Did Video Game Cartoons Really Worked?

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a_little_help_here

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It seemed that back then, there were many cartoons based on video games. The problem was that... many were deemed, "bad." One of the main criticisms were they were inaccurate to the games. Of course, the games themselves were shallow at best and didn't really had much to work with. The Legend of Zelda and Pac-Man are just a few examples. The problem people had with the former is that the main hero was snarky and wanted to get some. They say he was out of character, but... he never had ANY character whatsoever in his source games. He was meant to be an avatar, so he can't be DiC's?

All I'm saying is... maybe games just can't work as cartoons. Movies suck as games. I guess it's vice versa.
 
The only video game based toons that I would say that were really good were the 3 Sonic cartoons(Adventures, Satam, and Underground). Although I happen to enjoy Adventures(for its rather great humor and milton's design on robotnik) and the serious tones of Satam. I havent seen underground. Games can work as cartoons but however the only reason why they are bad is because the people are not handling them right.

Take zelda for exmaple. If you give Zelda to somebody like the director of spirited away, and if he nailed it. You'd get yourself a good animated film of Zelda.
 
Thing is, most old school video games didn't really have anything approching a coherent storyline. I mean look at Mario for example, you've got this Italian plumber running around some weird fantasy land full of talking mushroom people, where he has to save a princess from somkinda of freaky turtlle monster by getting super powers from flowers! How in Odin's name is a writer supposed to fit all that into any kind of story that makes sense?
 
Sonic the Hedgehog was a pretty good cartoon, even if it was a little bit too dark considering the subject material. Pokemon has been going on for years and has legions of fans.

And I actually love The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. Yes, it's cheesy, but it's the good kind of cheesy.
 
The only game cartoon I can think of off the top of my head that was good before 2000 was the Street Fighter II animated movie. Sure the plot was thin, but the animation was top notch, the choreography was gorgeous, and Chun-Li...yeah, Chun-Li.

Your average Saturday Morning cartoon based on a video game was the same as other SatAm stuff, just with a different lead. Same stock plots, same bad comedy, same annoying quirks. (EXCUUUUSE ME PRINCESS!)
 
Weren't all of these shows produced by DiC, the same people who tried to americanize Sailor Moon and peddled out kids programming to where we got shows like Super Duper Sumos?

There you go.

(I don't think ABC's Sonic was made by them, but the series right after it was, and it was all I could do to make it past the opening sequence)
 
I'm personally of the opinion that the 'Earthworm Jim' cartoon was one of the few quality takes on a video game series that was not only genuinely entertaining and funny, but also stuck fairly close to the source material. Granted, it took a few minor liberties from time to time, but they fit well with the tone you'd come to expect from the games themselves. Nowhere near as jarring as say, making Sonic the Hedgehog a prince and giving him a magic guitar or what have you.
So taking that as an example, yeah, cartoons based on video games do have the potential to work, and work well. But that said, the ones that do are usually an exception to the rule.
 
One thing that annoyed me about The Super Mario Bros. Super Show was the movie parody worlds within the Mushroom Kingdom they went to, or whatever excuse they used so they could do riffs on Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc. It annoyed me, because I was like, "That stuff isn't in the game!".

I watched the show expecting to see Mario and Luigi hopping on Goombas, not getting into Star Wars-style spaceship battles.
 
Did Video-Game inspired cartoons really worked?

In my opinion, yes.

Anything on the Saturday Supercade (Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Q*Bert, Frogger, and Pitfall Harry) worked, even though I wasn't born yet.

Why do I have to reason myself? All video game inspired cartoons are great. If only these type of cartoons/anime aired more than cartoons inspired by children's books and novels.

Movie and TV shows (in general) into video games lead way to stranger results, but that's just me.
 
They can work, you just need the right people behind them.

Viewtiful Joe was decent, though they could have adapted the second game better. Devil May Cry and Gungrave were also okay from what I heard. Sonic X seems popular enough. Never watched Kirby though. Star Ocean EX was very mixed, some good with some bad (the worst probably making Ashton a complete joke, but maybe that's just because he's my second favorite character). Tales of Eternia was just an insult to the game, though. Probably the worst anime adaption I've seen, though I'd be lying if I didn't admit the music was pretty dang good. I always wanted to check out Blue Dragon, but I never played the game.
 
DiC also did this with Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theatre.

...then again, Sanrio and Nintendo themselver even prover that their mascots can fit for basically ANYTHING, as they were meant to be.

At least, "The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3" made up for the "Super Show."


What about Adaptation Decay? Many Game-based cartoons were hated for a reason.

At first I was going to say that maybe Japan can do this better than the West(the CGI show based on Donkey Kong Country was made in France... and DKVine despied it) because that most of the games were Japanese anyway... but then I remembered that Disgaea, Devil May Cry, Tekken, Tsukihime, and of course, Pokemon, were called out of tarnishing the name to their respective games. Now, i'm not really sure.
 
Sorry to bump this, but I was thinking the topic over and realized half the problem with these early 90's shows is they didn't have too much of a plot, then ignored that.

Look at Double Dragon. It's a cartoon based on a video game that's pretty much a ripoff of an anime (Fist of the North Star) which itself is a kung fu wuxia version of a movie (Mad Max). It becomes even more obvious this isn't the height of originality when you look at Billy Lee's character design, which is little more than an Americanized version of North Star's lead, Kenshiro, right down to the clothes.

Now obviously you can't fully ape Fist of the North Star because that show was about Kung Fu Mad Max making people's heads explode as he walked the earth. Nor could you do a direct adaptation of a paper thin storyline for 13 episodes. (Ok, they go here, beat up everyone, leave). So DIC being DIC abandoned the original premise, using Kenshiro's character design and decided to do a transforming superhero story, filled to the brim with poorly animated action and lame social messages. And the result today is Youtube Poop fodder. Would the show have been better if it used what shallow plot there was? Hard to say. It would take someone who cared to adapt the script into usable form? Would kids have been able to handle Fist of the North Star? Doubtful. Your head asplode wouldn't have gotten past the PTA.

Rinse and repeat for dozens of games with paper-thin stories taking influence from a myriad of sources.
 
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