The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3


The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 is an children's animated television series that premiered on September 8, 1990, on NBC. It is the second animated series to be based on the Mario video game, following on from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! and preceding Super Mario World, and is loosely based upon the video game Super Mario Bros. 3.

Overview

Unlike its predecessor, the series dropped the use of live-action segments and King Koopa's alter-egos, featured an entirely new cast with the exceptions of John Stocker and Harvey Atkin, who reprised their respective roles as Toad and King Koopa, established a level of continuity in stories, and featured the introduction of a set of characters called the Koopalings, based upon the same characters from the Mario games but with different names to their official counterparts. Episodes were divided into two segments of around 11 minutes each, always opened by a title card featuring world-map footage taken from Super Mario Bros. 3, and often featured the use of power-ups and other elements from the game. The only episode to not feature world-map footage is "Kootie Pie Rocks". Although Nintendo modified the character designs from the Mario franchise and flipped the shirt and overall colors of Mario and Luigi's, DIC decided to keep the character designs from its predecessor, but beginning with "Princess Toadstool for President", Mario's hair color is changed to brown while Luigi's hair stays black. However, the Shout! Factory DVD cover depicts Mario wearing his modern colors from the video games.

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. Many episodes are set in the real world such as London, Paris, Venice, New York City, Cape Canaveral, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.. One episode titled "7 Continents for 7 Koopas" is about the Koopalings invading each of the seven continents.
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 on NBC, whose format involved having two Mario Bros episodes with a full-length Captain N episode sandwiched in-between. All further airings of the series separated it from Captain N when Weekend Today aired in 1992.

Voice cast

The TV series entered production before official names were given in the development process of the video game, so the Koopalings names are all different.
In 1994, Buena Vista Home Video released 4 VHS volumes of the series which each contained 2 episodes.
In 2003, Sterling Entertainment released a VHS/DVD titled King Koopa Katastrophe, which contained 6 episodes. The DVD release also contained the Sonic Underground episode "Sonic Tonic" as a bonus feature. The DVD was re-released by NCircle Entertainment in 2007, excluding the Sonic episode.
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 Visual Entertainment released a three-disc box set of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 with all twenty-six original 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 has also released the series in 4 volumes as well as the Collector's Edition of the complete series.
On July 1, 2015, the show was re-released to Steam by Cinedigm.
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 in place of the licensed songs. However, the King Koopa Katastrophe DVD from Sterling Entertainment/NCircle Entertainment features three of the six episodes with the original broadcast music still intact.
The show has also 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 in the UK, and the Netherlands
TitleEp #DistributorRelease date
Super Mario Bros. 3: Mind your Mummy, Mommy Mario2Buena Vista Home Video1994
Super Mario Bros. 3: Misadventures in Babysitting2Buena Vista Home Video1994
Super Mario Bros. 3: Never Koop A Koopa2Buena Vista Home Video1994
Super Mario Bros. 3: The Ugly Mermaid2Buena Vista Home Video1994
Super Mario Bros.: King Koopa Katastrophe6Sterling Entertainment/NCircle EntertainmentJuly 22, 2003/August 21, 2007
Super Mario Bros. / Heathcliff1Sterling Entertainment2004
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Complete Series26Shout! FactoryJune 26, 2007
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Trouble with Koopas6NCircle EntertainmentJanuary 6, 2009
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: What a Wonderful Warp6NCircle EntertainmentMarch 3, 2009
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: Koopas Rock6NCircle EntertainmentJune 1, 2010
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: Complete Series Collector's Edition26NCircle EntertainmentMay 14, 2013