The second Saturday morning series
and third overall based on the Super Mario Bros. franchise, Super Mario World was based on the video
game of the same name that served as the launch title for Nintendo’s brand new Super
Nintendo Entertainment System (Super Famicom in
Japan).
The SNES was developed after
Nintendo’s sales began slipping to competitors NEC Home Electronics’
PC Engine (or TurboGrafx-16
in North America) and Sega’s
Mega Drive (also known as the Genesis)
in the late 1980s. Both systems were 16-bit and outperformed the original NES
in both graphics and sound. The console was designed by Masayuki Uemura
and was launched in Japan on November 21, 1990 to instant success.
Super
Mario World was one of the launch titles for the system, and was bundled
with the North American version upon its release the following year. The game
was directed by Takashi
Tezuka and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto,
with Shigefumi
Hino
as the graphics designer. The game was a bit of wish-fulfillment on the part of
the production team as after they had completed the original game
they wanted to have Mario riding on a dinosaur. But, that was not graphically
possible until the SNES came around.
 |
| Dinosaur Land. |
World (known
as Super Mario Bros. 4 in Japan) had
Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach travel to Dinosaur Land
to recuperate from their battle with Bowser. However, Bowser had also chosen
that place with his Koopalings to rebuild his forces and attack anew. Bowser
had kidnapped the Princess again and imprisoned the citizens of Dinosaur Land
in magical eggs. Mario and Luigi freed one of them, Yoshi, and together they
set out to stop Bowser, free the dinosaurs, and save the Princess.
 |
| Mario, Luigi, Toadstool and Yoshi. |
The game introduced several new
elements to the franchise. Yoshi, for instance, could eat enemies with his long
tongue and, depending on what kind of enemies those were, would gain a special
ability like flight or fireball breath. Eating berries also caused Yoshi to lay
an egg containing a power-up. New power-ups included the Cape Feather,
which gave the brothers a golden cape that allowed them to take off from a
running start and glide through the air, and a Power Balloon
that allowed them to inflate for a limited time and fly. Enemies included some
returning classics and new Troopas, such as Chargin’ Chuck, a turtle in
football gear; Dino
Rhino, a slow-moving dinosaur; Dino-Torch,
a small dinosaur that breathed fire; Fish Bone,
a slow-swimming fish skeleton; Monty and Mega
Moles, which were evil moles that came in small and giant size, respectively;
and Wiggler,
a happy caterpillar that became enraged when jumped on. The extra item system
from Mario Bros. 3 was refined to include
the ability to hold an extra item in the actual game screen rather than having
to return to the overworld map to access it.
 |
| Mario trying to teach the Cave People football. |
As a result of the new game and its
popularity, DiC
Entertainment and Reteitalia,
S.p.A. began work on a new animated series incorporating
elements of the game. Super Mario World was
largely a continuation of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3,
featuring the same cast and most of the same characters. However, a new
animation studio, Pacific
Rim Productions, Inc., was used on the series resulting in
similar but noticeably different character designs. The series would follow the
game fairly closely while taking some liberties with the names of some
locations and characters, as well as maintaining continuity with the earlier Mario Bros. shows.
 |
| Oogtar being eaten by a piranha plant. |
The series focused on Mario (Walker
Boone) and Luigi (Tony Rosato) living with Princess Toadstool (Tracey Moore) in
Dinosaur Land (sometimes called Dinosaur World). Unlike the game, the land was
populated by cavepeople as well as dinosaurs. Mario often spent a lot of time
trying to make the cavepeople’s lives easier by introducing modern inventions
that they were currently living without, such as cars and television. Taking
the place of Toad
from the previous shows was Oogtar (voiced by Toad’s actor John Stocker), a
pre-adolescent caveboy. The heroes were also joined by Yoshi (Andrew Sabiston),
a curious child-like dinosaur with a large appetite and numerous phobias that
was discovered as an egg by Luigi. Following the Marios to Dinosaur Land was
King Koopa (Harvey Atkin) and his Koopalings (who retained their Mario 3 cartoon names): Bully (Dan
Hennessey), Kooky (Michael Stark), Big Mouth (Gordon Masten), Hip and Hop (both
Tara Strong), Kootie Pie (Tabitha St. Germain) and Cheatsy (James Rankin). Of
the entire cast, only Atkin and Stocker appeared in all three Mario cartoons. The Cape Feather made an
appearance, used primarily by Mario, and the Fire
Flower returned with a new design making it resemble an
orange rose.
Super
Mario World debuted on NBC
on September 14, 1991. The show’s episodes typically ran 11 minutes and were
paired up with episodes from the third season of Captain N: The Game Master for a half-hour
block called Captain N and the New Super
Mario World. It was written by Kristofor Brown,
Eleanor
Burian-Mohr, Paul Dell,
Jack Hanrahan,
Phil Harnage,
Perry Martin,
Martha Moran,
Frank Ridgeway,
George Shea,
Brooks Wachtel
and Steven Weiss.
The series’ theme was composed by Mark
Mothersbaugh and was played over an intro animated by
Canvas, Inc. The intro featured a noticeably higher quality of animation than
the rest of the show, which likely suffered to the same budget cuts that
plagued Captain N’s third season
quality.
The
show ran for a single season of 13 episodes and was cancelled along with Captain N as NBC sought to move away
from animation into more teen-oriented programming following the success of Saved by the Bell. It was the
shortest-lived of the three Mario shows. World
was later shown from September 1992 to September 1993 in the syndication
package Captain N & The Video Game
Masters along
with Captain N, The
Legend of Zelda and
Mario Bros. 3. From 1994-1997, World was paired up with reruns of 40 of
the cartoon portions of The
Super Mario Bros. Super Show for
the syndication package Mario All-Stars (named
after the compilation
game
that included all the original Mario console games and later World). All-Stars aired six days a week on the The
Family Channel and on USA Network on
weekdays.
 |
| Mario World on DVD apart from Captain N. |
Unlike the other Mario shows, World didn’t see as wide a home video
release in North America. “The Night Before Cave Christmas” was included on the
1996 VHS Super Mario Bros. Super Christmas
Adventures from
Buena
Vista Home Video.
Two
VHS
tapes were released in the United Kingdom, however. In
2007, Shout! Factory
and Vivendi
Entertainment in North America and Roadshow Entertainment
in Australia released Captain N and the New Super Mario
World to
DVD after legal issues involving Yoshi’s use were resolved. In 2013, NCircle Entertainment
released the complete series independent of the Captain N segments in two
volumes, later collected into one
volume.
Originally posted in 2017. Updated in 2019.
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