Retronauts - 659: Holiday Special 2024 - Captain N: The Game Master

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

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Drafts Drafts Cards Draft Cards burning on an open fire protest marching everywhere Living costs getting higher and higher Air pollution fills the air Oh hello there

For the 14th time I almost didn't see or hear you come in Welcome once again to the Retronauts Holiday Cabin and parts unknown for yet another annual holiday special And this year I've decided to make things just a bit more festive by taking my collection of factory-sealed retro games, removing them from their packaging, and turning them into amusing Christmas tree ornaments with nothing but a power drill and a piece of string. Can you believe stadium events was trapped in that dusty old box for over 30 years? It's a damn shame.

But unfortunately, this year you're going to have to find some way to entertain yourself because after 13 years of covering holiday-themed video game topics, the bottom of the barrel has been thoroughly scraped, but good. So, I'm officially out of subject matter unless I, No, no, listen, podcasting about some bad old video game cartoon I've already covered is hack, and I know it's hack. And besides, what is this? The year 2013? Should I also create a listicle using nothing but parks and wreck gifts?

Ah, listen, for now, let's just quietly sit, stare at the floor, and wait for this whole wretched year to blow over. Oh, God, guess? And me without a podcast topic. I guess I better open the door and get this over with. Huh. What's this? A mysterious package I'm not expecting? And with no return address?

Well, it would be rude to not open this. Hmm, this is a strange spherical device with a note attached. I'll read it now. Dear Bob, this is you from the year 2050. Thanks to an executive order from President Mr. Beast, all content creators have been gifted one free use of non-harmful time travel in exchange for certain human rights. I've enclosed a device that creates a field which temporarily makes it the year 2013, mostly because I remember getting the same device from myself

26 years ago, and I'm simply trying to complete the loop. In any case, make sure you stay indoors on August 18th, 2029. When it happens, you'll know with love future Bob. Well, that was nice of me. Now let me just boot up this little device and, oh God, I have to create a username and password. All right, let's just try this out here opening up the window let's see if bob servo is to of course it's taken why is this all right that's the other guy okay so how about bob servo one and we're in okay okay we're going to activate this baby right now wow he was right the whole cabin has been surrounded by a bubble that temporarily makes it the year 2013 just smell that 2013 air now no podcast topic can be off limits Oh, and I think I know just the people I want to test this out on. Oh, look who it is. It's Henry and Drew. Come on in, come on in. It's so cold out there. I am mega chilled to the bone right now. I also speech impediment.

It's very cold to kiss. Well, because it's so cold outside, I heated up you guys some nice Mountain Dew game fuel. Now, the sell-by date does say 2010, but that's just the record. So, Henry, here is some Cortana coconut for you and Drew. I've got some Master Chief Melon, and I'm going to have a nice refreshing, all-natural Baja blast as we talk about today's subject. I hope this XBLA code still works. I'm going to be saving this. I'm sure you can buy some skins somewhere. For my avatar, I'm going to have the coolest kicks.

There's going to be a skin marketplace somewhere you can spend those points on. Well, welcome to the holiday cabin. Drew, this is your first time here. I hope the journey wasn't too treacherous for you. No, I was prepped by years of reading Nintendo Power, much like Kevin, our hero, in the series. And I realized that I didn't do any formal introductions yet. Let's start with Drew. Drew, who are you?

And more importantly, what are you doing here? I am here to discuss old TV and video games. So I guess this episode makes like the perfect cross-section of my interests. I am perhaps someone you might recognize from a very similar podcast called Talking Simpsons. where I've chatted with these two gentlemen about famous episodes of The Simpsons before. I have my own podcast called Gayest Episode Everywhere, we've never done a captain in an episode. And then I write about old video games at a website called Thrilling Tales of Old VideoGames.com.

And who is our other person here who is a frequent visitor nearly every holiday season since the late 2010s, I believe? It's been going quite a while. Yes, it's Henry Gilbert. Hello again from Talking Simpsons. And yeah, I could not stop myself from coming in here. to talk about another classic video game cartoon I watched as a kid, though, not my favorite. I'll just say that right now. Even as a kid, not my favorite.

Well, I'll admit, this is the 14th Retronauts Holiday Spectacular, and I'm absolutely out of video game-related Christmas things. I checked. There are some edge cases. There are some things like there's a recent Pac-Man cartoon that did a Christmas special. I need something to be a little more kitsy than that. So I am being a huge hack and returning to the retro gaming goldmine that is Captain End the Game Master, the classic. late 80s, early 90s cartoon that we last covered on retronauts in early or sorry late 2013 so it's been 11 years prior to this I was an ignorant 31 year old basically a child today I am a season 42 year

old my opinions about cartoons have been honed through nearly a decade of podcasting about animation so I'm ready to return to this it should be illegal to podcast about captain end in 2024 but through certain circumstances I have made it possible so that is the topic for today's podcast. You know what? There is an unwrapping scene in this episode, so it's thematically appropriate. Yes, although there's also some weird take on the Monster Mash, which is I was not expecting that at all. I guess, yes, a man with a big white beard does bestow a gift that is unwrapped by people. So it fits. It actually fits pretty good. I was so focused on wanting to buy a Game Boy, I didn't even see any of these qualities, these Christmas qualities. Well, I want to

talk to both of you about Captain N. That's the point of this entire podcast. But more importantly, where it fits into your life. Because previously, when we covered Captain N on a very short episode in 2013, it was a retronauts micro, I believe, 40 minutes long. Still available online if you want to give it a listen. Ray Barnhold and Jeremy Parrish were on. So you are two newcomers to talking about Captain Nen on a podcast. I want to know, what is your experience with this three-season cartoon program? Let's start with Drew.

So I think it's funny that we're going to talk like we have different experiences with it because traditionally the three of us have identical life experiences with most of these things. But I watched this because it was on and I was expected to watch it. And I think it was a really interesting thing to encounter when I did because I was like, I should like this more than I do. But like, I don't know. Something about this is weird. I was one of the few kids who actually played Kid Icarus before this TV show existed

because I was a word Greek myth like nerd. And I was very offended by the fact that it uses. the wrong name for Kit Icarus, does not call him Pitt. And then all the other weird things about this. And it's like, this is just something about this is off. And I couldn't put my finger on what it was until much later in life when I realized it was made by adults who did not live video games as much as I did. And this is just what we were stuck with. But if I watched a bunch of the episodes when you invited me on this because I wanted to re-experience them. And what I kept coming to is if I can use a Simpsons analogy, is that fair? Oh, sure. Yes. It's legal here.

You're familiar. You know that one Simpsons where they get snowed in on the last day of school for Christmas, and they have to watch a movie that Skinner makes them watch? And it's like some, like, cut rate, like, sea list boring thing. And it's the kids are irritated. And at one point Lisa is watching it, she's like, this couldn't have less to do with Christmas. And I'm like, yes, watching these episodes, I'm like, this couldn't have less to do with video games. They're just using video games as a mechanism to tell bad stories.

And Drew, I think you folks covered on gayest episode ever the NBC Saturday morning preview special in which Captain N was featured. Is that correct? It's hosted by some of the Save by the Bell kids. They're all in it, but only four of them go inside the TV. It's the boys and Lisa, which is weird. But they do talk up Captain N as if it's going to be something real special. This is probably why I was stoked to watch it because Saved by the Bell told me it was going to be good. Yeah, I think that was my entry point. I'll talk more about that later. Henry, Captain N and you. yeah i also uh because we all have the same childhoods i was more i was watching all of these deke shows

and i loved super mario brother super show and i couldn't have been more excited for the super mario brothers three show that was coming out and then this was along for the ride in my viewership of it though i definitely fell off of it when i was looking at the episode list i was like nope don't have no memories on this no by season two I actually was barely watching it and I think my issue was that I had not played Kid Icarus but we had played multiple Mega Man's

me and my brother and we love those and we owned Castlevania and I know this will sound like I'm saying like me as a kid felt the same way I do as an adult but I really did dislike that they were different I was like that when I could watch Mario Brothers I was like this seems like Mario the Weed

but when I watched this show it's like that's not them this isn't right like I couldn't vocalize why it wasn't right but it did bug me in that way now isn't at all that bugs me in that it is so disgustingly commercial even by an 80s cartoon

standards like that it bugs me there too this episode we're covering today especially the season two premiere Game Boy it's just titled the name of the product they want you to buy as for me again we're all born in the same year I don't know if we pointed out earlier we're all in

1982 babies. So we all counter this at the same time in our lives and the Save by the Bell Kids. I had followed them for a season. They had an NBC Saturday morning preview special. They told me I should watch Captain N. I had to listen to them. And I think I watched the entire first season and maybe a bit

of the second. I just like seeing my hobby and my interest reflected back at me because very few things were doing that. People were still kind of dismissive about the idea of video games. But like you, Henry, it did bug me that so many of the details I memorized were different

because little kids love to have a mastery over the things they can access and the things that they can have power over. And for me, that was Nintendo games. I want to learn what all the Nintendo games are, who's in them, who the enemies are, et cetera. And then when you're presented with something like this that gets it all wrong, it's existential.

It's an existential dilemma you have as an eight-year-old wondering, why are you trying to change reality cartoon? I feel like this was a crucial off-ramp in like understanding like what canon is and how canons can be different different continuities but like we had like the tim Burton batman movies and then the animated batman tv series and was like oh things can be different but i was a little bit older when i made that realization this came before it could accept that there could be differences you know also

yeah they were more fun maybe you'd accept it too yeah i mean in the past i think this was listicle fodder this was cheap internet joke fodder coming back to it now 11 years later There are some things I appreciate, especially in terms of the art and animation. And now I have a more familiarity with how a show like this is created. I understand what happened and what went wrong. So this will be more than cheap punching down. We're going to try to punch up, if anything, to try to elevate what's going on here. Yeah, the animation is better than I was expecting.

I watched the first episode, and it looks pretty damn good. And they do a good job animating some of these very weird designs for the characters in the backgrounds. Now, I would give this compared to the Mario Brothers 3 show that was its compatriot. I would say this is, on average, looks better than that show did. And that show was a slight upgrade from Super Mario Bros. Super shows extreme cheapness. Yeah, this is one of those secret anime shows for at least the first two seasons, where you watch it, especially this one where they all look like they're just in an anime, especially Kevin.

Kevin is very anime. And Lana, too. I mean, it had to be so painful for the Japanese artists who worked on this to see a character like Rockman slash Mega Man go from being like this perfect copy of Tezica style to this hideous creature in this episode or in this show. If anything, the characters are overdesigned in a very charming way, that made them very, very hard to animate.

Yeah. So let's talk about the history of Captain. and thankfully new research has been unearthed in the 11 years since I covered this. But in case you are under 37 years old, I can explain what Captain N is to you. It was a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon that mostly acted as a showcase for Nintendo products. You could ask your parents to buy you. And in mashing together these different video game realities, it sort of landed on a multiverse concept before. That's where everything ended up 30 plus years later.

Yeah, I guess this idea of video world that they can all tell. teleport to each other, isn't that different from Wreck-it-Ralph, I think. Or like Smash Brothers. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I can see the appeal of this. Smash Brothers has the out of like,

these are toys that come to life instead of like, no, this is them. This is that guy in the video game. This is that guy. They're all real. And the most important guy is named King Charles. So one thing I completely overlooked is the fact that Captain N actually began in the pages of Nintendo.

Nintendo Power, not as a comic, but as two installments of serialized fiction. I don't think this came up in the last podcast. If so, I apologize for not finding this out. Now, this is very controversial, and I'll go over it, because this is a real, he-she-said kind of thing, and I'm not sure I'm fully on board with this origin story of Captain N. So if you happen to read the Nintendo Power, November, December, 88, and January, February, 89 issues, you were treated to the short-lived adventures of Captain Nintendo. a.k.a. Captain N.

And thanks to the Internet Archive, you can easily read this two-part series because all the Nintendo powers, or a lot of them, are an Internet Archive. And it basically has the opposite premise of the cartoon Captain N. In the first chapter, a Nintendo employee named Brett Randalls is the victim of a microchip explosion. And this gives him the ability to take items from the video games and integrate them with his body. There's a sort of Kronenbergian aspect to this where microchips explode and then embed in his skin. It's very odd. That's freakish. This sounds also like fanfic written by

Nintendo employee about his life. It basically is. I can see Drew nodding. Drew, how much familiarity do you have with the original Captain Nintendo character and stories? So when I did my independent research on Captain N,

which will come up when we get to the character design part, I found this little nugget out. I was like, I don't remember these stories because I definitely had those issues of Nintendo power. And I remember the fiction where it's like that kid meets Link and the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches together. You know what I'm talking about?

I remember that one. Yeah, this was completely a blind spot for me until I actually looked it up and read the stories. So, like, I guess as a kid I must have been like, that's too much text. I'll read that later. And then to never read it because I don't recall ever reading it. But it is there in the old Nintendo Bowers. So it is funny that like I completely memory hold the entire thing. That said, I don't think it's that close to definitely be like the inspiration for Captain N.

I mean, Captain Blank is kind of a generic concept, you know? Yeah, well, we'll talk about who the source on this is very, very soon, but more about this Captain Nintendo character. So microchips explode, they embed in his flesh, he's able to pull things out of video games and incorporate them into his body, but also microchips hit some NES games, and then the villains come to life. Mother Brain is one of the two featured villains,

but she is really, or in the case of the story, I guess it is really just a creature that is fueling Gannon and the second chapter is about Captain Nintendo fighting Gannon in the Nintendo offices. It's very odd but again it is the opposite concept of Captain N where things are coming from games into our reality

and it's not a teenager it's a Nintendo R&D employee who has magical microchip powers yeah it does I'm curious to hear more on this but yeah I could I now vaguely remember back in the old days hearing oh did you

was ripped off from a Nintendo Power employee. Like, I had heard this story before. But I probably also had that Nintendo Power. But any wall of text with very little pictures, I wasn't going to stop to read that as like a 7-year-old or whatever. I was flipping to find the Howard and Nestor comic page. Yeah, the comics were more successful, and there's not enough spot art in these stories.

It is just a big wall of text. So this two-part Captain Nintendo's story was the work of Nintendo Power Editor Randy Stuttered, and he wrote a semi-exposé on his time at the magazine. And honestly, he seems like a real jerk with a big chip on his shoulder. I understand. It does sound like he was mistreated and mis-underpaid, but it feels like once you read his 8,000-word expose on the magazine,

I'm sure if you asked anyone who worked with him, they would say, oh, God, he was such an asshole. It feels like he's that kind of guy where the account he writes, this is my interpretation is, I was so brilliant, no one understood how brilliant I was. Maybe I was a little headstrong, but all of these females got in my way. And a certain lady boss, he calls the dragon many times throughout his expose. He sounds like somebody, yes, that everybody leaves the coffee room when he comes in there during break time.

It's kind of like if Robert Evans worked at Nintendo Power, that is how this exposee reads. Like, did I write that preview of Mega Man 2? You bet your ass I did. That's what it really feels like to me. That, it reminds me of that, that turn off the, like, oh, the making of Spider-Man turn off the dark book written by the writer of it and who basically says, if only they'd take it my ideas, it would have been great. I told every bad thing I told them not to do and every good thing was my idea, like that you have to question the source on these. It's sort of like when someone you know is telling you a story about how they were mistreated or insulted. And as the story unravels, you start to realize like, oh, no, you're the villain in this story.

You don't have the distance to realize this, but you're the villain. Is this person's manifesto or whatever? Is it easy to find online? Because I actually didn't read that part. Yes, it is easy to find online. It is linked from a lot of the Nintendo Power entries on, or sorry, Captain N entries on Wikipedia and the Captain N wiki. So it's very easy to find this. I'm not sure when it was written or where this guy ended up after writing this or where he is now.

But this is all still online and very easy to access. Cool. I want to look into this. So according to Stuttered, Captain Nintendo was his effort to give the company a spokes character with a little more edge than Mario. But after two installments, his editor acts of stories. So Stutter decided, I'm going to make this a marketing proposal to someone in marketing. Just so you know, in his manifesto, he calls this person an insidious little cockroach. So this is the kind of writing he's doing in his expose. He's not shy to let you know how he feels about the people he worked with that Nintendo.

So, yes, he brings Captain N as a marketing pitch to this department. Apparently, according to Stutter, this person loved the pitch. This included a Saturday morning cartoon, the entire pitch package. It's just an idea of where Captain N could be, what he could do, what kind of things he could be involved in. But then this person asks him, this person as Stuttered, would you mind if your ideas went somewhere and you didn't get reimbursed for them? Again, this is according to Stutter. And not soon after that, his boss tells him his pitch is being made into a Saturday morning cartoon. And I'm asking all of you out there to take this with a massive grain of salt.

There's many more details of the story I'm not telling you. One of the details is he made an oil painting of Captain N and someone stole it off of his desk. So there's also theft involved in this story. Come on. Yeah. Boy. It's like, that sounds like somebody who's saying that, like, I have proof I came up with it at this date. I, but it's like, okay, well, where is this painting?

I got stolen. Stolen off my desk by the mean, awful people, probably some bitch. If I can be devil's advocate for a moment, this guy does sound like a jerk based on what Bob is saying, but he could be a jerk and still have his idea ripped off. Those two things don't cancel each other out. Having lived in Los Angeles long enough to know that, like, people get ripped off, their ideas ripped off left and right all the time. Yeah, I mean, the problem is I'm willing to believe him, but his jerkiness and standoffishness, makes me less willing to believe him.

It's kind of like disagreeing with facts in his story, but I can totally see this happening. And it seems like he was mistreated. It sounds like people were being taken advantage of a Nintendo Power in terms of, oh, you're working on the game counselor hotline. Why don't you write for the magazine? We're not going to pay you like a magazine writer, and you still have to answer phones and everything. But we need help for this magazine, and maybe one day you'll see something out of it. But those facts seem true, but he seems just vicious.

viciously, viciously angry about this. Right. No, he has none of the, you know, holding his head high that Howard Lincoln, not Howard Lincoln, the Game Master Howard. Philip. Philip Phillips. Phillips. He seemed to be asked to do eight jobs at once, but he at least seemed to have a good

time with it until he went to LucasArts and was excited there instead. So, yeah, you can either believe Stuttered and, hey, that's up to you. I find him hard to believe, but I can see this happening. or you can choose to believe that Deak Entertainment independently chose to make this cartoon with the exact opposite concept. So there are two different, it's a he said,

he said, but you can see how Captain N could have come into being independently because it's so different than the stories he published in Nintendo Power. I mean, I feel like you could make as strong an argument that Captain Nent said rip off of Kid Video. Yeah, I'm not as familiar with Kid Video. I think it was just not available to me in my area.

I think we were, we, because we were the exact same age, we're just too young to lash on to it, but people who are a little bit older than us imprinted, imprinted on them heavily. And based on my understanding of how it worked, it does sound very reminiscent of this just with video games rather than TV world. So it makes me think that Deak Entertainment didn't see the Nintendo Power Stories

is the fact that their original pitch for Captain N was for it to be a cartoon based on another popular game. And that game was Paperboy. So Captain N started as a. paper boy cartoon in which the pitch was paper boy is the main character and then video game characters come into our world because the funny gimmick is they find our world as addictive as we find video games so the pitch for that eventually was called buddy boy because they found out there were legal problems with making a paper boy cartoon I'm guessing because even though

paper boy came out for the Nintendo paper boy was wholly an Atari owned property and I don't think Atari wanted their character advertising Nintendo as a whole. Yeah, that makes sense at that moment. I mean, yeah, that it started those, those, I saw those designs out there for the, the buddy boy show that makes, it also makes more sense that they'd have a kid main character as opposed to a teenager then, too. But, I mean, yeah, Deke, I, it's weird. We've talked with other people who worked on shows back then, and they could be that,

like Paul Provenzano who he worked on the acclaimed version of one of these shows that had you know the arch rivals characters and art characters hanging out but it could be that informal of like you meet one guy from Nintendo of America that says in the meeting hey what about this idea

it could have happened but it also is just such a obvious idea of like the kid like it's just the Wizard of Oz it's old it's our older like it's just such a classic story idea And now it's all the rage in anime. And it has been for like 30 years, I guess.

They should change Captain N's title to be one of those like, I just got tell. I just died. It got teleported to video world to save Princess Lana. What am I turned on? That kind of title. Yes, it needs to be at least 30 words long. And then a reference to something erotic in the title.

So, yes, the original pitch for the Paperboy cartoon was a collaboration between cartoonist, artist Phil Barlow and Deak Executive Richard Rainis. And we don't know much about the pitch outside of the fact that it's about video game characters coming to our world. And many of the designs, including Kid Icris, King Hippo, the Eggplant Wizard, and Green Mega Man are in place for this early pitch. Now, Drew, did you reach out to either of those two men? I think you have something ready for us here.

Both of them. But it's when we get to the next phase of the design. So, yes, Phil Barlow was the person who designed all the characters in that rendition of the show. And then the characters that came along in the next rendition, which include Kevin and Princess Lana, were not designed by him. They were designed by someone named Marcello Vignale. And I reached out to Phil asking him specifically if, to his knowledge, he knew if Princess Lana was designed to be a reference to Palutena, who was at the time a very obscure indigenous character. She's basically the princess in the Kidacris,

who's like, you rescue at the end of the game. And there's a lot of of weird design similarities between the two of them, where I'm like, oh, this has to be at. And I wondered this for a long time since I was a kid who cared way too much about Cadacris. And he referred me to Vignali. And Vignali said, the quote is, when we were working on Captain N, the Nintendo Corporation gave us a bunch of eight-bit images of their characters. In some cases, they sent us drawings or packaging art. I can't remember for sure if that was the case with Palutena, but from the look of her design, that was certainly where this design came from. That design being Princess Lana.

The similarity is too close to be a coincidence. So apparently that is, like, they needed someone who looked regal and vaguely classical. And they took, uh, proletana and like Kelly Kapowskied her into what she looks like. It's true. We had Kelly Kapowski and Lana on the same channel on the same morning. It was too much for me, frankly. Wow, man. Somebody, okay, the listener to this, and I bet we'll have more.

Get this, uh, source this on the wiki page. Yes, please. for Captain Nass. And then pay us money. I have an article about it on Thrilling Tales of Video Games so I can point people too. But the other interesting thing

about her being Palutana is that if you look at when Kittakeris came out, Palutana's design is basically based on Sayori Kito from St. Sayah, who is also an Athena character. They're very similar

in the way they function in their respective world. But that means that Princess Lana is a copy of a copy. And I'm sure there are people who watch St. Sayah And Captain End didn't realize that essentially

this is like an American version of the same character. Wow. Yeah, I really like Phil Barlow's designs now. I think in the past I thought, well, they look stupid. They don't look like they're supposed to. They have a really quirky over-design quality to them, again, that made them very hard to animate.

But there's so many of these designs that look like they would be on a goofy comedic sci-fi novel cover in the mid to late 80s or something about them. We'll get to some of the later designs in this episode, but some of them have visual gags kind of baked into the design that I think get lost in the animation. But I do like where this went, even though in the past, I thought it doesn't look like the guy on the box. It doesn't look like the guy on my screen. They just created a new character, even though he says his name is Simon Belmont or Kid Icarus. You've got me softening on these designs now a little, I guess.

Maybe they look better on a poster than they do in motion. I think these designs look best when their background images. So some of like the design for Princess Lana's Castle or a mother brain. Floating Fortress. They're actually, like, wild and really cool. And like you say, they look like old sci-fi novel designs. And it makes sense that Phil Barlow also worked on the Alfa animated series because it's like this, like, it's like, HR Geiger by way of Lisa Frank is, is like how I would describe what his look is. Because, like, they're really weird and interesting.

It's just hard to animate. Yeah. And not looking like the source material doesn't really help either when you're trying to sell this show to kids. Yeah. So also, Richard Reynes was the other guy who collaborated with Phil Barlow on the initial pitch for this. So if his name sounds familiar,

you've likely seen hit thousands of times because he's been a non-writing producer on The Simpsons since 1992. So every Simpsons episode since the end of season three, you'll see produced by Richard Reynes, and that's him. Man, so it comes back to the Simpsons again. Yeah. It's so funny.

And Reynus had a big hand in the Alf cartoon, and apparently the pitch for Buddy Bowdo. boy was going to be more like alf a more comedic show here it's kind of a serious adventure cartoon that has a lot of gags in it that's interesting man like well and alf had the good luck of being like one of the last tms ones that deke got to do before they got priced out of tms but not not no offense to the the overseas studios on this one yeah we'll talk about them and i had the uh the fortune to watch a bunch of alf at a bar the the cartoon elf alf alf tales Put Alftails on instead of sports, I say, when you're running a bar.

At least one TV should be Alftails. Everyone else can just be watching the hockey game or whatever. I want to watch Alftails and just wonder what the hell's going on. And also, so I want to cover Green Mega Man because that's a big sticking point with a lot of people. It's where all the Captain N jokes come from. Mostly, they really focus on this. So this is what Phil Barlow had to say about Green Mega Man. Quotes, I played the game for one night on a small TV.

I had to rely on memory when I did the color. for this pitch art. I wasn't even the colorist on this art that was handled by someone else. So the Mega Man colored green thing wasn't my call. So I guess it just depends on how old your CRT was, what the tint levels were at, whether or not you saw Mega Man as a blue character or a green character. I think it's weird that people object to the color of Mega Man and not that like this version of is basically devoid of any real characterization.

That seems like the bigger flaw to me. Like he's just, he's a speech impediment. And that's it. I feel like Kid Icris is the same character, too, because when I was watching it, this episode, it had been a long time. And when Kiddickrace appeared, I thought, oh, right, his thing is that he's in love with Lana. But it turns out all the men are. Yeah, which is great. It's all their thing.

I mean, she is hot, yes. But that doesn't have to be the thing. Well, she's the only girl also. So she's a smurfette issue as well there. She is the universe's only woman, or VideoLand's only woman, at least in some episodes. There's Mother Brain. Mother Brain's something. Yeah.

That's true. I just think of Mother Brain as an entity. Yeah. That's true. So, yes, Barlow designs are cool, but they're a little off. And what little we know about the production of Captain and the Game Master comes from a 2002 interview with Jeffrey Scott. It's still

preserved in all of its tripod glory online with the original formatting. It's 22 years old. No one's bothered taking it down. And Jeffrey Scott was an impossibly prolific children's television writer of the era. How prolific was he? He wrote the entire first season of Captain End the Game Master.

We will not be covering any Jeffrey Scott episodes here, but that was his thing. He said, like, lock me in a room for a month, I will give you a season of children's television, and that was his thing. And he's still, as of like 2022, I think, extremely prolific. He's still pumping out scripts at this same speed. Having watched notes of that first season while I was like cooking dinner and doing dishes this past week, it's not as bad as you think. Like, it is, in fact, maybe even helped by the fact that it does feel like it came from

one person's brain because it gives you a sense of continuity of the world that's harder to achieve when you have a team writing all the stories you know and comedy is in his blood because he is the grandson of Stoge Mo Howard so oh yeah Captain N does that stand for nepo baby it's yeah that his it was so funny for some other podcast thing I was doing research on like oh when did this dude die when did this stooge come around and And it was, you know, there was a book on the last days of Mo Howard and, like, Jeffrey Scott was one of the writers on it. And I was like, what, huh? Like that, it reminded me.

I think Bob had mentioned it before when we did The Muppet Babies. What a cartoon podcast. Yes, we podcasted about that in the, in the armpit of the pandemic. So that was a lot of fun to talk about. We were going insane on that podcast, I believe. So how did Jeffrey Scott get involved with Captain N? Well, apparently Jim Henson was involved, according to Scott. So Jeffrey Scott was pegged to write the entire first.

season but a suit at NBC had heard that his Muppet baby scripts were crap and had to be rewritten so he got Jim Henson to call the president of children's programming at NBC to tell him that was not true so in his final years of life Jim Henson wasted time to get the head writer of Captain N hired wow man and this but that's so funny because like that makes him working on a thing that you would that my imagination of Jim Henson would hate this video game this violent video game commercial show he wasn't asked his opinion on video games they just asked him is geoffrey scott good he's like yeah yeah i guess so i don't watch that muppet baby's crap that's what he sounds like uh if you've ever seen me either way yes exactly he's too busy counting the money to watch those episodes

so yes uh this might not surprise you but geoffrey scott was not a gamer though he didn't develop the show at all so that developing the show was not his task he was just handed the story bible episode ideas and according to scott he was told which games he'd have to cover either by nintendo or the network and then he play a bit of them to get a feel for what they were like but he most relied on outlines provided by nintendo when it came to learning more about the game so it seems like he wasn't given enough information in general and at this point i assume that it was harder to get resources from japan like what did bayou billy look like in the manual in Japan. What does this character

look like? I feel like they weren't really given enough, maybe just a vague text description of certain characters and enemies. I hope he at least got Game Master Howard's fax number for chatting about this. But get some tips from him. Yeah, I feel like that was one of Howard Phillips' many, many hats

he wore, or he was also like a Captain N consultant. You know, as far as an assignment for a writer, I almost think I'd have preferred that to what they would have gotten on Super Mario brother super show which is just you know here's the movie or genre pastiche we're going to do this time at the very least this one they're like you are going to this game world this is where your characters will be so the settings already made for you right there and then from that point geoffrey scott can just go he can pick whatever stock archetypes argue with each other and somebody gets kidnapped in the end yeah every game world is basically a montage world which stops you from writing anything too complex It's like, oh, now it's the Metroid montage.

Now it's the Bayou Billy montage. Now it's the Burger Time montage. So if you look up this interview from 2002, it's very fun to read because Jeffrey Scott is very polite. But you get the sense he's humoring someone who is a huge fan of something he does not remember doing. And this is only maybe 10 years after he finished working on Captain N. So it's not too far in the rearview mirror. But as he gets towards the end of the interview, there are so many answers that say, I don't remember. I don't recall.

one of the question is, why wasn't Samis-A-Ran in this? And he said, well, I've never heard of her, so that's probably why. Good answer. At the end, the guy says, I hope you come back for another interview. And he basically says no in a very polite way. You know, I think I have a roast in the oven. So I'll get back to you, though. And yes, he did not come back for a second interview.

So that's fun to look up. So check that out. If you just type in Jeffrey Scott, Captain at an interview, you'll find. mind it. And the interview does point out the fairly obvious bit of trivia that the series was going to be called Captain Nintendo, but it was being produced at the tail end of the Toyota

Cartoon Boom, and on the cusp of the 1990 Children's Television Act being passed. So by the fall of 89 NBC could see the writing on the wall and knew that calling a show Captain Thing You Should Buy was going to be a no-no according to FCC regulations. So

they went from Captain Nintendo to Captain N, and that's why it was named the way it was. And the Toyetic super toy focus children shows was really just 1981 to 1990. That was it. They tamped down on it better, but still it is like, in this case, yes, he's not called Captain Nintendo, but like, he has everything that you'd get in your Nintendo action deck. Like, every, it names all of these things. Like, it just, they got it to work as a commercial while still having it to the level that a politician might notice is not there. I'm curious why they just didn't call it the Game Master because they actually used that phrase in the show.

Like, that's the thing that exists in this world. People don't ever call him Captain N, dude. They just call him Kevin. They call him Kevin, yeah. I think one of the show calls him Captain N. And then Mother Brain will call him things like Captain Nini. I think only the villains refer to him as Captain Nen. I'm pretty sure.

But yeah, he's got the Zappa, he's got the NES belt buckle. He's fully decked out in Nintendo colors even, but it's Captain N. They don't live in Nintendo land, which I'm sure it's what it was called before, you know, the writing was on the wall. So they live in Video Land. And I'm sure Nintendo was a bit annoyed that it was being so broad, but ultimately they were saying the Castlevania world is literally called Castlevania. The Metroid world is called Metroid. We're not referring to these by the places they are, referring to them by the product names. Which makes sense considering the fun.

function of the show. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the show got me to play, like, we rented Kid Icarus because of seeing this. And, of course, I was too dumb of a kid to get it at all. Well, it's kind of a bad game, too. It is. Yeah. We did a whole podcast about the entire Kid Icarus series, and it was made under duress.

So there's a lot of reasons why it's not very good. So here is basic production info about the series. There's only 34 episodes, and they aired between September 9th, 1989, on October 6, 1991, and the third and final season amounts to seven 11-minute episodes that were intended to be paired with a Super Mario World cartoon. And technically, this is a separate series because it had to be licensed in addition to the first two seasons as a separate DVD release.

So I see. So I guess that would mean budget-wise. It was coming out of the adventures, the Super Mario World budget, not its own unique one then. I'm guessing it was really truncated and also NBC was really pulling out of animation at this point. And 9192 was their last traditional Saturday morning with cartoons.

After that, it moved over to TNBC with all of these Saved by the Bell spin-offs in similar shows that were all about kids being paid cheaply on cheap sets having teen problems. I watched the last episode to air before we recorded today because I was just curious because it's the Final Fantasy theme one. And I'm like, it is really weird that there was a Final Fantasy themed episode of Captain N. And, like, Astos the Dark Elf and Matoia the Witch are characters in it. And it looks like so much dog shit. Like, Princess Lon is kind of the main character, but she looks drunk for most of the episode. It's just not a great look. This is anime, like, kind of low-budget anime for the time, seasons one and two.

Season three, they redesign all the characters to make them easier to draw because whoever they're giving these to animate are they're giving no money in time. So season three is markedly worse in terms of how it looks. I kind of like just looking at this show because it is just 80s anime but season three is just hard to look at but thankfully there's only seven episodes I always assume that Final Fantasy

episode just like the Dragon Warrior One is just because Nintendo of America invested a lot in publishing those here and nobody bought them and they have to keep giving them away so they were trying to give it a push in that early days Oh yeah that makes sense

just trying to get the RPG market started it wouldn't happen until Pokemon in America. Well, I mean, FF7, that was how they learned to trade. Sony knew, no, just lie. Just don't say it's an RPG. That'll get them to buy it. Show full motion video during wrestling events and TV shows. So there were no Captain N toys, though I'm assuming there were T-shirts and folders and things like that.

I was looking online and I saw what looked like to be authentic vintage Captain N shirts. So I think apparel is as far as it went. and then Valiant Comics released a five-issue Captain N comic book series in 1990 as part of their Nintendo Comic System brand I bought a few of the other

Valiant comics as a kid but I did not like them I thought they were ugly and bad They sucked They sucked I hated those comics And I would have read Any comic book at any time then

I would all I did was read comic books back then if I wasn't playing a video game And they just made me feel Like the Mario ones were like this is The one I remember best of Mario ones is like he eats he is he is the he's trying to be married

he won't take off his frog suit and the big birth of the fish wants to marry him like in the or the Game Boy one actually is really weird because Super Mario uh separate from the Mario characters he pops out of his Super Mario land game but in the real world and the game boy is just this artifact everybody's fighting over it is where

that both this and the Game Boy comics just really botched the idea of like telling a story that would compel people to buy this product. Yeah, in this episode, Game Boy is just kind of annoying and people want to euthanize it, but we'll get to that very soon. Game Boy will break your toys. There is a, there is a Captain Nen comic though where you meet Sammas and they have a big gender reveal of like Samus is a girl, so they kind of made good for the fact that what's his face did not know who Samus was. Yeah, I should point out that Nadia put together an episode about the Valiant Comics, and I'm sure they're all easy to read on Internet Archive if you're interested in checking them out.

There's not a lot of them, and it's obvious why Nintendo shut them down, along with shutting down things like this. I feel like after 91, 92, they said, we're not doing anything like this. We're doing a movie, and it's going to be great. Also, Valiant Comics collapsed even harder than the NBC Saturday morning in 1992. Yeah, what happened to them, Henry? Were they around not long after the, they were the defunct not long after these comics came out. Well, basically all comic

books went bust in 93. Like, it was this huge implosion, 93, 94, I'd say. And Valiant really overspent and thought they got to be the third publisher for a little bit, but then when Image Comics came around, they stole all of Valiant's

market. And Valiant probably also wasted a lot of money on licensing these Nintendo comics that weren't very good. Yeah, I assume that the license was not cheap for a company like Valiant. Though I think in that comics, too. It's only Nintendo characters that Kevin meets up with, right?

I believe all of the side characters in this that are owned by Nintendo aren't even in it. Which means you get more kiddickress, so I was very happy. Well, when it comes to animation production, based on the available credits, it seems like all of the storyboards were done in America and then shipped overseas

to be animated, which means a lot of people who didn't speak English had to put the pieces together, and that's why a lot of the show is very awkward, even though the drawings are very nice and the animation can be nice. I feel like they were given a lot of responsibilities because this show had to get out the door very quickly. So no studio is credited on the first season, which is very strange. Normally they would say animation services by J country. Let's not see what the J stands for. It's some other

foreign land. Yeah. But on season two, the entire second season is credited to Spectrum Animation, which is a studio made up of former TMS employees that animated some of the best-looking episodes of Batman the animated series like Heart of Ice the first episode produced on leather wings and beware the gray ghost and actually they worked so hard on Batman that's what made them go out of business because they worked too hard on Batman yeah I love Bruce Tim on the commentary for Heart of Ice makes this reference like hey look how good the frosting on mr. freeze's helmet looks that's because it is airbrushed on each cell that's the reason spectrum no longer exists because they spent they did

too good a job and spent too much money. But wow, they earned that had to be an early gig for them because Spectrum was like a spinoff from I believe TMS or TOWA, one of those, but started as a spinoff of those. Yeah, it was TMS and this probably was one of the first things they did an entire season of Captain N. So

I do want to go over a bit of the cast here in what they did before and after, but I'm only going to go over a few of them because with a lot of them, the story is the same. There's lots of voice acting and character actor work in things filmed and recorded in Vancouver, especially anime and especially anime recorded by the Ocean Group. So as I sit here in Vancouver, the entire cast of Captain N is all around me, and I just

have to find them. I imagine it's like living in L.A., Drew, although with different circumstances. Like, Harry Shear could be walking down your sidewalk right now. I don't think I ever told you guys, but one day I walked out my front door and I saw Mr. Belding walking down the street. Well, that's when you call the cops. Yeah, I was like, this feels more. He needs help getting home, I think.

So, yes, I want to go over some of the characters here. And then maybe as we listen to the voices, we can pick out a few more. But Kevin Captain N. Kean is played by Matt Hill. And he's still voice acting as recently as 2020. Captain N is on his first role, though it looks like it was the beginning of a long career as a voice actor. Notable to nerds of our age, he was the voice of Raphael in the third Ninja Turtle movie. and he was also the English dub voice for Panny Hose in the English dub of Ronma one half

And notable to people lately younger than us He is also Ed with 1D and Ed Ed Ed and Eddie The stupid one So doing a way different voice for that character Yeah Yeah, wow Yeah, Ed Ed and Eddie is secretly a very Vancouver show It's from animation, voice, all that stuff

And I swear every younger voice actor in this Is in that Ronma dub the one everybody knows and loves They stuck together A few years after Captain N, they're all working on Rana for Viz And Princess Lana is played by Venus Terzo, which is an amazing name

And in keeping with the very Vancouver-y theme here, she's a character actor, does a bit of voice acting. After this, she was the dub voice of female Rahnma, also Gene Gray and X-Men Evolution, so a lot of roles for her. But to cut to the chase, Mother Brain is played by Levi Stubbs, clearly cashing in on his Audrey 2 fame. He played Audrey 2, the voice of Audrey 2

in the film version of Little Shop of Horrors. He was the lead vocalist for the Motown group, The Four Tops, and this is really the only voice acting he did out of Little Shop of Horrors. No one else got him. Maybe he just hated doing this so much he never wanted to go back. I mean, it sounds like he's having fun. It sounds like he's very comfortable going through all the pitches

and valleys of Mother Brain's emotions. I think he must have cost as much as 10 Vancouverites to get him. Yeah, he is one of the characters, I think in the credits he has called out in Levi Stubbs as Mother Brain. He gets a special credit, as does the kid who plays Kevin in the live action intro. And he only did one other thing, and it was an episode of some new Lassie show. So he gets a special credit and the dog who plays the dog in the live action intro. But no one else is credited by like this person played Kevin, this person plays Lana, et cetera, et cetera.

You mean the dog they painted the face of? Yes. Like Duke? Yeah. Makes me sad every time I see it. But yeah, any other general notes on the production before we get to the episode in question here? The person who voices Kittakeris is later became very famous. He was on Battlestar Galactica playing like a kind of grown-up role.

And it's really weird thinking of that actor who has a certain amount of gravitas on Battlesart Galactica doing the Kidakurus voice. I can't quite make it make sense in my head. Yeah, here he is a child with a crackle. voice. No grabitas to be found. Yeah, I think I saw a little shop of horrors around the same time as this, so that probably got me to watch

Captain in a little more, just that I, though I think as a kid, I think I didn't even really realize it was the same person. I was like, oh, that sounds like, it feels more like a thing. Somebody would have told me like in 1994. Oh, do you know that's the same voice as Motherbrain?

What is sheer lunacy is the fact that they made a little shop of horrors cartoon? And they did not get Levi Stubbs to reprise his role. I'm guessing because of money. Yeah. It's hard to think of a show that is done cheaper than Deak, but they did exist. So let's move on to the episode in question. The episode is Game Boy.

It is the season two premiere. It aired on September 8th, 1990. And by the way, if you're looking for the episode, there's DVDs, obviously. But the fine people at Wild Brain Entertainment posted all of seasons one and two a decade ago. And this episode barely has 80,000. views all these years later. So it's safe to say that this show did not retain

the kitsch value it once had. Well, we're changing that today. Merry Christmas. I hope to see 20,000 more hits on every video. But it's weird that I've made videos that have gotten more hits than the Captain N thing posted it 11 years ago, and that's crazy to me.

And it's the official thing. This is not somebody who uploads VHSs like so many other things. It's just wild brain putting it out there. I'm impressed that Nintendo allows this to happen and works with Wild Brain on this instead of like locking it down. I mean, maybe there's only so much legal action they can take, but they seem to let it just happen. Yeah, I feel like there is no working with Deke. Deke just owns the rights to this and they can do whatever they want with it.

Or sorry, Wild Brain. And actually, I walk by Wild Brain fairly often in Vancouver. And I feel like I should knock on the door and try to find the authentic Captain End tapes because there is one missing episode that's a clip show, but it's not available anywhere. And I wonder if they have it. So to kick things off, Captain N decided to spice things up by having more than one writer on season two.

It's a crazy idea, but they went with it and it worked. And the writer of this episode is Dorothy Middleton. So it's written by a woman, not a guy named Jeff. And she is the story editor for seasons two and three, meaning she's kind of the showrunner in terms of children's television. In traditional TV

writing, a story editor is usually the lowest rung on the ladder, or maybe staff writer is and then story editor and then you get a producer credit and then it goes up from there but in kids animation story editor was at least in this point in time you are the showrunner you're getting a bunch of scripts sent to you

you're organizing them you're rewriting them you're deciding what gets cut and what doesn't get cut so that's her job here I don't think there's a writer's room for captain and the game master no yeah it's it's more back then it's just like you got the scripts in make it work get this on

deadline and probably get this done your part of the job done in two to three months so they can stop paying you on this freelance basis like certainly I would bet she was not an employee of Deek doing this story editing I don't think so and before this I wanted to see

what she did she was also the showrunner for the one season the Karate Kid cartoon and a chunk of the Police Academy cartoon she was not the showrunner for all of it because there were 65 episodes so I think duties were spread around for that show unbelievable no way

I would have thought that it's 13 and done. Sixth? That's insane. I assumed the same until I clicked on the Wikipedia. Lincoln saw it. Nope, 65. They all aired in 13 weeks and then no one saw them again. Wow. Okay, so it was still a one season thing. They just over-rested. They bet big on Police Academy, the show. I have very vague memories of just seeing it on TV and thinking, well, I haven't seen the movie, so I think I'm missing something.

I think a lot of us has changed the channel. I think it had the same Ghostbusters deal of like, this doesn't look. like you're not looking at Steve Gutberg on screen here. And outside of a few minor things after this, her career in television basically stopped, and I tried looking her up and nothing came up. I'm not sure if she's still with us, but it seems like she changed career paths or maybe became an executive or I'm not really sure where she ended up, but she was for a few years show running these very IP-driven cartoons.

Sadly, she didn't have the opportunity to become a podcaster back then. No, no, although that'd be a great interview. I want to know how the production of something like this goes down because clearly Jeffrey Scott did not remember. So we opened with the opening sequence of this episode, which is a little different than the opening from season one. I like the season one opening more because we get a tour of Video Land, the various characters, what all the worlds look like. Here, this is wholly devoted to setting up how Kevin and Duke ended up in Video Land with the live action footage. And in the first season, the sequence ends with Kevin firing his out. separate the screen, making the logo appear here, it's Game Boy right in your face with the logo on

his screen. So Game Boy is the focus, really, of season two. And we're going to discuss whether or not he is a poochie character, because I feel like he kind of is a poochie of Captain Ed. I definitely feel like he is. Absolutely, yeah. I, about this truncated season two opening, number one, it is where I learned the word skeptical, because I had not heard that word before I had to ask my mom what it meant. Number two, I wonder if, I wonder if, you know, I wonder if, the thing they took out of the first season intro is when Kevin's mom yells off screen that it's time to clean his room and he responds by jumping into video land that like on some level are like are we encouraging kids to run away from their parents I think maybe we are

they kind of are or he yeah dive into your TV if your mom is sassin at you see what happens next when I watch this opening as a kid I also think I was a little bothered how similar it was to the the the Super Mario brother super show of like oh so nobody's a person in this world like at least in Zelda Link is just Link he lives there But even Mario and Luigi They're teleported into this world

And they're just always talking about the real world They're real world guys At least you get to see with Kevin He's a real person who came to the video game world I think that's a go-to for a lot of these adaptations This Mario also The Masters of the Universe movie It's always like what if thing was in real world

What if Real World thing ended up there I feel like that's the first thought, the first draft, and people often don't go beyond that. Yeah, actually, that was both the plot of the Super Mario Brothers anime film in 86 and also the plot of the 2023 Super Mario Brothers animated film. And the 93 movie. And kind of the plot of the live action film, too. Yeah, yeah.

They're all the same movie. We said this when we cover the Illumination film. But seriously, it makes me think it has to be that it's what Miyamoto approves of. And he's the one commonality with those threes. that he would have been in those meetings. We'll investigate later. So we start on the Palace of Power. Lana's here.

She's anxiously awaiting the return of her dad, King Charles. And we have one of those now, finally. After 30 whatever years, King Charles exists. For now. Can we say Captain N predicted it? I think so. There's not enough Captain N predicted it, actually. We need to start writing those articles because the Simpsons once are angering me.

You know, I have a theory about that truncated opening. I forgot to mention is that I saw that. I saw that it was Haim Saban Shuki Levy was the first season intro and they are not the credited writers of the second season intro. As Haym Saban super fans know that him and Andrew Hayward hate each other

and they had a big falling out around this time. So they could just be part of the getting rid of the Haym Saban stuff while they're clearing Deke of his because I believe Saban tried to buy Deke and they couldn't it was there was a real mess there well on this series saban and levy are the composers but i think they aren't for this season i think their music might only be for season one okay i was looking into this i think the music in season one is better and i feel like they took a different

creative direction and it would make sense if this pairs up with him falling uh them falling out with deke interesting yeah i i didn't notice saban and levy Sabana Levy hired much better people to steal the music from and put their names on than So to catch you up on the story of Captain N There's a bit of a recurring thing here Because Mother Brain banished King Charles

To a Mirror World via a warp zone These are terminologies that are used throughout this episode Kevin was summoned as this kind of chosen one figure To Rescue the King And up front immediately Lana and Kevin Look in anime ASL both looking very hot depending on whatever you're into, that's the first thing you see.

Two extremely hot anime characters up front. And the important fact here is that this interdimensional warp zone only opens every 1,000 video years and they're trying to get this all worked out so the king can communicate with them. I don't know how long a video year is, but apparently they're going to live through

several thousand of them in their lifetimes. I feel like all the proper nouns in the sentences you just said need asteris and the asteris all goes through. This doesn't mean anything. is a mirror world is that a kiddicarous thing or what there's a mirror shield in kiddegra's but no i think they just made that i i think that's wholly original it is funny on the hotness level that for kevin when they make up like who's the greatest video game player in the world and it is a guy who's

like he's the quarterback of the football team yeah that's who how where does kevin find the time to exercise if he's going to master every video game okay so this this is the interesting thing there's an episode in season one we found out that kevin was picked on and bullied by a much more jockey kid and that explains like oh I don't think Kevin was very popular I think he was like a little weiner who just played video games all the time although it does not explain why he has a Letterman jacket

Yeah I don't know he's really personified as a Zach Morris Smart Aliki guy in this Just like Zach Morris he can press pause on the world too That's true yes oh good pull Wow wow maybe they were stealing from Saved by the Bell The Zach Fellow is rather popular with the children So yeah they're trying to open this warp so the king can get through to them All Captain N has to do is push a button

But he's delaying this for some reason Because video games are a specialty I didn't get this line at all Yeah, why are you procrastinating because I like video games? Okay, don't know I mean, that's poochy rules right there Like let people know that he likes playing video games up front Just in case they are unsure

And it's almost like they're launching nukes Because Mega Man is having a key extend from his robo finger To turn in this machine So they can fire a laser out of a porthole in the ceiling it's very complicated. My first thought seeing that was like, oh, it's a USB stick is coming out of his head

or his finger there. The release is Ribbon off Robocop. But in our first clip here, it's time to hear about the latest Nintendo product. Just think, Kevin. Soon my father will be safely home again. Now, don't get your hopes up too,

High Lana. He may not have made it to the warp in time. He'll be there. I know he will. Hey, there's something coming in. Rips! Father, you made it. You're coming home.

Not quite yet, dearest daughter. But why not? I miss you so... And I miss you, little one. With a lass, there is only room for one traveler in the space capsule. I have decided it is best for Video Land to send another in my place. He is called Game Boy. What's a Game Boy? He's a remarkable child from this world

Who can help you battle the forces of evil That may our land I truly believe he will one day be our greatest hero Take care of him, Lana He's been like a son to me Kevin comes very close to saying What's his name again? I forgot Yeah

Well this aggravated me up front Because they could have solved the entire problem The underlying problem that they're having he can just come to video land and save everything but no he doesn't want to abandon a child who lives in Mirror World if I mean personally

if I'm Lana I'm like okay fuck this guy why was I crying every night for my lost father he has one chance to ever be with me and he sends us this somebody else with no instruction manual or anything

like though in Lana gets over pretty quick but he's also like oh this this person has been like a child to me. It's like, I'm your child. I mean, you've known me for considerably longer, I would imagine. Come see me. I also like that they are saying at the start of the season, you know, well, I guess the premise is dead now. See you later, Kevin. Like, why is this even a TV show? Don't worry about rescuing me. Just hang out with Game Boy. By the way, his voice is done by

Long John Baldry, who plays Robotnik in the funny Sonic cartoon. You can definitely hear it there. That guy's the greatest. He is such a fun. I talked all about what an interesting wild man that guy was from when we cover that on a cartoon. Did you talk about how that Elton John song is about him? That is right. Yes. Yeah. He was a very interesting guy, but man, I can't hearing Lana now in this clip, I'm like, God, I watch too much

Romma one half in the English language dove. Like, I'm just hearing girl type Romma. So yes, Game Boy is coming to visit. Inexplicably, I don't know much about the mirror world by I guess sentient computer boys live there and like with mother brain their interpretation of the character is very literal so they are designing mother brain mother brain oh what it's if it's a big brain character that's kind of like a mad mother-in-law this one game boy oh game boy is like a little brother so this kind of like a scrappy do too where it's like a little rambunctious kid character that's kind of what they're going for here no this show maybe

this is another reason i bounced off of it as the i'm the only older brother on this podcast to give a small difference in what's different about us as very similar guys. This is a show about like, oh, everybody's like a younger brother annoying Kevin. Like they just all are like jealous little brothers wanting attention. And now they're adding another little brother to this show. I mean, we're also just not mentioning the fact that like this show's way for dealing with like having to advertise the Game Boy is making the Game Boy a physical character who exists and talks to people. rather than it being just like another plane of existence where you can go into video games

which seems like it would be the more obvious way to tackle the subject. Yes, thank you, Drew. I think I just take this at face value because I've seen it so much but it is the crassest choice imaginable to have just the character exist in the same form as the product you buy on the shelf.

I guess it could have become another maybe it would have been more crass if Kevin got it as a new tool like his zapper or whatever that it's like, oh, I can do this with the Gameboy. Then it's literally one to one. of your item and you're playing it. Maybe that is that's too close to a commercial.

I feel like they should have just put him in the packaging. So it's just the box floating around. So kids know what box to look for. And that first Game Boy box is very cool, by the way. Also, this guy needs to just be, this King Charles needs to get a vote and no confidence for sending this kid sucks.

Like he is actually wrong in doing this. Lana should just say, like, you know what, I'm the queen now. Yeah, I don't trust. Charles' leadership. He's just sending this Game Boy for reasons that are unknown, but he's like, oh, I'll find a way to return one day. And then immediately

Simon Belmont enters the scene here. He's trying to get Kevin out of the picture by teaming up with Game Boy, immediately trying to buddy up to this new character, which has not entered the scene yet. He's still coming via satellite. I mean, Simon is ready to make his move at all

times. He's a very proactive, too, of his game. And Lana's going through some massive mood swing. She immediately gets over not seeing her father again for a thousand video years. She's way into having a baby brother to the point where Kevin falls out of his chair at the idea of him getting no attention from Lana. I guess he's no better than the other boys who want it. Maybe I'm trying to think of what other old thing they're inspired by here. Maybe it is just Peter Pan.

Like, this is way everybody wants Wendy's attention of the lost boys. Yeah, that could be true. Peter Pan at least has Tiger Lily. Like that literally is not really another female character except for the one episode where Zelda shows up. and they all argue over who Lana likes best. Even Kevin gets involved in this. And, I mean, I would choose maybe one of the two adult men if I was her. But honestly, they're all too, way too desperate.

Little guys don't have a clue that they're not really in the running here. No, no. It's like when the little kid has a crush on teacher. And she's like, oh, that's very cute. Well, I don't read you mega bedtime stories because I want to sleep with you, Mega Man. Uh, yeah, uh, Meggie, I mean, also they both have, they have problems, uh, as well, I'd say. We just covered, uh, the, the film, Eight Crazy Nights on our Patreon, Henry, the Talk to Mrs. Patreon. I feel like Whitey and Mega Man are related.

Oh, yeah, that's right. They've, whitey is from the same speech impediment school as, as Mega Man and kid. Just in terms of, like, the size and shape of the character, I feel like they, there's a lot in common. So, Kevin tells the guys to stop fighting because, uh, uh, she's the man or he's the man for her rather and then we cut to mother brain who has her own plans for game boy in our next clip so the king's sending them into a hero well not if I get my tentacles on him first

egg flight hippo finance center yes my main brain you idiot get up and get me that game boy I see something this. The tractor beam has locked on to something headed this way at mega warp speed.

Here, I'll punch in a close-up. Hey, it's a mega satellite. Hey, that's mother brains too, goos. They're trying to intercept. We've got to stop them. Get ready. gonna be like taking candy from a baby I feel like if any

of the freelance writers turned in a script where Mega Man did not say Mega in every sentence and Kid or Chris did not say Iqis in every sentence they were blacklisted immediately they did not work in L.A. ever again. How are the kids going to know who these characters are if they don't have their speech impediments? See, that's the story editor's job now

in season two and it's not Scott. She probably had to add in many megas in I can't believe these idiots left out eight megas. This is what they hire me for. Boy, Kevin sounds very Canadian when he was saying his line. Yeah. These two gunes.

I just like, this is all designed to sell the Game Boy. The entire season is Mother Brain goes, give me that game boy. Yes, yeah. Again, as a kid, this did get me to rent Metroid and Punch Out. And when I saw the Mother Brain like didn't have a face or the King Hippo wasn't blue, I was very confused by these things. Yeah, the color designer was having a really fun time with this show. And also, the character designer was having a lot of fun depicting gigantic male nipples on King Hippo.

They are so distracting as someone who, I like a larger gentleman, but he's not drawn in a way to make largeness look enticing at all. It's not a great, it's not great. His nipples scarred all these children. This is why you don't see nipples on cartoon characters much after. Mario has nipples, though, canonically. Canonically, yes. Say what you will about the villains. they all have pretty clear personalities from like the moment you meet them.

You're like, okay, that's the big dumb one. That's the little snivly one. And then Mother Brain is like an insane diva. And the only one of the good guys who has anything even approaching that is Simon, who's just like gay buffoon. But like it's, it is interesting that like it's so much easier to write bad guys that have character than it is to write good guys, apparently. Yeah, Simon is fun because he has a personality. Mega Man and Kid Echorus are just there to tell you exposition while adding their own little speech impediment. meant suffixes to certain words

that's it that's all they're there for and Kevin and Lawner are pretty bland too honestly yeah just not a whole lot there yeah the villains are a lot more fun I feel like this next set piece was supposed to be a game themed set piece but they didn't get the rights or the game owner didn't pay enough money

to be featured on Captain N so it's just generic space shoot them up kind of stuff going on here yeah why is this art type or something yeah like whatever was that for the Nintendo at the time like Life Force or Gradius or whatever. It could have been anything like that. Clearly Namco is not playing ball with this stuff then.

So this is a kind of a boring little space set piece, but they're trying to intercept the Game Boy satellite because it's coming in from the mirror dimension. I don't know how this works. The show doesn't explain it, but they're trying to grab it out of the sky, eggplant wizard and hippo, with their machine's claws.

And this is when Kevin and Simon emerge from a warp zone in a smaller craft of their own and Hippo and Eggplane go on the offense by firing a corn at them through the windshield of their craft somehow the corn phases through. Right. And it's functional corn,

but I guess like you say, that the villains are better to find at least as like characters with a thing to do. You know, Eggplant Wizard, he can do anything you need as long as it creates a vegetable in it.

He's also constantly shedding vegetables as if they are body leavings. I don't really understand how that works. That's how he reproduces. He produces like spores or buds or whatever. Yeah, so I want to get through this part quickly. It's kind of boring. Basically, Kevin and Simon do this Beverly Hills cop maneuver

by getting all the corn fired at them and putting it in their exhaust port and tricking them into taking off in another direction, which heats up the popcorn, fills the ship with popcorn, and dispatches King Hippo and Eggplant Wizard temporarily. As we go to commercial break, Kevin says, call me corny, but man, do I love this game? And my comment was, what game?

What game are you referencing? I don't know what to buy and I'm scared. Yeah, you know, it makes me think that how they later, maybe it was even a light cut because when they later go into a game and Kevin says the name of the game, it's off screen, which maybe makes me wonder if they're like, in case we can't get the rights, don't, let's not have lip sync for the game name. Yeah, they could be just to save their asses in case they couldn't clear it

or the check didn't come in from the Burger Time people. So there's a break, we come back. There's a weird time cut because we start on the satellite floating through space and then we fade to all the characters standing in front of Game Boy. Game Boy has fully emerged from this craft. We don't know what happened to it. But in our next clip here, we finally meet the thing we can buy. Well, what do you know?

Game Boy is some kind of weird computer. Just what we needed. A brain and a bump. Let's get his batteries loaded and check him out. Easy, fella. He won't bite. I don't think. I am called Game Boy. I am programmed to play games. So yes, welcome Frank Walker to the show. Be really doing a slimer voice. Slimer mania has gripped the country right now in 1989, or 1990, rather.

It's still holding on tight. and because Game Boy makes the beeping noises and makes Frank Wilker voice noises, I feel like Frank Wilker came in in one afternoon laid down all the Game Boy dialogue and that was it for Frank Welker, a guy who gets L.A. wages on this Vancouver-based voice recording show.

And I mean, by 1990, Frank Welker already is like the most in-demand guy in animation, in voice acting in L.A. anyway. I think back to Mark Evaneer, who was the story editor on Garfield and Friends. He was worked with a million people and is also a professional voice director. He says, your job as a voice director

is you interview everybody in town and then you hire Frank Welker. Like, that's how it works. You have to prove you've done the leg work. Or that you temporarily lost Frank Welker's number. Drew, go ahead. Sorry. Is it worth it to hire him

and pay the Frank Wilker wage for this? Because Game Boy's voice is really annoying to listen to. And I feel like you don't need to pay a lot of money to get that. Like, that's pretty easy. I'm sure you can find someone that can do that at like a third of the cost.

It doesn't really just add anything because it's so annoying to listen to. I think they just wanted to coast on slimer recognition to keep kids stuck on the floor on the couch where, oh, this new character,

who is he? Well, he sounds like slimer. And I like slimer. I'm not going to change the channel. And he floats around. He floats around like slimer too. Yeah. Yeah.

Actually, I could see them just saying, like, well, if we're going to get a slimer on the show, let's just hire slimer. Like, maybe they listen to somebody let them get slimer for as cheaply as possible but then yes it bugs me how very little he speaks in this

and then how can Game Boy be a character if he never really talks and another challenge for the artist is that they have to depict very symmetrical not symmetrical but very precise pixel graphics on his screen and earlier with the king communicating with the characters

they have to kind of fake pixelization with pencil drawing so I feel like they're asking these animators to do a lot that sounds easy on paper like oh game boy makes this image appear on the screen but it has to look like it's actually on a game boy screen yeah that I their concept for game boy too is like

I think obviously they all come to love game boy eventually for no good reason I would say but if they're going to stay okay you want to make me by a game boy which you don't need to I wanted it the second I heard it existed but if you want to do that make him fun he needs to be

he actually is everybody doesn't like him. It is, it's the reverse of Pucci in that regard. Everybody loves Pucci the second you see him. Everybody here does not much care for that's true. Oh, go ahead. He sucks. No, no. He just, I was saying he sucks. He does suck. It's a weird decision to make that I'm surprised Nintendo signed

off on, but I assume that they, as long as he was featured on the show, they didn't have any suggestions or care really. But the second he shows up, he's a jerk who breaks everything. Because I guess the working concept is he's a little kid with a lot of energy, but everybody is completely sick of his shit very early on. He literally will break

other toys. Now I mean this is such that this plot from this point onward is so the plot of just a stock sitcom plot of you know everybody tells Stephanie she's annoying so she runs away from home and the Tanner family has to get her back like it's it's the new little brother kind of story except here it's in video world. Yeah I don't want to go over all the details but he basically terrorizes every character and then eventually he overcharges all of the kitchen appliances they shoot goop over everybody and he jumps into a warp zone and that's when the characters end up in burger time here's a little clip of burger time world what kind of mega world is this from the looks of these outfits i'd say it's burger time oh yuck i've got egg on my face at least you're not in a mega pickle

Yep. Ready to commence gameplay. Begin. I'd better go get him so we can warp out of this crazy world. Okay, hot shot. Let's shake this joint. Hot shot? Shake. I'm playing the two. I haven't played this game in a while.

a while. I forgot about the pepper. But, geez, come on. It's maybe mega harder than it loves. It's real hard to hear that voice with nice podcasting headphones on. Yeah, it's real gross. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, sorry. I just have a lot of issues.

Oh, me too, me too. Number one, why are they playing Burger Time? Why are they not playing a Game Boy game? I realized there was a Game Boy version of Burger Time. But that was hardly like a flagship title for the Game Boy. It's just so bizarre. And all the games that they're jumping into, it is randomly Burger Time in the episode

where they're trying to trick us into wanting the Game Boy. Yeah, no Game Boy games are featured. Instead, it's all of these very old video games. So Burger Time was released for the NES in 1987, three years before that, which was like a geological age in terms of Nintendo games. Everyone had just played Mario 3. Nobody cared about Burger Time.

And my own thoughts about Burger Time, it's a game. The premise is so cool that no one realizes the game is actually not very good and kind of super super difficult but that's just my own take on it but the other worlds and Captain N

like Castlevania and Metroid and whatever Kiddickers is from they all serve to function as societies I don't know why Burger Time is just a fully functioning world that apparently just only exist to play the Burger Time game within Right it's not like

they go to a restaurant or something I could have also just used an explanation from which you can't do with a character like Game Boy of Game Boy saying oh you guys want to play huh well I'll give you a food fight or just why did he do this

like there's no reason that he beyond being like I guess he hasn't opened his little bastard kid to mess around things but I do at least like seeing everybody look silly in their outfits even Kevin who normally the main character

is meant to look cool all the time him in a giant sausage outfit, it made me chuckle. Okay, but there's a really weird missing joke where Simon is a fried egg. He's like, I got egg in my face. Mega man is a pickle. He's like, at least you're not in a pickle. Kevin is a weiner, and there's not a

weiner joke, and I am pissed about you. I feel like NBC, S&P, cut the weiner joke. He should have at least said, well, hot dog, I can't wait to beat this game. That's the kind of talent they needed at the time. I'm like at the end writing stuff. Yeah, it's weird they're not playing a Game Boy game. It's weird that this game just

exists for the purposes of playing a game. This kind of reminds me of reboot. A series that does this idea a lot better where the characters function within the society then the game kind of takes over where they are and they have to participate. That feels like what's happening here, but that's not the way this world normally

works. At least the adventure in this game ends with them completing a burger being stacked up. So at least it follows the end of a level of burger time, at least. Yeah, there's a lot of goof him ups where Kevin tries to set his zapper to freeze,

but it shoots ketchup, and the Game Boy slides around on the ketchup faster than it can float. And there's a real punch and Judy style, I said, let me have it when Simon gets the mustard dropped on it. And all of these old jokes that are centuries and centuries old. But you're right, Henry, they do successfully complete a burger in Burger Time, which is a satisfying action in that video game. That's the best feeling I have in Burger Time. I'm chasing it every time I play it once every 18.

years I go to like an arcade convention which is why it's a lot of lighthearted fun outside of all the breaking of possessions that Game Boy does but I find shocking we go from this to Kevin basically pulling the plug on Game Boy yes it's time to put Game Boy

down he's going to go live on a farm let's hear that in our next clip here well I'm pulling the plug on this Joker until we decide what to do with him I know let's lock him up in a closet and throw away the key. Yeah, he's too much trouble as Maximus.

That goes mega for me too. I just don't understand how my father could have been so wrong about Game Boy. I wish I could talk to him. No can do, Lana. The war closed hours ago. We have to try, Kevin. You know, she's right. Her dad should have sent her something.

Tell us what this thing is and why you sent it instead of coming back. So the way this is structured, you would think that like there's a missing instruction booklet or something or like he has a switch on us back that's set to annoying and they're like oh that was the problem we didn't that does not actually happen we don't find out why the dad thought game boy was hot shit and when there's like everyone just decides they love game boy all of a sudden there's nothing that like provokes that it's just really fucking weird and also i don't believe at the by the end of the episode that she says oh this is why father sent it here oh father's brilliant plan was this like at the very least he if she's going to throw it out there of like, why would my father do this? I feel like she should have an answer for that at the end of the episode. It feels like implicitly the message is, Game Boy is too much fun and we're tired from all the fun we had with it. It's time to put the Game Boy away and take a break to maybe read or do our homework.

But functionally, this is just like the sitcom of like, oh, everybody thinks that, that, you know, everybody's saying, oh, I hate this guy and glad he can't hear me. But it turns out they did hear you end act too with like, oh, dun, dun, done. There's a real, like, Johnny 5 moment at the end of this act, because for whatever reason, Duke comes up to the Power Down Game Boy, it comes back to life, it sheds a single tier, and it says, defective performance cannot be tolerated, and then it gets a little lick from Duke. And I would say that voids Game Boy's warranty. Nintendo will not repair that Game Boy now after that happened. You know, the bit two there with that clip of Mega, I'm noticing this every time. When Mega Man and Kid Icarus talk, they both just have the same opinion and agree.

And it's just like, then why are these two separate characters over and over? Yeah, there's already too much of the bland exposition character in this show. We don't really need another one. I guess this one just beeps more. Well, I guess he, well, because he's cool. Like, honestly, he should have just killed, use this as time to kill either Kid Icarus or Mega Man and then just have Game Boy take their place. They check on Mega Man and he's just jammed into Game Boy's battery case.

I do want to see that So another commercial break happens And we come back and check in on Mother Brain's Technodrome Which is the Planet Metroid It's a cool little design Where it's a floating steel brain That's kind of pulsating and shooting smoke out of it Yeah, it's really cool

Yeah, like you said, all the background elements And painted elements Work really good in this show Yeah, it's the movement that's the problem And Dr. Wiley is here, I assume, via some VideoLand version of Operation Paperclip. That's how he ended up getting hired. Because this guy is doing the Nazi scientist's voice, 100%.

Yeah, it was, you could do that safely back then instead of Nazis were far in the past. They're never coming back. And it does feel like Dr. Wiley is reading off bullet points on a product sheet because he points out, I'm not going to do the voice, but he's like, oh, the gay boy is actually the most sophisticated computer in VideoLand, and it can adapt to any situation. You could take it on the go. You can play it at the office on the bus with your family. I guess at least he recognizes what the dopes on the good guy's side can't notice.

And Mother Brain is like the child watching it because Mother Brain stands as, I want this Game Boy! She wants to control him and turn Game Boy into her own brainchild, is the line here. But Mother Brain is clearly a bad guy because she doesn't want to buy it. She instead wants to steal it. She should have bought her own copy. that's the store. I agree. So I like how she calls

Hippo and Eggplant Yo-Yo's and I forgot that the threat of Mother Brain is tentacles coming out and I think electrifying you. Which is just, at what point did Levi Stubbs come in here? Because so much of Mother Brain is functionally what Audrey 2 can do.

Like Tui is stuck in place, has also big crazy lips and is making all these plans and mainly grabs things with his tentacles. Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, I feel like That's where they started with the character, and they said, well, let's put eye shadow on Audrey, too, and call it a day. That's really, as far as this character goes.

And did they then reach out to Levi and offer him the gig? I wonder what order. Who else did they consider for this job, really? I think they had to lock him down first. So Mother Brain sends hippo and eggplants to head into the Palace of Power, kidnapped Game Boy. They don't want to do it. She scares them in doing it.

This is when the vegetables fly out of eggplant wizard. A fun little gag. I like whenever that happens. They make a fun little popping noise when it happens to. Fun sound design on that. It's at least a good wild cartoony take a show that doesn't always feel like a cartoon or like it's taking advantage of being a cartoon.

So Hippo and Eggplant, they emerge from the Warp Zone in front of Game Boy, and they first encounter a snarling duke in our next clip here. Out of my face, dog crap. Make some magic, wizard. This mutt won't let us near that hunt of land.

This daddy line will do the trick. Hurry and get that battery in before those ant-turbs come back. Ready for Disposal of defective units. Disposal? No way. Her ugliness wants to play some games with your brain. I am programmed to play games. Hey! But be careful! I'm an egg plant, not a squash. Come on, let's get out of here!

This place gives me the creep. So Game Boy is ready to die, and they're taking him away. And I guess using a dandelion counts as vegetable magic, because you can have dandy lions and salad. That was a kind of common thing. But in this form, it is the dandelion that has the puffy seed pods all over it. Yeah. And it turns into a snarling lionhead, dandy lion.

It's, you know, clever at least. At no point did they realize that eggplant wizard turns things into eggplants. yeah which is a funny visual comparatively but also that shows you the cheapness they have here they paid Frank Welker for his few lines as Game Boy he's not doing those dog snarlins

no as much as I don't like his Game Boy voice the guy doing Duke's dog noises is no Frank Welker yeah when you have Frank Welker on the show and someone else is making dog noise you're asking what what's going on here you know that they're being cheap just like the Simpsons were when they stopped hiring Frank Wilker. So they take away Game Boy through the Warp Zone. It's so weird that Warp Zones are in this,

and they were such a function of Mario Brothers that this is not a Mario Brothers show. I did want to point that out. They mentioned that Mario exists, like, on some level in the first episode, but the only presence we get from Mario games after this is the sound effects, which are kind of nonstop, but most of the sound effects we get are Super Mario 1 sound effects. And Donkey Kong does show up a bunch,

because Congo land was a big part of video land as well. But I don't think they realized that Donkey Kong is a Mario character. I think they thought they were separate. They're not true gamers. Yeah. I mean, this definitely is like a separate thing. I'm like, oh, if you want the Mario thing, that's a separate contract. You didn't get the rights to put Mario in this.

This is an umbrella under other things. So how did they get the contract to crossover with Zelda then? Yeah, you're right, Drew. In season two, I think there are maybe two or three. Zelda crossover episodes that you they have their own character designs for the characters that had already been animated the previous year and it's the same voice actors from the legend of Zelda cartoon series yeah my my guess is maybe that was a since they weren't going to make more of the legend of Zelda cartoon series maybe they at least thought they could

stealth they maybe even add some old scripts they could repurpose for for that crossover so after they leave dude comes out of hiding barks at nothing this gets Kevin involved Kevin realizes Game Boy is missing. King Hippo was given the diagram of Game Boy, and he drops that on his way out because he doesn't have really pockets, so I don't know what, and he has no visible fingers or anything, so

this is a bad guy to get paper to. Oh, Drew, go ahead. He could, sorry, he could tuck things under his tits. That's true. He could just, like, spear it on his nipple, like, it's one of those things you use to hold papers on a desk. Yeah, I will, you know, those bullies, they knew the right thing.

all the good guys, they were being mean to Game Boy and making him suicidal. Here they're telling him like, no, we like you. You're a cool guy. Let's hang out. Yeah, back at the Technodrome, Dr. Wiley is making alterations to Game Boy, basically on an operating table in front of Mother Brain. He's attaching a clamp. He's using the Ghostbusters PKE meter to activate electricity.

So Game Boy is being brought back to life and also being turned evil. And then we cut back to the good guys who are beginning to figure things out here in our next clip. This looks like the work of that nasty Dr. Wiley. Then Mother Brain must have Game Boyicus. Oh, well, I guess that crisis is over. What's for luck? Anything about hamburgers. Simon, what are you saying?

We've got to get Game Boy back. What? Unrisk this handsome neck for a hunk of Microtoo? Suit yourself. I'm going to Metroid, and anybody who cares to join me is welcome. I'm with you, Princess. Me too. I just hope it isn't too late to stop whatever Mother Brain is up to.

Aren't you finished yet, Dr. Wally? Captain Ian and his dougarice just walked into the other level of McFloid. I just need to plug him into your defense system. Perfect! With my brain and his games, I'll be the game master of Video Land. Ha ha ha ha ha. Master Brain, may I present game brain. So Mother Brain and Game Boy now share a psychic link together

Or rather, I guess they're just tethered to each other at this point This shows you the evils of Of modification to your Nintendo products Only use license accessories do not find a mother brain And attach to your Game Boy Yeah, this is the opposite of calling that number Or that has Mario with the wrench next to it And his nice little suit jacket and bow tie

But you see Simon is following the rule of the you know the brainy smurf of all these cartoons whose job is to say why would i want to do the good thing i want to be boring and but it at least makes him as a kid if you like interesting people it makes it much more interesting than everybody else who's just like no we're going to do what we're supposed to everyone is a real buddy bear exactly yes yeah yeah thank you more more garfield and friends references here uh so he's finally plugged into Mother Brain and other various devices. That's when Game Boy

crackles with electricity. He comes to life. He's buff and he's macho. He's grown arms, I believe, at this point. And he asked, like, shall we play a game in a very sinister fashion? Frank Welker knew he was doing a wargames thing. Absolutely. And this is when Mother Brain says, okay, the game is called Destroy Them. And he is

sent out to dispatch Captain and his friends who are infiltrating the world of Metroid. And it's hard to tell what happens next, but suddenly Mother Brain is in front. of them or perhaps just projected in front of them but game boy is actually there i think then later they they spin away mother brin so she is not far it's very confusing but it seems like she manages at one point yeah yeah i feel like she does fade away at a certain point but uh the transparency effect is not really that that effective on this spectrum's doing their best with it yeah i have

it open right here to look at it like yeah the i guess i mean they look a little They do look somewhat transparent, but it's not the best there. But, yeah, again, who the ability to teleport or not is very random in this series. Like, everybody can teleport if they need to. But the point is of all this that Captain N is going to square off against Game Boy to see who is the true Game Master or I guess Brain Boy, as he's known now. And this is when they have an epic battle. It all begins here. Mother Brain says, show them your stuff, my pet.

and then a bunch of Rio from Metroid emerged from his screen. I don't think anyone knows Metroid enemy names because I'd look all of this crap up and I love Metroid. Well, it's also tough because these aren't, they rarely look like how they look in the instruction manual either.

So you have to do a little jump off there. Metroid 2, that's still like a year or two away, right? So connecting Metroid to Game Boy doesn't make sense in that way. That's 91, so we're more than a year away. I think it's like a fall of 9. game. One thing I like about the animation though, I like the weird hand-drawn pixelization effect when the

enemies are blasted out of existence. They had to hand-draw all of that. It looks really neat. I like the concept. It lets him kill things on the screen and you don't ask where they end up. So I like that. All the stuff with the zapper is fun. I made me, I like the zappers are cool. And I loved my zapper and just pointing

at the screen to shoot things. So I always enjoyed zapper action on Captain N. So after the Rio Emerge and Kevin last them. Mother Brain retreats in our next clip here. Ooh, that was close. I've never seen that many real traveling in a pack.

Next time, you won't be so lucky. I advise you to turn back while you still can. Yeah. Simon, am I glad to see you? Simon Belmont does not shirk his duty as a hero. Maybe you were right, Simon. How can I ask you? You all to risk your lives for a computer.

We're not, Princess. We're doing it for Game Boy. Come on. If we split up, one of us is sure to get through. Here, Lana, you better take my Zapper. Who knows? It may come in handy. So, yeah, they're doing it for Game Boy.

Kids, risk your life for Game Boy. Game Boy is not just some replaceable thing. It is your best friend and you need to save it. Yeah, I think this is a big jump for Kevin here that nobody likes him. Like, I guess his dog likes him, but nobody likes Game Boy. Yeah, I mean, the show is saying Meet Your New God, but the characters initially hate this thing and want to kill it. Yeah, by now they've got a complete turn for no reason. I really like that they give Lana the zapper and then she's actually awesome with it, though it makes you wonder like, why didn't she ever, she should be in the having action and a weapon all of the time.

I totally agree. And this throws us a real curveball because in our Christmas episode we're talking about the monster mash. And I don't know if the original episode had the monster mash because it seems like someone went to great lengths to write this sound alike

that I feel only exists for the sake of Captain N. But we get a montage set to Do the Freak, which is a cheaper version of the Monster Mash. And it's kind of weird that it's here because they're not in Castlevania. This would make sense in Castlevania the game based on classic universal monsters.

Here they're just shooting space aliens And I do want to play a little bit of Do the Freak for our listeners Just so you can know There are many Monster Mashes out there And this is simply one of them Late the night in the doctor's lab Circus and wires were laid out for a slab

The wiring was crossed Completely by chance And suddenly the whole thing started to dance Do the freak You'll catch on real fast Do the freak You'll see it's a blast to the break

It's totally unique Everybody do the freak I feel like the person writing this was having fun when they included the lyric It's totally unique There's no other song like this one You've never heard it before

You know as Simpsons fans You guys should realize There's a tradition of playing The Monster Match on the wrong holiday That is true So for the sake of this podcast We're doing a good job No I have to think

That this is just like The Super Mario Brothers Super Show, which had long sequences written to songs that are edited to a specific pop song that then they have none of the rights to. But I am just shocked that at some point, I wonder at what point in Captain End's life cycle, did they go to the trouble of paying even the barest minimum of songwriting and recording to get this copycat song over? because otherwise, if it was just library music or silence,

this would just be unwatchable. But, like, when was the money spent on ripping off Monster? I could not find any information about this sound-alike, and I really want to know more about it. But I assume it was just written for the show by a guy, paid very little, I assume. So if you look at just the Wikipedia list of Captain N episodes, the descriptions for season one tell you which song initially aired

when they first aired on NBC. and then when you watch the episodes now it's not that song anymore it's something else that they've subbed in but they don't say that for season two and I wonder if maybe the departure of the people who were doing music for the show meant that they were just going

with sound like off the bat to save money that sounds that sounds right I mean I feel like NBC was backing away even with season two from spending a lot of money on cartoons so that could have been an extra cost for them yeah okay then maybe it came late that they edited and timed all of this out

to the Monster Mash and then by the time it's getting closer to air date that's when they learn in 1990 fall 1990 crap this can't be the monster mesh get a copy recorded right now well I don't want to go over the entire montage here it's basically every character

fighting a Metroid enemy some of them are depicted in an insane fashion I want to zero in on Craid here because Craig we all know what he looks like he's the big fat monster in Metroid here they reinterpret him as a goofy space alien wearing a link style costume because if you look at the Sprite for Cray and the original Metroid and the art, his green back fur kind of looks like

it could be part of a uniform. So that's the interpretation with this character. And he's got all of these spikes all over his body. The visual gag baked into his character design is the fact that one of the spikes has a marshmallow stuck on it. And you only really notice that if you look at the original character design sheet, you can see the marshmallow. And then it's barely visible on the actual character in the show. But Phil Barlow, whoever designed the character, threw in that gag just because he thought

it'd be funny if there was a marshmallow on one of the spikes. Is Crade the one that fights Simon? Yes. He's got the spear, which is somebody interpreting Craig's belly spike as a handheld weapon. Did not even read him as Craig because he looks so weird.

I assume these were all enemies that were made up specifically for the show. But yeah, you're right. That does seem like his grade. Yeah, Kiddickress fights a zoomer, I think. Lana fights a dragon. That's the name of the enemy in Metro. I think it's just called a dragon. Simon is attacked by Crate and Kevin fights what I assume is Ridley with an Aldi belly button. Yeah, that's a hideous Ridley, but I think you're right too. Wow. Yeah, I didn't even see it. Yeah. I think animation wise, at least spectrum, because this didn't have to be synced with dialogue, because it's all, it's just all

silent action for on their side anyway that they could do there's some fun takes in this like uh the the dog and uh sorry Simon and the dog both have really good cartoony reactions to it like they have good wild takes the action is fun you don't have to hear dialogue and so many of these cartoons really rely on montages because no one is actually a character so it's easier to fill time with these very long drawn out montages that the animation can handle the grunt work on those like make these last for two minutes make it look exciting and fun and then we can get back to writing for these

group of nobodies afterwards I wonder if the writers get the same page rate if they just write down like one sentence instead of dialogue just one sentence like this character fights that this character fights that it continues for 30 seconds and then they must write really long paragraphs then if they

get a page rate on these so yeah a big long montage Kevin is actually sworn by a cluster of Metroids And Duke runs off. We go back to Mother Brain's chamber. She's gloating. She's seeing that Captain and his friends are all dying.

Electricity is flowing into Game Boy. And Duke saves the day because Duke bursts in, Yanks Game Boy, free from his digital chains, and he severs the connection to Mother Brain. And in a very protracted scene, we see all the enemies menacing the heroes, completely dematerialize. And then we see Mega Man was fighting something. They just never showed us what he was fighting initially. But we see the resolution of Mega Man's struggle in this long scene. Did we not mention that kiddickriss gets covered in white goop?

I forgot to say that, yes. Conspicuously, white goop covers his body. Yeah. It's funny to see all of your heroes just fail so much and suck at it. I guess, though, this lets him at least get saved by the dog, not unlike Toto, saving everybody in Wizard of Oz. And now Mother Brain's plans have failed. Stop him!

Hibble! Where's that stupid fuck? putting the plow on my beautiful plan! Hurry up! Come back here, you sleep-bent bull-chaser! Yeah! I'll get him with my string being there. Huh?

I'll show you what happens some little weasers who get in my way. What's going on? I don't understand. He shouldn't be using this much power. He's going to overlord. And in a very Metroid-like fashion,

this is when the planet starts exploding. And this is when they have to do the escape sequence. So it's playing by the rules of Metroid. Yeah. So they should be saying like, oh, the Game Boy, they should be shocked at how good the Game Boy is a conserving power, too, and say, wow, these batteries last forever on the Game Boy. So much better than any competition.

Well, Game Boy is able to explode and then look completely immaculate afterwards. So they are saying the Game Boy is very durable. Hey, we all saw the one from Operation Desert Storm. Oh, yeah, that was in my notes. I think this is the Game Boy that went overseas and served in Operation Desert Storm. Also, I do know that it was with King Hippo. This is your problem if you're making an American cartoon at this time. and like it makes sense to have your big lummix figure as one of your bad guys.

Totally makes sense. However, your boxer guy can either punch things or be punched by things. Like that is not allowed in these cartoons by the censors. That's true. There's a very little boxing happening right now. Also, apparently you can't just throw a rocket mother brains jar and spell out all her like brain juice. No one ever thinks of that. That's the point of the game.

You just shoot missiles into the one hole in the tank, you know? Yeah. Some game master that Kevin is here. To wrap things up here, Game Boy Yanks the last court free, the one attached to Mother Brain, and pulls it, and it sends Mother Brain spinning out of the room, and I assume out of Metroid, and I just thought it must have been so complicated to rotate this character continually out of the room. Mother Brain, there's a reason why this character is emotionally stationary, because it is such a complicated character, so many lines, so much pencil mileage, but they're asked for a gag with a very lame punchline to spin the character out of the room. yeah with it's such an asymmetrical design with like a with like multiple levels to it it's you know a basically a stretched out muscle in front of a in front of a spinal cord all full of like goo and stuff like it's so the spectrum over delivered on that spinning there and as mother brain spins out of the room kevin delivers a very inaccurate pun to end the episode well it looks like game voice got this mission all wrapped up That night at the Palace of Power, an important welcoming ceremony takes place. You're one of us now, Game Boy. Welcome to the end team.

Here you go, little guy. We had this made especially for you. Here, try this. Why, Simon, how unselfish of you. Hey, it's all in the family. You're missing it, but Game Boy was gifted a big baseball cap with a letter G on it for some reason. To welcome him to the end team, I guess. A hideous hat.

It doesn't really fit his head, and it's not the shape for his head as all. Yeah. And I don't think he wear, I looked at some later episodes. He's not wearing this hat. This is not his character design, right? like he's usually just the regular Game Boy. They should have given Game Boy like a wormlight or something to plug into himself. You're going to need one of those in 1990.

Actually, they don't exist yet, so you're in trouble. Well, Nintendo wouldn't approve of a third-party accessory. That's true, yeah. The entire arc of this character, of this story is, like, so confusing. Like, they hate him for, like, he's awful for no reason. They hate him. They want him to die. And then they decide that they don't want him to die.

And then he's a member of the team. that's it i guess he's he saves them from mother brain and he does defeat mother brain so that proves his worth to the team but like he they are saved he almost killed them first like and that i it there is a big leap there also it would feel at least a little more satisfying if after being given the hat or being told you're a member of the team game boy said anything yes yes frank welcor unavailable to say anything uh the the pithy thing is Game Boy to wrap things up. It's so weird. He just

like whistles and stuff. He has nothing. Like, how am I supposed to care about this Game Boy? Obviously, it's a dumb cartoon. I know. But couldn't he at least say, like, thanks, guys. Like, at least that. Yeah, or like ready to play or something stupid like that. I don't know. Anything.

I did want to zero in on Kevin's weird wisecrack, his failed Spider-Man wisecrack, because Game Boy's attached to a tether to Mother Brain. Game Boy yanks the tether. causing mother playing the sprint out. Nothing is wrapped up. If anything, something has been unwrapped.

Yeah. It's like, oh, that was a real, you gave her a real spin. Like, at least that. I would think that is maybe on top of how good spectrum did with what they were asked to, maybe she was supposed to be tied up like a mummy in her wires from being spun,

and that's what Kevin's line was recorded for. Yeah, I feel like the writing and the animation were not agreeing here. And there were no retakes. but at least like Simon Simon gets to welcome him and offers up his mirror which is unselfish for him

and it's all in the family which means like yeah they're all a family of weirdos but meanwhile ignorance and Mega Man don't get to say anything here either no no we don't know how they feel about things but you know guys the lightheadedness I'm experiencing right now tells me that the oxygen is running low in the cabin it's time

to send the guests away into the inclement weather before you go though I want to ask each of you you. What should the legacy of Captain NB? Let's start with Drew. Weirder than you imagine it could be, but on some level, not nearly as awful. Somehow it adds up to something that works a little bit better than you remember. And Henry, how about you? I think calling people game a masters and the parodying of like a game a master, that's, that's its legacy. Just using that term and somebody who's like, oh, so good at video games, he can go in them and fight them. But as, you know, it's not. I wish it was at least more crass. This is crass, but I feel like there's small amount of fear of the legislation against advertising toys to kids as much made them hold back just a little bit that it's not even as crass as you think it would be.

But I will give it credit for being better animated than any of the Mario Brothers cartoons. I'll give them that. Again, it's fake anime. I like that this is the best-looking one of these shows anyone ever made before Nintendo said, we're not doing this anymore. Please give us our rights back. We're never going to make anything until much, much later. Yeah, I think the legacy of the show is just the oddness of a company like Nintendo who is now everything is so close to the vest with Nintendo.

Like no secrets get out. Licenses are treated very carefully here. It was the Wild West. The gap between America and Japan was much larger with the lack of an internet. So people couldn't really check in on things. And I like that this just exists. It's not good, but it is just a weird oddity, and thankfully, Wild Brain makes it very available to throw on an episode randomly if you ever want to just see what video game culture was like in this era as Nintendo, the A-Bid era is hitting its peak. Can I change my answer?

I think the legacy of this show should be Wombat-Man. Everyone's favorite character, Wombat-Man? That's my answer. They wrote an original Wombat-Man song. They did. There was original songs on a lot of these episodes, at least in season two. I still get that one Batman song stuck in my head sometimes. Me too, and I didn't watch the episode,

and I have not seen it in probably 34 years. Same. Okay, so it's time to do plugs. Let's talk about where we can find everybody online before I make you leave. So, Drew, where can we find you online? I'm on Blue Sky at Drew G. Mackie, M-E-C-K-I-E, and on podcasts-wise, I'm on gayest episode ever.

I have episodes with both Henry and Bob. Not yet an episode with Henry and Bob together, but I want to do that one day. and I'm thinking Duckman. Duckman? Oh, I'm down for Duckman. Okay. For sure.

And then my website or weird video game lore is thrilling tales of old video games.com. Henry? Well, of course you can find me on, well, I always used to say Twitter first. I'm going to say Blue Sky first now, but

I technically still have an account on Twitter too. And those are both H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. I'm also on Instagram as Talking Henry. And I say, Happy holidays to all of you listeners. And if you enjoy hearing me and Bob chat as well, you should check us out on the Talking Simpsons network of podcasts. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons is where it's supported.

Check out TalkingSimpsons.com, if you've never seen it before, us covering every episode of The Simpsons in Chronological Order, we're doing five and 15, seasons five and 15, back to back right now. We've done so many holiday-related, not just Simpsons episodes, but other cartoons for the What a Cartoon. podcast. This month, we're just doing the Beavs and Butthead Christmas special. We're talking about that one. And we've also covered several video game things before. Please see all of the things we do at Talking Simpsons. And what a cartoon in podcast land. And as for Retronauts, we're Retronauts, by the way. And if you want to support us, go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. And you can find out how to give us money there. And I recommend you do in the spirit of the holidays, because for five bucks a month, you get access to a lot of bonus stuff. For the past five years now, we've been doing two bonus episodes every month. And if you're not a patron, you cannot hear those episodes.

And I dare say there's probably close to 100. I can't do math right now. Again, the oxygen levels are dropping. But there's a lot of stuff behind the paywall at patreon.com slash retronauts. If you like our show, there's a lot more of it waiting for you, again, at patreon.com slash retronauts. And I'm Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter or X as Bob Serva, but now more on Blue Sky as Bob Servo as well. But that has been it for another episode of Retronauts.

I'm going to usher Henry and Drew out of here. Please take your game fuel. It smells very bad. I think it has turned. Have a good night, everybody. Well, there you have it. Another Retronauts holiday special in the books. Just don't ask me about the subject matter for next year

because I'm pretty sure this whole 2013 time bubble is purely a temporary thing. And now that I mention it, I'm not even sure if we've lapsed back into late 2024 yet, but I bet there are three distinct ways to check. I'll just turn the radio on to the local parts unknown pop station, here. Oh, the delightful Harlem Shake! And who could forget all of those hilarious videos that employers made their employees do? Let me just turn that off immediately and turn on something,

a little more Christmassy, of course. Now I'll just check my local listings here, and oh, there's still time to catch bad grandpa in theaters. That's the way they want you to see it. That's the way it should be seen. Now, let me just go online to really confirm that it's 2013 here, and oh my God, there's very few video game websites. sites instead of none. This really is the year 2013. And with that, I wish you a happy holiday and I'm Mary making it back

to civilization. I'll just be here with the ones I love most playing the ponies. Good night, everybody. We're going to be able to be.