This week we’re doing a true Saturday morning cartoon, which is to say, it actually broadcast on Saturday mornings in 1983.
“Saturday Supercade” varied episode segments; produced for television by Ruby-Spears; starring Peter Cullen, Soupy Sales, Bob Sarlatte, and Billy Bowles.
“Saturday Supercade” ran for two seasons producing a total of 97 episodes. Each episode consisted of smaller segments of various popular arcade games of the time including “Frogger,” “Donkey Kong,” “Q*Bert,” “Pitfall!” and more. Not to mention cameos from Mario himself.
For your viewing pleasure I’ve compiled a few random segments, presented in no particular order, some of them better than others.
“Frogger”
The need to adapt this into a series makes about as much sense as turning Battleship into a movie. The game consists entirely of a frog jumping first across a street, and then across a river. There are no villains to speak of, except maybe cars and alligators. At least Mario has a rich cast of characters and a loose motive to pull from. Plumber saves princess from evil dragon turtle is at least the beginning of a story, frog hops across street, is not. But that didn’t stop them, they filled in a story wherein Frogger (a strange name for a frog) is a reporter/detective. It’s sort of like “Scooby-Doo” except Shaggy is the main character and also he’s a frog.
Unfortunately this is the only clip of the show I could find, except for the theme song, and it’s pretty obviously incomplete. Since the show isn’t available for streaming or physical sale anywhere at the moment, this is all you get to see unless you’ve got some VHS tapes stashed somewhere.
“Donkey Kong”
This show has a strange feel to it as well. When I was a kid and I played “Donkey Kong” I was always under the impression that Mario was the hero and DK the villains. After all, you play as Mario (or Jumpman, depending on how old you are or how big of an ass you are), dodging obstacles, climbing higher, all in the service of saving Pauline from a giant, presumably dangerous, ape.
PART ONE
PART TWO
But in the show it seems pretty clear that DK is the hero. He’s not very smart but he accidentally bumbles his way into helping people. He doesn’t come off as all together or badass, just sort of stupid with a shallow inclination toward good, like he isn’t really thinking about what he’s doing.
Meanwhile Mario and Pauline follow him just trying to mess up his day. All DK is trying to do is bumble through his day accidentally saving a few dozen people and Mario and the Pauline just can’t let him alone. They even try to stop his wedding. The only explanation is that despite the suggestions made by all of the games at the time, Mario and Pauline are the villains of this show. Mario is like a drunk once-was obsessed with capturing an ape, damn the consequences. Even after DK saves the day (again!) Mario is nipping at his heels in seconds, literally saying “You’ve done your good deed and now you’re mine!”
What a dick.
The last segment I have fore you today is…
“Q*Bert.”
Of the three franchises, “Q*Bert” is probably the least known, so good thing it’s the best cartoon. I’m not sure exactly what it is that pulls this one together. Maybe it’s these particular characters work with this style of animation or maybe it’s just that they’re more interesting, I don’t know. But something about it puts it above the other two series. It’s probably just that a Q*bie (I’ve decided the species Q*Bert belongs to must have been called Q*bies) looks pretty creepy with a black cloak over its snout. Like a droopy crow or something.