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The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! / Legend of Zelda - Comparison between releases


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I've been wanting to do a comparison between the various Super Mario Bros. Super Show / Legend of Zelda DVD, VHS and streaming releases for a while.
I hope anyone interested in collecting the series wil have use for it.

This is my buying guide for you on which releases to get and why.


In my comparisons i try to include details on the quality, languages, extras and even specifically mention if something is missing has been changed ore was added ect.


Little history about the show.

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! is an American television series based upon Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2. 
The show was produced by DiC and was distributed by Viacom Enterprises.
When it originally broadcasted in 1989 the show ran from Monday to Friday.
In total the series consisted out of 52 Super Mario Bros and 13 Legend of Zelda cartoons.
Each episode began with a live-action segment starring Captain Lou Albano and Danny Wells.
During the summer of 1990 DIC tried to make the show more 90s by replacing the live-action segments with a show called Club Mario.

In its original form 41 Mario episodes included pop music from the 80s.
The music played during the cartoon's were mostly removed and replaced on later airings / releases.

 

This GUIDE includes both NTSC and PAL releases.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

DVD releases:

 

Shout_Factory_Season1_DVDFront.png

 

Title: Shout Factory The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!: Volume 1 - 2006 release

Language: English
Subtitles: none

Region: Region 1
Number of discs: 4

Episodes included: 24

Aspect Ratio: 4:3

 

Spoiler

 

DISC 1:

#1 The Bird! The Bird! / Neatness Counts
#2 King Mario of Cramalot / Day of the Orphan
#3 Butch Mario & the Luigi Kid / All Steamed Up
#4 Mario's Magic Carpet / Marianne and Luigeena
#5 Rolling Down the River / The Mario Monster Mash
#6 The Great Gladiator Gig / Bonkers from Yonkers

 

Special Features:

Interview with Captain Lou Albano
Storyboard-to-screen Opening title sequence
A gallery of concept art for the Super Mario Bros Super Show Cartoon Series

 

Hidden Extra:

Patti Cake routine reference

 

DISC 2:

#7 Love 'Em and Leave 'Em / Will the Real Elvis Please Shut Up!
#8 Mario and the Beanstalk / Bats in the Basement
#9 The Great BMX Race / Mama Mia Mario
#10 Stars in Their Eyes / Alligator Dundee
#17 Two Plumbers and a Baby / Lost Dog
#16 Pirates of Koopa / Do You Believe in Magic?

 

Special Features:

Concept art from the worlds

 

DISC 3:

#11 Jungle Fever / Dance

#14 The Fire of Hercufleas / The Marios Fight Back
#15 Count Koopula / Magician
#28 Mario Meets Koop-zilla / Fortune Teller
#47 Mario of the Deep / Two Bums from Brooklyn
#52 Robo Koopa / Captain Lou Is Missing

 

Special Features:

Concept art from the worlds

 

DISC 4:

#12 Brooklyn Bound / Cher's Poochie

#13 Toad Warriors / E.C. The Extra Creepy

#18 The Adventures of Sherlock Mario / Plumbers of the Year

#23 Mario and Joliet / Fake Bro
#24 Too Hot to Handle / Time Out Luigi
#25 Hooded Robin and His Mario Men / Flower Power

 

Special Features:

Concept art from the worlds


DVD Quality:

The good part the episodes are pretty much uncut just like the way the originally aired on TV.

All the original commercial bumpers are pretty much included except for one.

It has all the original Untill next time everybody parts and also the Zelda previews.

It's a shame however that Shout Factory used filters on the episodes.

Some scenes unfortunately look really over sharpened and comparing it to a other source i can tell a denoising filter was used too.

It looks decent in some scenes especially the ones where characters are drawn big.


Missing footage:

Shout Factory used the Family Channel re-run master tape for King Mario of Cramalot.
The Family Channel's reruns of the series removed the Legend of Zelda previews and the scenes that segued into them from the live-action segments.
The episode is also slowed down to bring it back to it's original length.
A extra fade in and fade out is included for the placement of a extra commercial break. 
The original commercial bumpers are not included for King Mario of Cramalot.

 

The DIC logo on the end of the episodes seems to have been faded out removing the Viacom ending.

The Domino's pizza sponsor logos have been cut.


Except for one scene in Episode #11 Jungle Fever around 09:32 all cover songs have been replaced with stock music from DIC Entertainment.

 

Episode #25 Hooded Robin and His Mario Men is missing some sound effects throughout the cartoon.

Most likely Dic Entertainment forgot to add them back in when the changed the music.

 

Screenshots:

Spoiler

vlcsnap-2017-07-25-15h43m08s667.pngvlcsnap-2017-07-25-15h44m06s573.png

 

vlcsnap-2017-07-25-16h25m36s847.png

 
 

UKDVD1.png

 

Title: The Super Mario Bros Super Show - Volume One 2004

Language: English
Subtitles: none
Region: Region 2
Number of discs: 1
Episodes included:
Aspect Ratio: 4:3 - 1.33:1

 

Spoiler

 

DISC 1:

#1 The Bird! The Bird! / Neatness Counts
#3 Butch Mario & the Luigi Kid / All Steamed Up
#2 King Mario of Cramalot / Day of the Orphan
#4 Mario's Magic Carpet / Marianne and Luigeena
#5 Rolling Down the River / The Mario Monster Mash
#6 The Great Gladiator Gig / Bonkers from Yonkers

 

DVD Quality:

The footage is 25fps interlaced, resolution 720x576.
Occasionally compression artifacts are present in the footage.
Most of time this happens around the parts that got cut like the commercial bumpers.
The Saban international logo is included after the outro instead of the DIC / Viacom logo.

The video quality has been left untouched.
No cropping, denoising ore sharpening where applied.

 

Interestingly enough this DVD includes the correct master tape for King Mario of Cramalot / Day of the Orphan.

Not the Family Channel re-run.

The episode runs on the correct speed and the extra fade in / out is not present.

Unfortunately the Zelda preview and commercial bumpers are not included on this DVD.

So a small portion of the live action segment is still unavailable on DVD.


Missing footage:

- Zelda previews including the live-action segments scenes that segued into them.
- Commercial bumpers
- The DIC Entertainment / Viacom ending

 

What makes this release special:

All the original cover songs are included in this release:
"Surfin' Bird" (The Trashmen)
"Rawhide" (Frankie Laine)
"Bad" (Michael Jackson)
"Magic Carpet Ride" (Steppenwolf)
"Proud Mary" (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
"Shaddap You Face" (Joe Dolce)

 
Screenshots:

Spoiler

DVDVOLUME.Title2013127.pngDVDVOLUME.Title2002449.png

 

DVDVOLUME.Title4012443.png

 

 

volume2.png


Title: The Super Mario Bros Super Show - Volume 2 2004

Language: English
Subtitles: none
Region: Region 2
Number of discs: 1
Episodes included: 5 
Aspect Ratio: 4:3 - 1.33:1

 

Spoiler

 

DISC 1:

#8 Mario and the Beanstalk / Bats in the Basement

#7 Love 'Em and Leave 'Em / Will the Real Elvis Please Shut Up!

#9 The Great BMX Race / Mama Mia Mario

#10 Stars in Their Eyes / Alligator Dundee

#16 Pirates of Koopa / Do You Believe in Magic?

 

DVD Quality:

Just like volume 1 the video quality has been left untouched.

The footage is 25fps interlaced, resolution 720x576.

 

Missing footage:

- Zelda previews including the live-action segments scenes that segued into them.
- Commercial bumpers
- The DIC Entertainment / Viacom ending

- The DVD is said to include "Two Plumbers and a Baby" but this is false. The episode is only listed on the cover but not included.

 

What makes this release special:

All the original cover songs are included in this release:
"I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (Marvin Gaye)
"The Power of Love" (Huey Lewis and the News)

"Shut Down" (The Beach Boys)

"Chains" (The Beatles)

"Limbo Rock" (Chubby Checker)

 

volume3.png

 

Title: The Super Mario Bros Super Show - Robo Koopa 2005

Language: English
Subtitles: none
Region: Region 2
Number of discs: 1
Episodes included: 3
Aspect Ratio: 4:3 - 1.33:1

 

Spoiler

DISC 1:

#52 Robo Koopa / Captain Lou Is Missing

#15 Count Koopula / Magician

#11 Jungle Fever /  Dance

 

DVD Quality:

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show Robo Koopa is clearly a continuation by Maximum Entertainment on their previous releases vol 1 and vol 2.

Surprisingly the DVD only includes 3 episodes yet Robo Koopa and Count Koopula seem to have been more compressed than Jungle Fever.

 

Missing footage:

- The Zelda previews including the live-action segments scenes that segued into them are removed except for the "Magician" which includes the Live action portion that presents the Zelda cartoon yet the cartoon part itself is skipped.
- Commercial bumpers
- Viacom ending

- For some reason the DIC Entertainment ending is not included in Jungle Fever

 

What makes this release special:

The original cover songs have been left untouched:

"Thriller" (Michael Jackson)

"Jungle Love" (The Time) 

 

 

 

------

Topic To be continued soon sorry for the wait guys!

 

Edited by Goku22
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  • 4 months later...

I've been watching Pluto TV's airings, Pluto TV's videos of the episodes include the Zelda cartoon previews, the live-action segway to the Zelda cartoon preview, the Viacom logo, however the music in the episodes is replaced with DHX/Cookie Jar (DiC had been bought out by them in 2008)'s production score, however DiC's logo is plastered over with the logo for Cookie Jar Entertainment, and the commercial break bumpers appear to be missing.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi Badguys, thanks for the input just wondering do you happen to know if the King mario of cramalot episode include the zelda cartoon preview on Pluto airings ?

 

Also terrible sorry to everyone for the lack of updates on this topic.

I've just been a bit too busy with a lot stuff to actually even watch my own dvds to even provide a honest review on them.

Also i just want to throw it out their, recently the German market seems to have been able to release the full series onto dvd.

We can thank https://www.pidax-film.de for this.

The released a total of 4 volumes, each volume includes up to 2 a 3 of the never released live action segments.

 

I took a gamble on them because i wasn't sure if the information was really legit.

I've often see incorrect dvd information listed on tv series so i was a bit skeptical when the where first annouced.

 

But still decided to buy them and the good news the really include all the live action segments so that's fantastic news for everyone wanting to own these on dvd.

Now be warned the sets are advertised as beeing dual audio so English / German dub.

However the zelda live action segments are only provided in german dub no english audio is available on them.

Also a other issue a lot of scenes are missing.

For example the Zelda previews and the scenes that segued into them are not included.

The original NTSC bumpers are not included and even the endings where Captain Lou Albano and Danny Wells with the guest stars say untill next time has been cut from all episodes.

So that's something everyone should be aware off which isn't mentioned on the site of course.

 

Three specific episodes are even missing extra scenes: 

 

Treasure of the Sierra Brooklyn  ( the mario head transition seems to have been cut short on this one )

The Magic Love ( is missing his complete mario head transition including a little bit of footage before it )

George Washington Slept Here ( this one is full of errors i have no idea what the did with this one. It's missing a giant scene in the middle and for some reason the cartoon beginning is sped up.

When set to English the untill next time everybody vocals are still present while the end credits is already playing ).

 

As for the video quality these dvds are not new scans the are in fact NTSC dvd copies.

The simply converted them from 29.97i to 25p and upscaled them to PAL resolution 720x576.

Resulting in inferior quality and besides the conversion the also applied dynamic noise reduction.

 

The audio quality is good similar to the NTSC releases.

As for the cover songs, get this, all of them are included in the german dub.

But when switching to English the audio plays the generic DIC stock music.

So i have no idea why the German dub can just use the songs while the original series has to be censored ...

I find it annoying because i actually really like the 80s pop music and to me it's part of the show the should have never censored it to begin with.

 

When i have the time i'll be sure to update this topic with some raw screenshots.

That's all for now regarding the Pidax releases.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Goku22
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  • 8 months later...
On 2/8/2018 at 5:00 AM, Goku22 said:

Hi Badguys, thanks for the input just wondering do you happen to know if the King mario of cramalot episode include the zelda cartoon preview on Pluto airings ?

 

 

From watching them, the videos on PlutoTV to be similar to the Shout Factory DVDs, and include every "Zelda" episode preview used as it was on Shout Factory's DVD release.

"King Mario of Cramalot" didn't have an episode preview due to the master tape that the episode had been sourced from (that episode's master tape was previously used for a rerun on Family Channel).

Then again, I haven't seen "King Mario of Cramalot" get run on PlutoTV that often.

 

As for the 80s pop covers, that had to be Saban's doing.  DiC likes to do "cheap", and music licensing isn't cheap, but the composers of the "Super Mario Bros. Super Show" were Haim Saban (had been composing music, and wasn't famous for anything outside of music composition on a lot of TV cartoons [Heathcliff, M.A.S.K.] and translating some anime [Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, Little Women] and cartoons [Ulysses 31, Diplodo] into English up to the 1st episode of "Mario Bros.", he would become famous later for adapting "Super Sentai" series for English-speakers, but that happened in 1994) and Shuki Levy (has a similar track record to Saban, but doesn't produce any film and is exclusively known as a music composer).

Edited by Badguys
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