what are the legal issues regarding captain n and super mario world?

G

guitarrockeron

New member
I have read that the series Captain N and the New Super Mario World was legally considered a seperate series from the first two seasons of Captain N and had to be aired and released as such. Does anybody know any details of this, assuming it's true? I know that the Super Mario World segments were shown as part of the Mario All-Stars series which also contained the Mario segments from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, and I know there are some single-disc Mario releases that contain Mario segments from all three Mario series (and no Captain N included). It's also interesting considerign the last few half-hour episodes contained two Super Mario World segments, and no Captain N segments (Captain N was also removed from the openign and closing by then).

Also, I read that there were originally legal issues that almost prevented that series from being released on DVD due to the Yoshi character. Anybody know what these kinds of legal issues are? Because I figured that Nintendo always owned the Yoshi character (and he has appeared in Mario games made since that DVD release). It would be odd for Nintendo to sell the character rights to one Super Mario Bros. character without selling the whole franchise.
 
I think I can answer this one. Shout Factory had to go through Nintendo to release each of the Mario series, and had to clear the license to release material with their characters. Yoshi wasn't in the previous two series, so they had to get permission separate from the rest of the characters. There may have been some trouble with whoever they were negotiating with at the time, but they managed to clear it up.

So it's not that Nintendo doesn't have Yoshi lock stock and barrel, it's that DiC and Shout Factory didn't have permission at first.
 
That's weird that they would have to clear each individual character, though Super Mario World also had other characters who weren't on the earlier shows, like the Magikoopa and Big Boo (I wonder if Nintendo owns the rights to the show's original characters such as Ooptar and other cave people).
 
Well, enemies like Magikoopa and Big Boo are probably a helluva lot easier to clear the rights to than a main character like Yoshi.

Not too sure about Oogtar (remember, it's Ratgoo spelled backwards), though. I want to say that DiC (now Cookie Jar) owns him, but, at the same time, Sega owns the characters DiC created for the Sonic cartoons. Probably the same case with the Mario cartoons(don't expect Nintendo to use him within the next 50 years, though).

My real question is which party owns Kevin Keene and Princess Lana...
 
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