Captain N: The Game Master

Before everything else, I didn't mean my first 2 posts to both begin with the word "Captain"; that's really just how uncreative with titles people were back then.

I would also like to warn the reader that this show isn't exactly in the top of my list, and is a prime example of the kind of show we "got suckered into watching".

Captain N: The Game Master is an American cartoon series that combines the awesomeness of Nintendo with the marijuana and crack of American scriptwriters and animators. For starters, DiC, the animation studio, chose to shit-can the original concept as published in the Nintendo Power magazine, wherein Captain N ("N" obviously standing for "Nintendo") has to give life to various Nintendo Entertainment System video game characters in order to defeat a certain gone-haywire supercomputer named Mother Brain (perhaps in reference to the Mother Brain final boss in Metroid). Upon her defeat it is revealed that she is planning on making a comeback, which left open an opportunity to continue the story. So Nintendo hired DiC, forgot about the original story, and produced this travesty of a cartoon. That we all watched anyway.

The cartoon proper begins when main character Kevin Keene, together with his dog Duke, are sucked into a world called Videoland, which he must defend from the evil forces of Mother Brain (surprise). Armed with a Zapper (proprietary Nintendo product plug--a Zapper is basically the light gun you used to try to kill the dog in Duck Hunt, but only resulted in much frustration and disappointment), he must make his way into Mother Brain's floating fortress, called Metroid (surprise again). But our hero is not alone in his quest; an initially-reluctant band of comrades are there to aid him:

• Princess Lana- the rightful ruler of Videoland; she had no problems with N because she had no right to.
• Mega Man - our favorite creation of Dr. Light from the Mega Man series of games. Although the blue paint on his armor seemed to be fading in this series and is actually turning into a sort of light green. He also borrowed Protoman's visor for this series (just kidding; this is just DiC failing at actually knowing the characters they're animating). And he has two blasters instead of one.
  
• Kid Icarus - from a game of the same name, the toga-clad hero can fly, shoot arrows, and get his shit beaten up if he doesn't.
• Simon Belmont - never has there been as much blasphemy and sacrilege in the video game industry as when they designed Simon Belmont for this show. Simon Belmont, in his original game Castlevania, is a leather-clad whip-wielding generally badass vampire hunter, who is out to ruin Dracula's shit. However, in the series, they turned him into a vain, arrogant sonofabitch who doesn't even carry his trademark weapon (well he does, just not in the way he did in Castlevania). And his costume suggests that he might have been the prototype design for Duck Tales character Launchpad. And he generally isn't badass at all; in fact he looked and sounded like the biggest pussy ever. Compare:

Left: Simon Belmont from Castlevania - total badass
Right: Simon Belmont from Captain N - flailing bag of cock

Other popular Nintendo characters make an appearance too, such as Link (from Legend of Zelda), Donkey Kong (from Donkey Kong, duh), and "Dr. Wright" (who is obviously Dr. Light from Mega Man), but they are only secondary characters, and we didn't get to see them that often either. Link has his own show, by the way. Find out more by following this link (ha ha).

So they team up and fight against villains, most notably Mother Brain (of course), some eggplant-looking dood, and Dr. Wily (from Mega Man).

The show ran in episodic format, and each episode is supposedly based on the videogame it is titled after (for instance, the episode titled "Final Fantasy" should have a world based on the Final Fantasy game). However, American cartoon companies being what they were, the protagonists of the game worlds were mostly absent, and only very few elements of the original game are used in the episodes.

Today, many people are embarrassed to admit that they watched this show as a kid (myself included, but you will never really find out who "iluvgirlswithglasses" is, will you). Still, it was one of the mainstays of our Saturday mornings when we were children, when we were still too young to notice that DiC virtually mutilated several video games in one fell swoop. What's funny is Nintendo actually supported this show. Shouldn't they have known better?