Why video game cartoons were a crapshoot in the '80s and '90s

I didn't even knew DD had a cartoon lol

Hard to fail on faithfullness to EWJ universe when in the games literally anything can happen

strawpoll.com/dbsse83s

That’s also partly because EWJ was a good cartoon masquerading as a bad video game.

Speaking of the Darkstalkers cartoon, remember when Rikuo had his own fighter jet?

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>a bad video game.

Give one good reason why I shouldn't bitch slap you several times in succession.

hey! that was sold SEPARATELY!
your parents help you put it together!

youtube.com/watch?v=ZJcJTs9NUl4

Its hilarious to think they had plans to make a toyline out of this show. Presumably. Certainly no other reason for such a thing to exist.

well
you can rest easy knowing there is no shitty morrigan or felicia figures from the 90s out there.

Felicia got the worst of it from the censors.

Well Double Dragon DIC had toys by TYCO

Toy Biz suggests otherwise. Although I'm not sure if they ever actually made a Felicia or Morrigan...

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Oh, guess not. Hm.

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SUPER FIGHTING ROBOT

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They made a Morrigan but she's part of the MvC toyline

yeah, but i meant shitty ones, those ones are at least ok. they also made a lot of the Vs series figures.

Ironically this toon would be the basis for Pac-Land
youtube.com/watch?v=n3n22GQMgcU

>second season actually started developing continuity and lore
>but it was aired out of order, shadow kahn turned out to be a total bitch, and it seemed like nearly every fucking episode involved either cyberspace or those mutants with their dumb scottish-jamaican accents

Shadow Khan was a Dollar Tree Scarecrow

Too bad all those shows were shit compared to Super Show.

What?

youtube.com/watch?v=BjjYxIgmyEg
youtube.com/watch?v=12rgYohCz2w

>80s stuff was just bleh
I'm disappointed in you

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>why video game cartoons were a crapshoot in the '80s and '90s

Most games in these days had a story that was written on a few pages of instruction manual, and graphics that left a lot to the imagination to work with. So people just made shit up.

Same reason for "The Deadly Cutsman", "Excuuuuuuse me, Princess", and all the weird shit that happened in the Super Mario Bros Super Show.

youtube.com/watch?v=deVz26AP8Go
youtube.com/watch?v=kDbD0216NaU

Remember Radical Von Awesome. I miss that guy.

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Yeah, I miss him too.

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>2015

Oh god what have I don't with my life.

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>stayed closest to the original material
The source material for most games in the 80s and 90s was little more than "that little electric bleep has to avoid that bloop to get that blip." It's not like Pac-Man or Mario had grandiose storytelling early on, and the games that did have stories to them (like Zelda) had basic stories, and many of them didn't have the stories in the game but rather shuffled off in the booklets where it really felt like a secondary thing that was never given much thought (because that's what it was).
The funniest is that people are all about "reimagining" old shows and video games and so on, and yet that's what these cartoons and movies did, they took a source material with a shaky story at best and built something out of it. The Super Mario Movie was alt-art before alt-art was even a thing.
Personally, as a kid, I really liked the Zelda cartoon and the Captain N cartoon and so on. It didn't bother me that "they weren't acting like their characters" or whatever because Link didn't have much of a character to begin with. He was just Swordguy in a game that was fun to play, and not some game that was trying to be a fucking movie.

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Just... why?

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Different target audiences. Though I do question why they would decide to market it towards children in the first place.

Money

no it didnt. It wasnt even close to the original

It was closer to the original than Captain B's depiction of him.

Captain N did deviate a lot from the source material. Characters like Kid Icarus and Simon Belmont had clear character ttaits not present in the cartoon. Also downright nonsensical things like King Hippo helping to take over the world.

I know Castlevania III's instruction manual was mum about Sypha's true identity but why did Captain N made "him" a Smurf?

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Animation team never got past level 1.
Joe Rockhead from was just a lunkheaded mook compared to the Crackenstein from the game he was based on

Kids

youtube.com/watch?v=-8wxG3gP4AM
youtube.com/watch?v=NMF0uJd3K8g
youtube.com/watch?v=YPiPrkZm1Zg
Funny that in the actual games Kuros is a knight instead of a barbarian as depicted in the game covers and the cartoon

notice how i didn't say that show, because i fucking said pacman and OG mario. i meant the supercade shit, you fucking child.

shit, were those threads really that long ago?

fuck, i still remember when Yea Forums was doing the code geass threads when it was new....in 2006.

The crew legitimately thought they had found the next Ghostbusters.

Poor guys.

ok....
i kinda want this now, DS girls in the ghostbuster outfits...

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No, it was because Earthworm Jim was a cartoon made by a cartoonist.

The creator also made Dave the Barbarian and Catscratch.

Meanwhile, check out some art from scrapped DiC (“DEEK!”) pitches for Metroid...

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Dave the Barbarian was Doug Langdale. EWJ and Catscratch were Doug TenNaple.

He did write for the Earthworm Jim cartoon tho

...and Castlevania.

I will GUARANTEE you a good amount of money that at some point an executive used ‘The Monster Squad’ as part of the pitch, either as a comparison or as the show they really wanted to make and slapped the Castlevania name on for marquee value.

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jesus..........
that title, i can't even READ IT.

If you tilt your monitor on it's back and view it from a 45 degree angle you might be able to read it.

Honestly, the fact that everyone in that pic is screaming except Medusa, who has a "wtf am I doing here, this isn't Castlevania, this is bullshit" expression on her face cracks me the fuck up.

>I am so fucking done with this shit.

They also replaced the Pope with the "Poltegeist King" in the US localized manual, so that made its way into Captain N too.

Oh wow

Money

To be honest, metroid one doesn't look too bad save for the open visor bubble helmet. And the fact that apparently they were going to make Samus a man?

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Man thing aside, the bubble helmet is actually weirder as a choice. It would save so much on animation costs to use the full helmet; no having to animate expressions of lip sync or anything like that. Deliberately changing the helmet to show the face was a choice that would increase production costs for the show.

I thought DiC stood for "Do it Cheap"?

Lol
Wasn't there scrapped art for a Double Dragon cartoon that looked far better than what was queefed out of '94?

I guess if anything, they had a toy to sell, perhaps refurbished from another show/product line, and insisted on the design for this. Other than that yeah, it doesn't make sense from a production standpoint. Like the space pirate design though.

Promo art and actual production frames are two different animals, but you're right I think. Never saw the Double Dragon cartoon. I was a Turtles Kid if anything.

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and to round it all out. California Games.

What an all-star lineup they had planned.

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Pitches can be changed. No doubt if it was greenlit they'd lose the transparent glass real fast.

This actually looks better than the '93-94 cartoon.
No dollar trre scarecrow, no mutant Jamaican Thundercats, none of that game-inaccurate malarkey

Got an almost complete token gang here
>black kid
>hot girl
>nerd kid
>weird kid
>hot boy
>chubby girl
>and dog.

kino, may give it a shot.

youtube.com/watch?v=j6fNTlMRdGQ
SatAm Sonic never gets a proper game but this does?

Budget

youtube.com/watch?v=FmfT-YPXo4M

all we need now is a wheelchair tech kid with a cyber curf board

its easier to make a fucking fighter.
also, i swear to god i remember some late 00s shit about a satam game in like 95 that got trashed.

And it killed Double Dragon until 2012

The movie did way more damage than the cartoon, really.

Really?

you obviously weren't around for the movie....

the cartoon was at least a cartoon, on saturdays. the movie was in theaters and did horribly and even then, DD as a brand wasn't strong as fuck past maybe the first 2 games.

not many people liked the 3rd nes game, not many even knew about the genesis version of 1, the DD5 game was a shit fighter and the only good thing at the time was the battletoads crossover, which was way more like a BT game than a cross between the two franchises.

are you telling me they didn't know the twist

Still, every cloud has a silver lining. In this case said lining is Alyssa Milano.

You'd need to beat the game to know that. So probably not.

This is pretty terrible if we're trying to stay close to source material. Mega Man looked nothing like his game character, Proto Man only worked for Wily out of obligation (or extortion) and the rest of the Robot Masters weren't exactly supposed to have a personality. Wily was arrested every game and he got new Robot Masters every time he was lose; he certainly didn't keep dozens of copies of each around every time. And if he was going to keep any, they'd probably be his own designs rather than the ones he co-worked on with Light.

Heck, the one time he copied Robot Masters were the ones from MM2 (into Doc Robot).

Plus, Light was a researcher and robots were a common occurrence. Most of the time, Wily just ran round stealing robots from their workplace before modifying them, so Flash Man, Metal Man, etc. are technically worker robots. There should've been more running around in the background, as opposed to Wily and Light having the only ones.

I'd actually say that the Super Mario cartoons were closer to the source material. They were shit (Mega Man was pretty great) but they're far closer to the games they're based on. Lots of Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Bowser, power-up in the SMB3 ones, enemies, moronic plots involving kidnapping Peach again, and so on. Although the most accurate is probably the Battletoads pilot. Yes, not really fair since it's one episode and can't screw too much up. It is so painfully 90s, is has a lot of callouts to the game, and even the stupid surfer aesthetic fits well with the franchise.

youtube.com/watch?v=ggmOeBnbyXI

>why video game cartoons were a crapshoot in the '80s and '90s
Because the cartoonists weren't given good access to the source material. They'd never played the games and only has the NA manual to read. They probably also got information from both NA and JP divisions, which might've been conflicting or sometimes incorrect information. And, ultimately, they were working on making a 80s/90s cartoon with a video game skin. They weren't trying to actually remake the game itself.

They knew that stupid kids would buy anything with the game character on the box so it just needed to look somewhat similar. I mean, the kids didn't have anything to read other than the manuals either, so what the fuck did they know about Mega Man anyways?

Still, Shadow Khan was a sad ass joke. Hyped-up to be some Thanos tier threat when in reality he's a Dollar Tree Scarecrow who flees from cats and dogs. Weaksauce.

To this day I still wonder what a MMX cartoon would've been like

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Proto Man only worked for Wily because MM 4/5. Bass was made several months later after the cartoon made its debut

Like that one episode he was in. They even wanted to make one, along with a season 3 with Bass (and Proto switching sides).

Then the toys flopped, Bandai pulled the funding, and it died.

Shit.

I bet Namco took one look at this show and said: Let's humor those Americans by making a game out of it
youtube.com/watch?v=4CDVshu9a4U

yeah, her ass saved that movie.

>along with a season 3 with Bass (and Proto switching sides).

While that's based and all, my take away is:
>Bass
>Meaning Mega Man 7 characters get included (and prsumably MM6 since that game also never made the cut)
>Which means Rbuy Spears Auto, and Tomahawk Man, and Shade Man, and Turbo Man, and maybe the Rush Power/Super Adaptor modes?

Even the anime industry wasnt doing so well. The Fighting Game's OVAs flopped pretty badly and relied more on the fanservice archtype's tits to sell.

And the worst part? I actually dont want a H OVA of Nekopara given the state of the hentai ova market right now.

>H OVA of Nekopara
Well the source material is shit, so it's not like the OVA is going to suffer in the writing department in comparison.

ALL of them. They just took the characters and did whatever the fuck they wanted storywise, but with terrible animation and bad voice acting.

It’s less that they were intentionally going to make him a man and more that they never saw the hidden ending and didn’t know samus was a woman

Duh, "If it's animated, it's only for children!!"

>we'll never know if Dennis gets ye flask

IT'S NOT FAIR BROS

Boy oh boy, Dic fucked up SO much shit...The Littles was good, and Kissyfur was GREAT though. Huh.

>2015
THAT'S NOT TRUE

THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE

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Only because they outsourced to Japanese companies in the 80s. The next decade however they had to go to other countries for animation works due to Japan becoming more expensive thus crap like this: youtube.com/watch?v=OGqvjGXSjRQ

So how did this one stack up compared to the games? I only have vague memories about watching the cartoon. Sure, the same general idea and theme was there, but I don't recall how much globe-trotting the cast actually did.

youtube.com/watch?v=CGufyFt6zQc

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You want to fork 50 dollars for a 15-20 flash loop? If you are lucky you get Bunny Walker, not lucky and you get Poro

The games themselves are $20 each for about three scenes that last under a minute each, taken together.

THIS

i also recently streamed like every fighter OVA i could find. it was fun and terrible, especially the ones in english.

The street fighter ova's were kino though

Most of them. Alpha Generations...yikes.

Reminder the pilot was way closer to actual Megaman, but they still opted for this version.

The people who made Captain N literally never played a video game in their life and had no problem admitting that.
The guy who actually created the comic Captain N was based on has been butthurt about it ever since since they basically stole his really cool concept that accurately depicted Metroid and changed it into the shit heap it became without giving him a dime or even a phonecall. Not that they had any obligation to, but like there's a guy right there who clearly has a great art style and knows the games, why not hire him?

The problem is at that point video games were still viewed as just a second flash in the pan like they were the first time, a toy fad, so they were just treated the same way as Transformers and GI Joe where you had to basically make everything up.

From what I recall it was usually only one location an episode. Other than the edutainment stuff it's okay at best.

Carmen Sandiego doesn't really have much plot or lore so it's pretty spot on

That is an entirely valid possibility considering these guys were the brain trust behind Captain N right?

Definitely

I liked the game show best. The cartoon was just too annoying.

why did they change so much? Double Dragon was about two guys beating up thugs and saving the girl. This power rangers shit has nothing to do with it. This cartoon is like when you read those laughable utter shit what could have been cartoons that rightfully never got picked up but this one actually made it somehow

user you're talking about the same generation of tv executives that made a Toxic Avenger cartoon

That's how it goes in video game toons.

It seems like there are more people interested in heckling the Darkstalkers cartoon than actually interested in the Darkstalkers games.

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As much as we love to see a new Darkstalkers game, current Capcom is still milking the SF cow, though the udders raw,bloody, and full of friction burns and abcess