"Hey, pizonos, it's the SUPER MARIO BROS. SUPER SHOW!!"

The first of the NES shows was the Super Mario Bros Super Show. The weekday live action/animation program premiered in September of 1989 by DiC Animation and ran for nearly two years in syndication. Two popular Nintendo games, Super Mario Bros and the Legend of Zelda were represented here.

There were two parts to each episode. The first part is the live action part and it showed Mario (played by Captain Lou Albano) and Luigi (Danny Wells) living in their plumbing shop in Brooklyn and getting into all sorts of crazy mischef. Their roomates include their maintenance man Edison, who looks like Cousin Itt, and their pet Ratigatior, a half rat, half alligator sewer dweller. Almost all the skits featured a celebrity guest star popping in and causing crazy stuff to happen.

Mario and Luigi in their live action forms	The brothers in their animated forms, with their pal Toad.

The second part is the cartoon, which was based on both the Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 video games. Mario and Luigi were operating on a bathtub in Brooklyn when they accidentally go down the drain. The find themselves in the Mushroom Kingdom which is being conquered by King Koopa(Bowser). Here, they meet Princess Toadstool and Toad, and learn that Koopa has put a spell on her people, turning them into stone. Each episode show the foursome as they journey through the different areas of the Mushroom Kingdom foiling the plans of the evil King Koopa, hoping one day to free the people and find a way back to Brooklyn. Most of the episodes were movie parodies, with Koopa wearing a different outfit in each one. Interestingly the main villian of the second game, Wart, was never in any of the episodes, yet most of his minions managed to appear. Like most 1980s cartoons, Bowser would always escape from the good guys (which he did through the use of sub-space potions), despite the fact that they could easily catch him. Many of the episodes also featured popular tunes played during major scenes; these were edited out in later rebroadcasts.

The Princess Toadstool, who's in constant need of rescuing	The dastardly King Koopa was always up to no good

The SMB cartoons were shown on Monday through Thursdays only. On Fridays, a Legend of Zelda cartoon was shown instead. This episode follows the adventures of heroic Link and Princess Zelda as they battle the minions of the evil Ganon, ruler of the underworld. Ganon has the magicial Triforce of Power, while Zelda and her father, King Harkinian, have the equally powerful Triforce of Wisdom. Link constantly stops Ganon's evil plans for stealing the Triforce of Wisdom and taking over the kingdom of Hyrule, all while trying(unsuccessfully) to get a kiss from Zelda.

Princess Zelda and Link in one of their discussions	The wicked Ganon, hatching another sinister scheme.

In 1990, the show underwent a major change. The show's name was changed to "Club Mario", and while the Mario and Zelda cartoons were still shown, the live-action Mario segments were replaced with two completely different characters known as Tommy Treehuger (Chris Coombs) and Coemcee (Michael Rawlins). The two hosted the show from a rooftop and would introduce the Mario and Zelda cartoons while also showing weird video clips, including some odd skits and characters. They were occasionally joined by Tammy Treehuger (Tommy's twin sister played by Victoria Delandy) and Evil Eric (Coemcee's evil twin brother).

Many episodes from the show were released on video from Kid Klassics. These videos contained two, one, or no live-action segments, and featured the cartoon segments as they originally aired (meaning they included the chase songs that were edited out in later airings). On these videos, the "Super Mario Bros." theme wasn't included before the cartoon segment. The cartoon episodes were also rebroadcast as part of the program "Captain N and the Video Game Masters", with much of the music removed and replaced with generic tunes. Recently some Mario and Zelda cartoons were released on stand alone DVDs, but in March 2006 Shout Factory released a four disc set containing 24 Mario Bros. episodes, complete with the live-action segments intact. All the Zelda cartoons were also released in a three DVD set in November 2005, again from Shout Factory.

If you're interested in seeing some of the episodes online, you can find them at Random Acts Productions (www.randomactsproductions.com), which has some episodes for download in the Cartoons section. These files are not too big, making them easy to downlad, but they only offer a few shows at a time. Still check it out.

The hosts of Club Mario, Tommy Treehugger and Co- Emcee

VOICES:

Mario:                   Lou Albano
Luigi:                   Danny Wells
Princess Toadstool:      Jeanine Elias
Toad:                    John Stocker
King Koopa:              Harvey Atkin
Mushroom Mayor:          Harvey Atkin
Tryclyde/Sniffet:        Harvey Atkin
Mouser/Troopa:           John Stocker
Flurry/Beezo:            John Stocker
Shyguy:                  Jeanine Elias
Zelda:                   Cyndi Preston
Link:                    Jonathan Potts
Ganon:                   Len Carlson
Triforce of Wisdom:      Elizabeth Hanna
King Harkinian:          Colin Fox
Moblin:                  Len Carlson
Sprite:                  Paulina Gillis

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