History and development Before the series was conceived,
Andy Heyward, the then-CEO of
DIC Enterprises, spent about a year trying to convince
Nintendo to license the characters. The project originated as
Super Mario Bros. Power Hour, a one hour long animation block that would have featured series based on a number of intellectual properties. Concept art was produced for adaptations of
Super Mario Bros.,
The Legend of Zelda,
Metroid,
Castlevania,
Double Dragon, and
California Games. With the exception of
Mario and
Zelda, none of these additional adaptations were ultimately produced.
Double Dragon would receive a
later adaptation from DIC which aired from 1993 to 1994, but this did not make use of the 1980s concepts and was instead based on the SNES titles released in the interim. The show premiered in September 1989. To promote the series, Lou Albano appeared on
Live with Regis and Kathie Lee in May 1989 with his beard shaven. When the series first aired, it was distributed by
Viacom Enterprises and was marketed by
MTV. In addition, DiC planned to produce an animated film based on the series, to be released in the summer of 1990. The film was never produced, and
a live-action adaptation was instead released in 1993. In
David Sheff's book
Game Over, Bill White, the then-director of advertising and public relations for Nintendo, said that the purpose of the television series was to boost awareness of the characters.
The Legend of Zelda animation was only produced for one season. Writer
Phil Harnage said that the reason it was cancelled was partly because it was tied to
The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! rather than being its own show. He also said that the show received some letters from children asking for it to not be cancelled but this positive feedback was not enough to keep the show in production. In one episode, Albano played as himself, but had to make the character of Mario absent for this to work, The live-action segments were directed by
Steve Binder and were filmed before a studio audience. which both Albano and Wells voiced their respective characters. A total of 52 serials were aired under this schedule until 16 November 1989. For every subsequent Friday, the animated segments consisted of serials of
The Legend of Zelda, The fairy character named Spryte was inspired by Forward's childhood obsession with the character
Tinker Bell from
Walt Disney's animated film
Peter Pan. Forward also explained that Link's catchphrase "Excuse me, Princess" was based on a popular
Steve Martin comedy routine. He decided to include it in every episode of the series as a way to poke fun at DIC's VP of Creative Affairs, Robbie London, who had forced him to use the phrase. Forward also stated that the relationship between Link and Zelda was influenced by the dynamic between the characters of David Addison and Maddie Hayes from the American television series
Moonlighting, which were portrayed by
Bruce Willis and
Cybill Shepherd respectively. The writers revealed that, in addition to having a "show bible" as a reference for the main characters, they were influenced by their own interests when creating episodes in the series.
Eve Forward said that although the monsters and weapons were based on the game, "a lot of the various swashbuckling stuff I liked to put in was based on things that had happened in our
D&D games". The show is one of the few instances of Link having dialogue in
The Legend of Zelda franchise. It was the first time that the characters were given voice actors, having never been voiced in the games and being composed of just a few pixels. This allowed the writers freedom of interpretation. Bob Forward said that "we very much made it up as we went along".
Songs Each episode features two main theme songs used during its broadcast: • "Mario Brothers Rap" – composed by
Haim Saban, Andrew Dimitroff and
Shuki Levy, the theme is performed by unknown artists, one version to open the show, and another version before the
Super Mario Bros. animated segments. Both versions are based on the original "Overworld" theme from the
Super Mario Bros. video game. The song was later featured in
The Super Mario Bros. Movie, performed by
Ali Dee Theodore. • "Do the Mario" – performed by Albano in front of a
greenscreen of the animated show's backgrounds, it acts as the closing theme for
The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!. During each
Super Mario Bros. animated segment, a cover of a popular song is played. Notably one episode originally used a cover by
Huey Lewis and the News with lyrics that were considered inappropriate for this show. When the program was re-released onto DVD in North America, these songs were replaced by instrumentals of seven songs from
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 and one song from
Super Mario World. ==Reruns==