Nintendo purists may be put off by the unfaithful characterizations of their favorite NES characters. Megaman is green and is missing his famous "arm blaster." The actor who voiced him sounds like his genitals were thrashed repeatedly while battling a serious case of throat cancer. Simon Belmont is a pompous, yet funny jerk. King Hippo looks like he's been dead for a year or two and apparently spent his formidable years in Texas. The list goes on and on. I wasn't offended by altered renditions of sacred gaming icons, but some geek in his momma's basement may be.
One of the coolest parts of the series is the main characters' ability to "warp" to other game lands. In one episode the main characters go to a Tetris-themed world, in another they visit Hyrule from The Legend of Zelda series. Interestingly enough, they never run into the largest Nintendo character of them all: Mario. Why the big M never appeared is puzzling, but at least his presence is felt through certain sound effects lifted from the Super Mario Bros. games.
Captain N: The Game Master series has its fair share of flaws. The idea that our favorite game characters are alive and well in some alternate universe is charming. Some of the episodes are truly entertaining and are elevated above the average Saturday morning cartoon fair. If you're a fan of the NES and are looking for a cartoon series that was relevant in a time when Saturday morning cartoons meant something, I highly recommend this series. Thirty bones to warp back to a simpler time filled with fun is worth it!
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Article comments
1 - Dynamo of Eternia
Actually, I picked this set up, and I think it is indeed incomplete.
I think what we have here are all of the complete 1/2 hour episodes(or roughly 22-23 minute episodes since no commercials are present) that were produced.
However, there were more episodes that on TV ran somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 minutes. I recall the animation being much more simplified and all around crappier for these short episodes (if you can imagine the animation being much worse than it already is).
On Saturday mornings, I believe starting in 1991, they had a 1/2 show of Captain N and the Super Mario World cartoon (the latter being based on the then-new SNES game of the same name). Each would have a cartoon that took up roughly half of that 1/2 hour + commercials.
This is purely speculation on my part, but it could be possible that the Captin N & Super Mario World thing could somehow be considered one show, and could be released together later on all in one set, which is why those epiosdes of Captain N were not included in this set.
As for Mario never appearing on Captain N, I found it kind of disapointing, myself. But, I think it never happened because there was pretty much always some other Mario cartoon incarnation running while Captain N was being made, and they probably didn't want to take the thunder away from the actual Mario Cartoons.
During Captain N's first year or so, the 5-day a week Super Mario Bros. Super Show was running.
The following year (starting in fall 1990, I believe) they started a Saturday Morning cartoon called "The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3" (which comes out on DVD in June, I beleive) which ran side by side with Captain N on Saturday Mornings (it did seem odd that they never did do a crossover between the two since they were airing side by side.
Then, the following year was the Mario World and short, crappy Captain N episodes.
2 - Dynamo of Eternia
*** an extra note that I forgot to mention in my last reply...
You will notice that Link and Zelda appear in a couple of these Captain N episodes, but if you look, you will notice that this was during it's second season, after the Mario Super Show had stopped being produced in new episodes (including the Zelda cartoons which were a part of it), thus allowing those characters to appear on the show since their individual show was no longer in production.
I did like how the incarnations of Link, Zelda, and even Ganon were cooler looking updates on the versions of them from the other cartoon series (same voices and all).
3 - Chrissy
Captin N is one of the best cartoon's made ,I still rember my brother and I watching it every Saturday morning.