Mark's Epic Blog of Randomness

By Mark Rodriguez I've done articles for all three Mario cartoons in the past, so it's only fair I did one for the Sonic cartoons. There were several series made, and even though Adventures was first and had a head start... we got another cartoon called Sonic the Hedgehog that aired Saturday mornings and was a more serious show, which would later be connected to the Archie comics series. I have to say this cartoon was full of wild and wacky fun, and at its core is closer to the games than the others. I mean, this show is all about Sonic and Tails trying to stop Robotnik from taking over Mobius with his army of robots.... which is basically what the games were about at the time. The main thing that was missing from the show was that Robotnik was using actual robots, while the games it was implied all (or most) of his robots were captured animals that were enslaved and forced to do his dirty work. We basically follow Sonic and Tails as they travel town to to...

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  The cast is pretty much the same except Toad had been replaced by the new star of the game, Yoshi.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 Super Mario Bros 3 was without a doubt one of if not THE hottest and most popular game for the classic NES. It basically took everything we loved about the original and multiplied it by 10. Who can forget the movie The Wizard with Fred Savage with a preview of this game as well as all the magazines covering it at the time. I still remember the giant Game Boy displays at Toys R Us advertising the game and the new cartoon coming out (as well as the Game Boy itself of course). The Super Mario Bros. Super Show has run its course so I guess it was time for an update. Unlike the first show that was weekly, this show was on Saturday morning and part of a game cartoon hour since Captain N the Game Master was after it. Eventually they kinda/sorta combined them into The Adventures of Super Mario Bros 3 and Captain N the Game Master, but we'll discuss that other show some other time. This time the show would stick a lot closer to the games since, to be hon...

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 ...

By Mark Rodriguez We already discussed Video Power, so now let's discuss the cartoon that took up most of the show. Join Johnny Arcade as he leads the Power Team to stop Mr. Big's evil plans. Also how they made a game about cops blowing up drug dealers into a kid's show. Before getting into the cartoon, I'm gonna put on my VGM cap for a bit and give a brief look at the games featured the most on this show... namely NARC. This was a two-player shoot-em-up arcade game made by Midway as you control Max Force or Hit Man to take down Mr. Big's drug organization. Along the way you either arrest or shoot down drug dealers and earn points for confiscating ganja (Johnny and I laughed at the Ganja Bonus). You could also use a missile launcher or drive a sports car equipped with missiles. The game also featured an insane clown that would kidnap and stab prostitutes while hanging around a triple X book store. Good times. NARC was one of the first 'overly-vi...