Even in the early 80s I was a video game fan, and I consumed the very limited media at the time for video games where I could. Other than the Pac-Man cartoon, one of the earliest cartoon shows related to video games that I remembered was Saturday Supercade, which aired on CBS from 1983-1984.
Each episode was a three-parter, consisting of a story from one of the video game franchise represented. The show was produced by Ruby-Spears, best known for the first few seasons of Alvin and the Chipmunks.
The franchises represented were among the most popular in the early 80s. The two most popular video games represented, Donkey Kong and Frogger, were in every week's episode, while the others were rotated weekly.
Donkey Kong: A tall, slightly pot-bellied Mario, mimicking the early look of Mario on the arcade cabinet artwork, and his girlfriend Pauline tried to recapture Donkey Kong, Mario's pet gorilla who had run away from home. It was heavily influenced by Magilla Gorilla, which Joe Ruby and Ken Spears had worked on when they worked at H-B. Kid-friendly comedian Soupy Sales voiced Donkey Kong.
Donkey Kong Jr: He's also out to find his missing dad, accompanied by a biker named bones. His catchphrase, "Monkey Muscle," sounded an awful look like Scrappy-Doo's "Puppy Power!", though they were voiced by different actors (DK Jr was Frank Welker, Scrappy was Don Messick, who also voiced his Uncle Scooby.)
Frogger: Frogger is a reporter for the local newspaper, his managing editor is a pastiche of J. Jonah Jameson and other hard-nosed editors and publishers in cartoons and TV show, and he has a turtle friend and a girlfriend. And in pursuit of his story, he has to dodge cars and alligators, just like in the game.
Q*Bert: Set in a 1950s world inspired by Rebel Without a Cause, Q*Bert and his friends are bullied by Qoily, Ugg, and Wrongway, who appear as leather-jacketed greasers. The colored discs make their appearance, and Q*Bert has one ability he didnt have in the game, the ability to shoot balls of gunk through his tube nose
Pitfall: Pitfall Harry, his niece Rhonda, and their pet lion, Quick Claw, go exploring the tropics for treasures. One interesting note is that Rhonda and Quick Claw were originally created for Saturday Supercade, but Activision then put them in Pitfall II on Atari systems and Super Pitfall on the NES.
In the second season, the cartoons changed. Donkey Kong and Q*Bert remained and Q*Bert was now weekly along with DK. Frogger, DK Jr, and Pitfall were dropped, and replaced with:
Space Ace: Based on Don Bluth's Laserdisc arcade game, starring Dexter/Ace and his girlfriend Kimberly. These segments were animated by Ruby-Spears rather than Bluth's studio, so the animation and artwork are nowhere near the quality of the animated segments Bluth did for the game.
Kangaroo: Based on the popular Donkey Kong-styled platformer from Atari and Sunsoft. Katie Kangaroo and her son, Joey, are menaced by the monkeys at the zoo they live in.
This cartoon, cheesy as it was, was a regular part of my Saturday mornings during that year. There wasn't much else video-game related except for Pac-Man on TV, and it had Donkey Kong, which was (and still is) my favorite arcade game. So it did the job.
What's interesting here is that the coloring of Mario's clothing in this show was the same color scheme Nintendo itself would eventually adopt when they finally standardized Mario's look. Until Super Mario Land, Nintendo didn't really have a standard color scheme for Mario. His overalls would be red half the time, including in the Donkey Kong arcade game.
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