The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3
Also known as	'The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. (Australia)
Genre	Adventure Comedy Fantasy
Created by	Shigeru Miyamoto (original characters)
Developed by	Reed Shelly Bruce Shelly
Directed by	John Grusd
Voices of	Walker Boone Tony Rosato Tracey Moore John Stocker Harvey Atkin Dan Hennessey Gordon Masten Michael Stark James Rankin Paulina Gillis Stuart Stone Tara Charendoff
Composer(s)	Michael Tavera
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	26 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Andy Heyward
Producer(s)	John Grusd
Editor(s)	Mark A. McNally Sue Odjakjian Warren Taylor
Running time	24 minutes
Production company(s)	Cookie Jar DIC Entertainment Sei Young Animation
Release
Original network	NBC
Picture format	4:3
Audio format	Stereo
Original release	September 8 – December 1, 1990
Chronology
Preceded by	The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! (1989)
Followed by	Super Mario World (1991)

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 is an American animated television series based on the video game Super Mario Bros. 3. It aired on NBC with Captain N: The Game Master in a programming block titled "Captain N & The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3" from September 8, 1990 to December 1, 1990. It is the second of the three TV shows based on the video game, with the others being The Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Super Mario World.

Unlike its predecessor, this series has no live-action segments and features entirely new voice actors, with the exceptions of John Stocker and Harvey Atkin, who reprised their roles as Toad and King Koopa. DIC Entertainment produced this series while Nintendo provided the characters and power-ups.

In September 2016, the show was re-released to Steam by Cinedigm.

Format

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 focuses on Mario, Luigi, Toad and Princess Toadstool, who reside in the Mushroom World. Most of the episodes revolve around the four characters' efforts to prevent the attacks made by King Koopa and his seven Koopalings to take over Princess Toadstool's Mushroom Kingdom.

Like The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, the animation was done by Sei Young Animation Co., Ltd.; however this show was co-produced by Italian studio Reteitalia S.P.A., hence the slight differences in character design.

Since the show was based on Super Mario Bros. 3, the enemies and power-ups were also seen in the show. In addition to being more faithful to the Mario gameplay, the series was given an established sense of continuity, something that the previous series lacked. The show was also known for having many of its episodes set in "the real world", with "actual" human beings appearing from time to time. Episodes took place in locations such as London, Paris, Venice, New York City, Cape Canaveral, Los Angeles and even Washington, D.C.. One memorable episode entitled "7 Continents for 7 Koopas" was about the Koopalings invading each of the seven continents.^[1]

This cartoon was originally shown in the hour-long Captain N and The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 programming block along with the second season of Captain N: The Game Master on NBC. All further airings of the series separated it from Captain N when Weekend Today came on the air in 1992.

Voice cast

This series is noted for its different (than the video game series') naming and age scheme for the Koopalings. This was due to the series going into production before official names were given in the game. Unlike The Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Super Mario World, Luigi is the only character to appear in all episodes.

• Walker Boone as Mario
• Tony Rosato as Luigi
• Tracey Moore as Princess Toadstool
• John Stocker as Toad
• Harvey Atkin as King Koopa (Bowser)
• James Rankin as Cheatsy (Larry) Koopa
• Dan Hennessey as Big-Mouth (Morton) Koopa (Jr.)
• Tabitha St. Germain (as Paulina Gillis^[2]) as Kootie-Pie (Wendy O.) Koopa^[3]
• Gordon Masten as Bully (Roy) Koopa
• Michael Stark as Kooky (Ludwig) Von Koopa
• Tara Charendoff as Hip (Lemmy) Koopa and Hop (Iggy) Koopa

DVD releases

The show has been released on DVD in Australia in a full box set made by MRA Entertainment, Europe which one volume out of the four has only been released in Germany, the distributor Disky released three volumes (each with six episodes on each) in the UK, and the Netherlands and there was one single DVD release in the US by Sterling Entertainment Group in 2003.

A DVD featuring one episode plus two Heathcliff episodes was released as a prize in Golden Grahams cereal in 2004.

Due to the success of the DVD sets of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, Shout! Factory and Vivendi Entertainment released a three-disc box set of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 with all twenty-six episodes on June 26, 2007, which was released again in a double pack with Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog volume 1 as a double pack on December 4, 2007, as a tie-in with Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. NCircle Entertainment (under license from Cookie Jar Entertainment) has also released the series in 4 volumes as well as the Collector's Edition of the complete series.

The original broadcast version of Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 features covers of licensed songs on five episodes and two Milli Vanilli songs on one episode. Due to copyright restrictions, the complete series DVD sets from both Shout! Factory and NCircle Entertainment use the song "Mega Move" from Captain N: The Game Master in place of the licensed songs. However, the King Koopa Katastrophe DVD from NCircle Entertainment features three of these episodes with the original broadcast music still intact.

Broadcast history

• USA
  • NBC (1990–1991)
  • Family Channel (1991–1998)
  • USA Network (1993–2000)
  • PAX Network (1998–1999)

International broadcasting

References

External links

• The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 at the Internet Movie Database
• The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 at TV.com