Every Super Mario Animated Series, Ranked

by

Despite a handful of appearances, the character hasn’t had a significant role in animation since the early 1990s. Their first animated TV appearance was in the Saturday Supercade cartoon, which featured classic arcade games. The limited number of cartoons solely based on Super Mario mainly show how popular the franchise once was, or they’ve become memes that keep alive the memory of other short-lived Nintendo shows.

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! Featured Live-Action and Animated Elements

It’s no surprise that the first Super Mario animated series was wonderfully strange, considering it featured characters who travel through pipes to save princesses from turtle dinosaur monsters! The show uniquely combined live-action scenes with cartoons inspired by the original two Super Mario Bros. games from Nintendo.

The live-action parts of the show featured wrestler Captain Lou Albano – who many remember as Cyndi Lauper’s on-screen father and wrestling coach – playing Mario. Comedian Danny Wells played Luigi alongside him. Surprisingly, these segments showed them as everyday plumbers, with cartoon segments shown between their scenes. The animated story followed Mario and Luigi’s adventures through the Mushroom Kingdom, where they met popular characters like Princess Peach (sometimes called Princess Toadstool) and Toad, all while battling King Koopa.

While the show primarily featured Super Mario characters, it also included weekly The Legend of Zelda segments. Surprisingly, these Zelda portions are often more fondly remembered than the Super Mario parts, largely because of the show’s unusual take on Link and his now-famous catchphrase, which has become a popular meme. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! only lasted one season in 1989, but with episodes airing every weekday, it produced a total of 65 episodes that you can still watch today.

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 Continued the Super Show for the New Game

Following the success of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, DIC Animation continued the animated adventures in 1993 with The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3. While still featuring the familiar characters, this new series drew more directly from the Super Mario Bros. 3 game and told a single, continuous story across its 13 episodes.

Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Toad continued to battle King Koopa, but now they also faced his Koopalings. The show took place more often in real-world locations instead of the Mushroom Kingdom. Though The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 removed the live-action segments from the original series, it still aired as separate parts.

The original Nintendo cartoon Captain N: The Game Master had a simple story: a kid from the real world gets transported to a world filled with Nintendo video game characters. The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 often aired alongside episodes of Captain N, creating an hour of Nintendo animation that unfortunately only lasted one season. Captain N continued to feature characters from the Super Mario series throughout its third and final season.

Super Mario World Re-adapted the Series to Highlight the SNES Debut of the Franchise

The release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System marked a fresh start for the Super Mario series with the game Super Mario World. The animated show also got a reboot as Super Mario World, but it included some updates. These new episodes tackled issues kids were facing at the time, which was a first for the series.

Toad wasn’t a major character anymore and barely appeared in the game. Princess Peach began acting like a mother figure to Mario and Luigi. A new character named Oogtar, a cave boy, joined them as they continued to defend the Mushroom Kingdom from King Koopa. The series also shifted its focus away from real-world scenes, dedicating more time to their adventures in Super Mario World.

Similar to previous animated series like The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! and The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World was part of a block of animated shows. The final season of Captain N: The Game Master aired alongside it, and the combined shows were called Captain N and the New Super Mario World. Later, all three Super Mario series, along with The Legend of Zelda and Captain N, were combined and re-aired as Captain N and the Video Game Masters. After that, there weren’t any new Super Mario animated adaptations for many years, until the recent films from Illumination.

Read More

2026-04-04 01:06