And you thought the humor in the games was silly.

I got Super Mario Bros Super show vol 1 last summer when I found it for 20 dollars. Now there was a DVD released a few years ago called Mario Mania which had the first 5 episodes of the show. Dic was going to release other DVD’s with more episodes but a deal with Yahoo kind of killed that. Now that the Yahoo deal is over big box sets is the way their distributing the show.

The show.
If you don’t know what the Super Mario Bros Super Show is it was a show that Dic and Nintendo of America made in 1989 to capitalize the success off of Super Mario Bros. Now this was during the time Nintendo revitalize the industry, owned a bigger share of the industry then Sony does now, and Mario was more recognize then Mickey Mouse.

The shows aired 5 days a week and contain a 15 minute cartoon short sandwich between life action segments. Mario was played by Captain Lou Albino and Luigi was played by Danny Wells. The life action segments followed the Mario’s as plumbers in Brooklyn before being sucked into a warp zone. These bits are most of the time really silly and somewhat cheesy but there are a few that are really funny. Also some 80’s guest stars like Magic Johnson do roles during these bits.

The cartoons on the other hand center around the worlds of Super Mario Bros the cartoon show, and a lot of what Dic made up. In each episode the Mario; along with Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool (now called Peach in the games) journey to a world with a theme to stop King Koopa (also known as Bowser) and help the citizens of that world. And in a lot of the worlds Koopa also dons a disguise for example in a future robotic world he becomes Robo Koopa (a take off of Robocop). There is also Koopkahn, Count Koopula, Koopzilla just to name a few.

The cartoon uses both elements from the first game and the American version of Super Mario Bros 2. So you get Koopa Troopas, Goombas and fire flowers, along with Mouser, Tri Clyde and vegetable throwing to go along with them.

The average story arc is ok and some episodes are funny but often times the show feels like it’s weight down to much by 80’s cheese but this won’t bother people who where fans of the Mario’s in the 80’s. The episodes in this DVD unlike the last one keeps the original commercial openers and closer as well has previews for the Legend of Zelda which aired on Fridays instead of the Super Mario cartoon. The Legend of Zelda does not however appear on this disc outside these previews, they released a separate box set for the 13 episodes of the Legend of Zelda. And trust me on this Zelda fans your better off saving your money for the Wii and Zelda twilight Princess then spending your money on the Zelda animated series.

The DVD.
Video quality on the show is well decent but I wouldn’t call it great. Unlike my last two 80’s cartoons that I have reviewed She-Ra and Voltron the Super Mario Bros Super Show had very little done to restore the video plenty of fuzz and scratches to see on the movie. For extras we have background art work for each episode, the opening theme story boarded, and an interview with Captain Lou Albino about the show.

Final Recommendation.
If your where fans of the show in the 80’s it might be worth your money to check it out. It’s cheesy and a bit silly but I did have fun watching a lot of the episodes. If you weren’t a fan of the show back in the 80’s I suggest skipping it because it hasen’t gotten better with age.