-use machine brought lapsed video game players back into the fold, its Virtual Console service lets users (legally) download and play retro games from Nintendo's heyday. From a cold, marketing perspective, there's never been a better time to capitalize on gamer nostalgia.

Closing Statement

There's a lot to like about the variety, absurdity, and authenticity of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Complete Series. As adult entertainment it's less than super, but as a slice of early-'90s kid culture, it's hard not to have fun. Just make sure you leave your grown-up expectations back in the real world.

The Verdict

Not-a Guilty. Now get the heck outta here. Those Mushrooms need you!

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