Mark's Epic Blog of Randomness

 By Mark Rodriguez Sometime before the release of Super Mario Bros 3 and the cartoon related to it, Valiant Comics released 2 comics (Super Mario Bros and Adventures of Super Mario Bros) based on the plumber heroes. The comic is slightly different from the cartoons that were airing at the time. The most noticeable differences being that we see Princess Toadstool's father in the comic, Wart from Super Mario Bros 2 occasionally makes appearances and the Koopalings are referred to by their in-game names rather than the name changes they received in the Mario 3 cartoon. Nowadays these comics are very hard to find without paying insane prices, but I was lucky enough to get this one for only 15 bucks at the Steelcity Con a few years back. Let's take a look.  "Beauty and the Beach" starts with Mario, The Princess and Toad on a small boat in the middle of the ocean. The Princess asks Mario if 'three hour tours' usually take two days. Mario says to ask Toad since he...

By Mark Rodriguez It's always fun to remember the games we played in our childhood. It was a different time when most of our concerns were things like getting that high score, or racking up wins in a fighting game for bragging rights. Before rent, bills, filing taxes and adult life. So with this console I'm going to look back at what were the first games we bought for each console, not counting the one that already came with it. NES- Nintendo Entertainment System- TMNT II The Arcade Game The NES we bought came with 2 controllers, the NES Zapper and Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt 2-in-1 Game. Mario was a lot of fun and I remember my dad loved playing Duck Hunt. There wasn't much urgency to get a second game at the time since there were tons video rental stores and we could play stuff like Mega Man 2, Castlevania, Double Dragon and so forth when we needed a break from Mario. It wasn't until we got TMNT II The Arcade Game for Christmas that year that we had a blast. ...

By Mark Rodriguez With the world, or rather SEGA going 16-bit with their SEGA Genesis, it was time for Nintendo to break out their own 16-bit system to be able to compete. And thus we had the Super Nintendo, and with it came Super Mario World. The Mario 3 cartoon stopped airing reruns just in time for a new cartoon based on Mario's first 16-bit adventure. The intro looks pretty cool with vibrant colors... but then the cartoon starts...  Roughly based on the game, this time Mario, Luigi, and the Princess take their adventures to Dinosaur Land which I assume is part of the Mushroom Kingdom. King Koopa and his brats are back to make more trouble as well.  The cast is pretty much the same except Toad had been replaced by the new star of the game, Yoshi. Toad is never mentioned or referenced to at all in the series, I assume so as to not to confuse the kids since he's not in the game. Yoshi is a big glutton and is kinda like the kid of the series. He talks ...

By Mark Rodriguez Here's another Throwback Thursday on a real old-school cartoon series based on probably the granddaddy of all video game heroes ever. I'm talking about Super Mario Bros! From the 8-bit NES to the Nintendo Switch, Mario is still going strong to this day. Time to go back to when all we had were just Super Mario Bros 1 and 2. Hey Paisanos!!! It's the Super Mario Bros. Super Show! This cartoon hit the boob tube in 1989, and man, I didn't even own the NES yet so it was my first real look at the characters besides playing the games at a friend's house. The show was divided into live-action segments and a cartoon, kinda like Video Power did. The live-action parts had the WWF Superstar himself, Captain Lou Albano as Mario and Danny Wells as Luigi, and they were basically about their normal lives as plumbers in Brooklyn before they were sucked into the mushroom kingdom. Some kind of situation would happen, most of the time would feature a ...