Saturday Supercade (1983)
First episode title: The Ms. Fortune Story / Mississippi Madness / Raiders of the Lost Shark / Trucknapper Caper
How familiar with the show am I?: I was aware that it existed, and I am of course familiar with some of the franchises involved, but not much beyond that.
Is this the first episode?: There seems to be some disagreement about which segments were in each episode, but the upload I'm using claims to be the full first episode.
In 1983, Ruby-Spears somehow got the rights to make cartoon adaptations of multiple different arcade games and package them all together as one TV show called Saturday Supercade. In this episode alone, we have segments based on Frogger, Donkey Kong, Pitfall, and Donkey Kong Jr. Yes, it has Mario in a cartoon, years before he got his own one!
This show is way longer than it needs to be - 48 minutes to cover the four segments - so I'm not going to go into as much detail as usual. I feel like I often go into too much detail on unimportant things anyway. There's an opening sequence for the actual show, plus separate opening sequences for each of the segments and special animations to transition from each segment to the next where the characters interact with each other, so that eats away at some of the time anyway.
The first segment is the Frogger segment, "The Ms. Fortune Story". If you haven't played the original game, it's about trying to get a frog home by crossing a road and avoiding all the traffic, and then by getting across a river on top of moving logs and turtles without falling in. In this show... Frogger is a newspaper reporter. Where did they get that from?! He's accompanied by a female frog called Fanny, and a cowardly turtle called Shellshock who hides in his shell whenever he gets scared, and they all work for a big boss man frog called Tex. Well, at least the turtle didn't come out of nowhere.
So we start with Tex telling everyone about a series of robberies at charity auctions. He's complaining that another newspaper has reached the story first, and the paper he holds up is visibly the Daily Bugle! Frogger's informant Mac, who I guess is a mouse, phones him up to let him know of another auction, and also to tell him that every auction that's been hit so far has had a fortune teller and a strongman as entertainment. Coincidentally, a very stereotypical-looking fortune teller and strongman have overheard Mac's phone call...
When the trio arrive on the road outside the auction, the bad guys try to run them down in a van, and all three of them do a terrible job of trying to get across the road. It's weird to take something a character is known for in a game and make it something they seem to specifically bad at in the show - Frogger's main skill here seems to be with his tongue rather than with jumping, both of which make sense for frogs but only one of which is present in the game! They eventually successfully escape the van only for Frogger to be run over by a steamroller, meaning Shellshock has to re-inflate him with a tire pump, something that would seem to be a running joke since it's also in the opening sequence for the segment.
Anyway, they make it into the party and start questioning a bunch of rich people to try and get some clues about the thefts. One pair, an older woman and her very large chauffeur, are quite clearly going to turn out to be the fortune teller and the strongman, but I completely missed that at the time, mainly because I wasn't looking for someone in disguise - if this had been Scooby-Doo I would have spotted it straight away! If this show frequently uses the idea of villains in disguise then I'm sure I'd clock them in future episodes.
Once the fortune teller's tent is set up at the party, Frogger and Fanny go in (Shellshock is too scared to), and the fortune teller "predicts" that following this story will lead to their deaths. She's not very subtle about the fact that this is a threat, of course. Her "powers" are impressive - at one point, the table floats into the air and an image of a skull appears floating above the crystal ball. She even makes herself magically vanish, but I'm sure we're meant to assume these are just cheap tricks rather than actual magic. Otherwise, she'd be making use of her magic in her crimes!
For some reason she specified that they will die at the Pilfer Paints factory. In other words, she's just given away where the villains' hideout is for absolutely no reason at all. I love a stupid villain. So the trio head there, where the strongman starts hurling barrels of paint at them. Hurling barrels? In the same show as a Donkey Kong adaptation?
As if "stupidest villain" is a contest, when the strongman successfully captures the heroes, he then straps them to a conveyor belt leading into a vat of paint and then leaves them unattended, instead of just dumping them in.
Frogger: This calls for a little tongue action!
Frogger's tongue saves the day by hitting the switch for the conveyor, and then they make it back to the auction, where they replace the golden tortoise statue that's being sold with Shellshock painted gold. Sure enough, the villains steal Shellshock instead of the statue, and Shellshock's able to contact the frogs via a radio inside his shell (he can put his whole body in there apparently!) to tell them where he's being taken (onto a boat called the Sea Gull). Once there... the villains are going to melt him down for his gold!
It's unclear how they haven't realised he's not the real statue yet, as he would surely have moved, and he can speak! But somehow, this is the scene Frogger and Fanny arrive to, with Shellshock over a furnace. The frogs burst in and are surprisingly able to hold their own in a fight against the villains given how small they are in comparison!
The fight takes them all over the boat and Fanny tries to steer the boat towards the police while trying to fend off the fortune teller at the same time, which is quite impressive. The frogs win, and in the course of all this action, the fortune teller's hair and nose and the strongman's balaclava and moustache all come off, revealing their true identities, and everything turns out fine. They take the story back to Tex and there's a gag with Shellshock taking a photo of Tex and the old-timey camera exploding in his face. But I guess there's nothing to say when this is set anyway.
The next segment is Donkey Kong in "Mississippi Madness". In this case the video game is about Mario (better known for other work) saving a woman called Pauline from the titular giant ape, who has escaped from the circus, and in this case the cartoon generally follows this dynamic - Pauline is presented as having been an animal trainer at the circus, and she and Mario are searching for the escaped Donkey Kong.
The episode opens on a riverboat, with Mario showing Pauline his schematics for an overly-elaborate Rube Goldberg machine trap for Donkey Kong, involving a duck, a dog, and a squirrel among other things! It is so weird seeing Mario talk in such a different way from his other portrayals - it's so generic, I even prefer the Chris Pratt version over this. We're then introduced to a trio of stereotypical Southern villains when a young man called Billy Bob bursts through the blueprints - the other two are a man in a white suit called Colonel Culpepper, and a beautiful woman called Belle (of course).
The villains are looking for someone big and dumb to steal a valuable emerald for them, and they look across the ship at the deckhands, just as Pauline realises that one of the deckhands is Donkey Kong (and to be honest it would be pretty hard not to notice). In this show he has a weird tendency to shout out his own name whenever he does anything, and right now he announces it as he climbs up to a higher level of the boat. Mario goes to confront the ape as Pauline reminds him not to harm Donkey Kong, which seems a little unfair!
Kong throws a barrel down at Mario, just like in the games, although it hits a plank of wood that's positioned like a see-saw and ends up flinging Mario up into Kong's attack range. Another weird vocal quirk of Donkey Kong in this show is a kind of "ee-yup ee-yup ee-yup" noise he makes, which I assume is a recurring thing as it's also in the intro. Is it laughter? After some antics where Kong manages to crash the boat into a New Orleans port, Culpepper decides that he needs Kong working for him.
He tries to introduce himself to the ape - when he talks, he keeps saying "I say" as if he's Foghorn Leghorn - but Kong only threatens the Colonel until he spots Belle, who lures him in. The writers have extrapolated from one of the few things we know about Donkey Kong in the game (he has captured a woman) and decided that skirt-chasing should be a major feature of his personality, to the point where he'll do anything for any beautiful woman he sees. Logical, but nothing like the Donkey Kong we'll know in later games!
At the museum, Donkey Kong quite easily reaches the emerald by dropping in through the skylight and hanging from a conveniently-placed flagpole, placing him behind all the men standing guard around the emerald. I love how they don't notice an explicitly giant ape landing behind them. Meanwhile, Mario and Pauline are looking for Donkey Kong, and the writers obviously realised at this point that they hadn't thought of a way to reunite them with him, because Mario randomly gets a "hunch" they should go into the museum, for Pauline to catch Kong red-handed.
The guards finally notice that something is happening, but Donkey Kong traps them in the emerald's container and then makes off with Pauline up to a higher level of the museum - when Mario tries to chase after him, Donkey Kong starts tossing Greek columns down the stairs at him! There's a bit of a recurring thing where this show will switch to a side-on view like you're actually watching a Donkey Kong style videogame being played, especially when Donkey Kong is throwing things. Here, it happens when Mario tries to climb up a ladder, and the columns take out the bottom of it.
With Mario dealt with, Donkey Kong swings back up through the skylight, with both Pauline and the emerald. The villains and Mario both independently conclude that DK is headed for a nearby swamp, which isn't as bad as the museum thing but still doesn't offer much in the way of logic. So when Donkey Kong and Pauline get there, Mario is waiting, hiding in a plant with a duck on his head in a shot that I'd very much like to see homaged in a Mario game:
Somehow Mario has had time to set up that trap he was planning at the start! He activates the animal-based chain reaction, and a cage is about to drop on the ape - until the villains rush in using a speedboat, knocking Donkey Kong out of the way and nabbing the emerald, but getting the cage dropped on them as a result! The police show up to get the jewel thieves, but Donkey Kong escapes in the confusion. Dammit Mario and Pauline, he's exactly who you should have been keeping an eye on!
The final scene is of Donkey Kong getting on a bus, all the passengers fleeing in terror, and DK tearing off the bus's roof and steering it himself using his hand-like feet, driving off into the sunset. It's weird to see the character who should be the show's main villain getting what is essentially a happy ending, but presumably that's what must happen every episode to keep the status quo!
Next is the Pitfall segment "Raiders of the Lost Shark". The game is just about an adventurer called Pitfall Harry trying to find treasure in a jungle, but this cartoon gives him a sassy niece called Rhonda and a cowardly, eyepatch-wearing pet lion called Quickclaw, who have "added for the cartoon" written all over them. In contrast to the other game franchises represented here, for which their appearances on this show represent a minor footnote in their existence, the Pitfall developers actually added both of these characters to the game's sequel!
Rhonda tells us through narration that the three of them have gone on holiday to Hawaii, and they're all relaxing on a beach. Quickclaw has brought with him a portable cabaña, which is a word I had to look up and I guess here means a beach cottage. Whatever it is, he's able to inflate it around him and it even serves him a drink. By the way, Quickclaw is yet another talking animal - every segment has those here, it's just that this is the only one where the title character is human so it stood out to me more.
Oh, and Rhonda refers to Pitfall Harry as "Uncle Pitfall", so he's yet another addition to our collection of "two-word character names which sound like they are of the form 'descriptor + first name' but are treated like the descriptor is a first name in its own right", joining Montana Max and Texas Pete.
Their holiday is interrupted when Pitfall gets a phone call from the "Admiral" - I'm not sure what Pitfall's actual job is - to tell him that a ship full of rare coins has been sunk off a nearby island and the suspect is an old enemy of Pitfall's called the Shark. Quickclaw immediately demonstrates his cowardice by digging himself into a hole in the sand, and Rhonda has to drag him along by his tail. Ow.
There's a seaplane waiting to take Pitfall to the scene, but a very shady-looking character gets there first. He has a hat, sunglasses, and a big beard - he couldn't look any more like he's someone else in disguise, but if there was such a reveal planned, it never happens. He slips a case onto the plane and then escapes before Pitfall and co. arrive.
Once they're all in the air, Quickclaw decides to make himself a snack, so he opens the "picnic basket" next to him. I already think it's silly when characters just try to take a bite of their food without looking at it, but trying to make a snack without looking at what you've got in your hands is especially silly, and here, Quickclaw manages to think he's making a hot dog when he is actually putting the head of a snake on some bread and adding mustard to it. It's only then that he actually looks at it, calling it a "boa constrictor sandwich" before belatedly realising what has happened.
The lion fights the boa constrictor in the typical cartoon "indistinct whirl of body parts" fashion, which ends up breaking off the plane's joystick. This is the first time I've learned that "joystick" was an aviation term before it was used in video games. I mean, "joy", it sounds like it's made for games right? Pitfall grabs the snake and gives it a tummy rub, which for some reason makes it stiffen, and so he's able to use the snake as a replacement joystick by sticking it in the hole. Uh... huh.
Safely landing on the water, the heroes get into wetsuits and dive in, but they soon trigger a trap causing rocks to fall down towards them. Their solution is to briefly disconnect the oxygen lines on their wetsuits to use them like jetpacks, which feels about as dangerous as the rocks! They get to the sunken ship, and a submarine designed to look like a shark is lurking around.
Pitfall: So, my hunch was right - the Shark!
I'm pretty sure this is just a mistake and Pitfall isn't intentionally stealing credit from the Admiral, but it's still funny that the writers seem to have forgotten how he got sent on this mission in the first place. We also get our first look at the Shark himself, who has an intentionally shark-like design - bald head, sharp teeth, and a collar that makes the shape of a pointy fin. You have to wonder, in-universe, whether he got the nickname before the look or vice versa.
In either case, he unleashes some actual sharks on the heroes:
Pitfall wrestles a shark and tries to stuff it in a giant clam shell, and finds three identical crocodiles inside. These three are evidently a recurring enemy in this show, as they are also in the opening, and Pitfall recognises them. But in this episode, we don't even get a name for them or any explanation of what they're doing here. Pitfall kills two birds with one stone by setting the shark on the crocs.
But there's a still a shark menacing Rhonda and Quickclaw, and the Shark's henchmen have taken advantage of the distraction and stolen the weirdly old-fashioned treasure chest full of coins. Pitfall defeats the other shark by tying it up with the ship's anchor, and then they all head to the nearby island, which is apparently where the Shark's hideout is. I suppose that's why he was the suspect, then!
It doesn't take much searching of the island before they get spotted by the Shark and his henchmen, who chase them onto a bridge as it starts to collapse. Just like the strongman in the Frogger segment, the Shark concludes that Pitfall is doomed and doesn't stick around to find out whether he actually dies, and so the heroes are able to swing from the bridge's rope into a nearby cave without being seen. I always say I love a stupid villain, but this level of it can get ridiculous.
The Shark and his henchmen head off in the sub with their coins to find somewhere to sell them on the black market, but it stays at surface level - Quickclaw tries to slow it down with a fishing rod(!), whereas Pitfall and Rhonda take it out much more effectively by launching a log at it from high up, destroying its propeller and making it crash. At least that solution makes sense.
Rhonda: And so the Shark and all his men - including the bearded man who gave us the snake - are all in jail where they belong.
Hey, they never met that guy! How does she know about him? Anyway, they're relaxing on the beach again as they were at the start. Quickclaw tries surfing and gets swept up by a big wave that somehow sends him flying down the street inland, without any water to accompany him, like his surfboard somehow became a hoverboard...
Finally, it's the final segment - "Trucknapper Caper" featuring Donkey Kong Junior. In the games, Donkey Kong Junior is a sequel where Donkey Kong's son has to save him from Mario - in this show, since Kong and Mario are busy over in their own segment, Junior is instead a very strong junior ape searching for his father. He also has a human best friend, a teenage boy called Bones, who, as you might expect, is not in the games. But the most obviously noticeable thing about Junior, right from the opening, is that his catchphrase is "Monkey muscle!" in the exact same cadence as how Scrappy-Doo says "Puppy power!"
The two of them travel around on a motorcycle, with Junior driving and Bones in the sidecar. They start this episode by entering Texas, and Bones tells Junior that it's the biggest state. Unless this show is set before 1959... no it isn't. Alaska is the biggest state. I'm not sure how they made this mistake. Maybe Bones is just an idiot.
Almost immediately, some tough customers in a truck try to run them off the road, and Junior and Bones end up crashing into a tree and wrecking the motorbike. So they have to go to a truck stop and fix it, and there they meet a girl called Jenny, who is very proud of her truck-driving father. I would be willing to bet that Jenny is yet another Tress MacNeille role - just something about the voice.
Anyway, the bullies from before spot all the expensive stuff in Jenny's dad's truck and decide it could be worth something, so they kidnap him and drive off with all of it. Junior does his "monkey muscle" bit and jumps into the now-repaired motorcycle with Bones and Jenny. I'm not sure of the logic of when he decides to shout "monkey muscle" - it makes sense before a fight, but sometimes it just seems kind of random.
They follow the bad guys without being detected, and find that they've stolen a whole bunch of other trucks and tied up their drivers too. Junior and Bones (forget that Jenny came with them, as the episode seems to) get on top of the truck containing the kidnapped drivers, and Junior gets to work unpeeling the roof to free them, while Bones tries to distract the sentry from the noise by shaking an overhanging tree branch and making cat noises... It almost works until Bones slips on a pinecone and falls to the ground!
He flees from that one guy only to run into the others. So Junior... makes a moustache for himself using needles from the tree, then jumps down to where everyone else is, and claims that he and Bones are fellow trucknappers called Bad Boy Bones and Monkey Wrench Willie. Not sure why the moustache is necessary, since he's still going to look like an ape either way.
They ask to join up with the bad guys, and the bad guys tell them they have to pass a test first, by stealing Turnpike Tex's truck. Along with Frogger's boss, that's two "Tex"es in one episode! So they get taken to a bar that has Turnpike Tex's name on the sign for some reason - Tex's truck is outside, Tex is somewhere inside, and they're going to have to steal the keys from him somehow.
As you may have already been imagining, Tex is a big cowboy-looking guy with a beard, arm-wrestling someone. He beats the nameless guy and needs a new competitor, and Junior offers himself up, which makes Tex laugh but he agrees anyway. Junior is of course a match for Tex, and in the struggle there's a weird perspective-defying shot where Junior's fake moustache gets moved then put back again, even though their hands don't look near enough to his face to do so:
While arm-wrestling, Junior retrieves the truck keys from Tex's belt using his dextrous monkey foot, although he accidentally takes the guy's trousers with them! Luckily he wins the arm-wrestle and is able to get away, and Junior and Bones escape in Tex's truck. It's weird that we don't actually see Tex do anything explicitly bad beyond beating someone at arm-wrestling, given that we're supposed to cheer on Junior as he defeats him - if the bad guys had made them rob an ordinary trucker like Jenny's dad then they might have been more hesitant!
At the hideout, Junior and Bones set a trap for the trucknappers: Junior is hiding in the back of Tex's truck, and the plan is for Bones to knock twice once the villains are in position by the door, letting Junior know to jump out and attack. Unfortunately, as the bad guys approach, Bones has a bout of stupidity (I guess it's because he's pretending to be a villain!) and "knocks on wood" for luck, which Junior takes as the signal - he jumps out and ties up Bones before he realises he has the wrong person!
Covered in a sheet, Bones runs and collides with the truck that has the hostages in it, and it rolls away (haven't the trucknappers heard of brakes?), almost going off a cliff, but Junior saves it in time, taking the rope off Bones and using it as a lasso. Then he sorts out the bad guys by turning a boulder into a bowling ball and bowling them all over:
The villains flee into a hut, which I guess is the centrepiece of their hideout that wasn't seen much before now, but the boulder also hit some trees and their disembodied trunks roll along and crush the hut, presumably not killing the thieves and just trapping them there, although the damage looks severe!
Later, Jenny (she's back!) and her father thank Junior and Bones for the help, and even blows Junior a kiss. Junior might even be her age - who knows?
Overall, all of these shows were disappointingly generic - all four shows had thieves as their villains! There are other kinds of crimes! It's also a shame that the Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior segments don't get to cross over, if only because the respective actors for Mario and Junior would go on to be Optimus Prime and Megatron!