Video Games + American Cartoons = Bad Adoptations

In early 1990s America, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was at the height of its popularity, the Super NES and Sega Genesis were right around the corner, and arcades have experienced a revolution led by Capcom's Street Fighter II and Midway's Mortal Kombat. The rapidly growing popularity of video games made the game companies want to cash in by expanding their franchises into other products such as toys, comic books, novels, movies, and animated shows. In regard to animated shows, Japanese anime adaptations of popular video games made in Japan such as Capcom's Street Fighter and Darkstalkers have come to be regarded as the most faithful to the source material. On the other hand, American cartoon adaptations of popular video games have been reviled by fans as not only unfaithful to the source material but insulting to everything they cherish about their favorite games by using cheap (read poor quality) animations, degrading popular game characters in the day as what the contracted American studios deemed "tasteful" and "acceptable in the eyes of parents," and writing in cheap morality lessons/public service announcements that were in all likelihood ineffective. At their best, they were inferior knockoffs of the more well-known and better cartoons that were aired at the time. At their worst, they were canceled after only a few months, or even less than a week, of the first season.



Street Fighter

Based loosely off of the critically panned film adaptation starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia, this mid-90s cartoon produced by InVision Entertainment (in apparent cooperation with Japanese studios Madhouse and Sunrise, though there is no actual proof) depicted Guile (the main hero of the show) and a good portion of the original cast from up to Super Street Fighter II as members of a top secret G.I. Joe-like crime fighting organization called "Street Fighter" committed to fighting the evil forces of Shadoloo led by M. Bison. Lasting for two 13-episode seasons from 1995-1997, any Street Fighter fan who may have seen this may recall the sub-par fight choreography and the professions some of the characters that are improbable given who they are in the games, mainly E. Honda and Balrog as computer experts. But an even greater absurdity lay with how their special moves are used in various situations. In one episode, Fei Long used his Shin Kakyu (which goes straight up) to destroy an assortment of barrels in a horizontal helicopter-like motion. In another episode, Chun Li used her Spinning Bird Kick to put out a fire. Throughout the show, Guile used his Sonic Boom constantly not only during combat, but also to briefly create a hole in a wall of fire to escape it, to destroy a ceiling, and even disarm a bomb. Today, it is mocked by YouTube in the form of the Street Fighter Stupidity series. Speaking of which, there was once a YouTube video made by theSwitcher that compares Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie to the cartoon in terms of animation quality, character representation, and the use of special moves. Unfortunately, it was taken down due to copyright notices issued by Capcom.

Darkstalkers

Another fighting game from Capcom, Darkstalkers is popular not only for its Street Fighter-inspired gameplay, but also for its colorful yet Gothic anime-style cast of monsters from the world's most popular myths and folklore, including vampires, zombies, werewolves, succubi, and Sasquatch. But when the American children's cartoon studio Graz Entertainment produced the Darkstalkers cartoon in 1995, it received a backlash so bad that it discontinued after only 13 episodes, which is half the total of episodes for the Street Fighter cartoon. With the cast of supernatural anti-heroes depicted as Disney and Loony Toon rejects with the black-and-white morality most people would expect of a children's cartoon, poor animation quality, and a poor precursor to Harry Potter who was a direct descendant of the wizard Merlin of Authorian legend as the main character (who got put into a top ten list of the worst cartoon sidekicks), this American cartoon was quite literally staked to death and forgotten by the Darkstalkers fan community, who would have opted for the Japanese anime adaptation of Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge. While it is not great storywise, the anime had at least more appealing artwork and it more accurately depicted the cast from the game in appearance, personality, and fighting style.

Captain N: The Game Master

Created in 1989 as part of NBC's Saturday morning cartoon line-up, Captain N: The Game Master was, some might say, one of the first American video game cartoon adaptations alongside The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3. It was produced by DiC Entertainment, a television production company known for cartoons such as Inspector Gadget, The Real Ghostbusters, Heathcliff, and Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Viewed at best as indirect (or rather deliberate on part of Nintendo) advertising of Nintendo's products, Captain N incorporated many video game elements from many of the Japanese game company's brands, including characters popular NES titles like Castlevania, Mega Man, Kid Icarus, Donkey Kong, and Metroid, the familiar 8-bit sound effects from those NES games, and even products like the NES controller, the NES Zapper, the infamous Power Glove, and later the handheld Game Boy. The story follows Kevin Keene, an ordinary teenager (at least, one as depicted in a Saturday morning cartoon) as he was sucked into his TV while playing on the NES along side his pet dog and transported into Videoland. Alongside the ruler of Videoland Princess Lana and her loyal companions Mega Man, Kid Icarus, and Simon Belmont (of Castlevania), Kevin battles the evil forces of Mother Brain (of Metroid) with his superpowered NES peripherals. An interesting story regarding Captain N's origins can be found at the end of a September 2013 issue of Game Informer magazine. The character was created by a writer for Nintendo Power magazine, which was formed in July 1988, as a fan-fiction story-turned PR concept.

Double Dragon

One of the most famous beat 'em ups of all time, the plotline of Double Dragon was very simple: Billy and Jimmy Lee set out to rescue their girlfriend Marian from the clutches of violent street gangs populating a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This cartoon produced by DiC Entertainment that ran from 1993-1994 depicted the brothers as pseudo-superheroes with magical swords and some sort of Dragon Mobile (some would consider it a knockoff of the Batmobile) fighting a basic morality crusade against the Shadow Master and his forces in a rather normal city (or as normal as depicted in any Saturday morning cartoon) That story idea was placed in the fan reject pile along with the poor fight choreography. The show also received a 16-bit game in the form of Double Dragon V, a poor attempt to cash in on the Street Fighter 2 craze.

Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm

Mortal Kombat was one of the first games to receive an M-rating for its ultra violence and gruesome fatalities when it first debuted in 1991. Since the bloody visceral combat is the trademark of the American fighting game franchise, no single phrase could be better than "out of character" when looking at Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. Airing in late 1996, this cartoon series was partially produced by Threshold Entertainment, one of the production companies involved with the first two live action movie adaptations. Perhaps the only memorable thing about this one is the fact that the show had completely toned down the violence in order to appease a pre-teen audience, an odd choice given the fact that the violence was what made the Mortal Kombat series popular in the first place. Taking place in a family friendly version of the movie universe, the Thunder God Raiden leads his team of Earthrealm warriors against extra-dimensional invaders in G.I. Joe-like fashion, complete with a central headquarters and dragon-shaped jets. After 13 disappointing episodes of terrible fight choreography, bad character design, and Sonya's annoying frequent use of a one-liner ("Kombat time!"), this series got canceled. On a small brighter note, the show saw the first debut of Quan Chi, a sorcerer from the Netherrealm who would later play a critical and much larger role in the video game series.

The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog

Another DiC Entertainment production released during the golden age of Sega's mascot, this show was, to put it mildly, a poor man's attempt to cash in on the Looney Toons popularity via constant running and chili dogs. With tasteless animations, inconsistent plot, and characters whose intelligence sat within the realm of stupidity (in layman's terms, they are idiots), it is quite baffling that The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog lasted three seasons from 1993 to 1996. Meanwhile, another DiC-produced Sonic cartoon titled simply Sonic the Hedgehog offered what was arguably considered better animation and story, even though it only lasted from 1993 to 1994. In terms of plot between the two versions, While The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog had the blue speedster constantly engage in hi jinks that pale in comparison to Tom and Jerry, Wile E. Coyote, and Road Runner, Sonic the Hedgehog was focused on the title character as he fights alongside a small resistance movement to free his homeworld of Mobius from the evil clutches of Dr. Robotnik. Around six years ago, Doug Walker aka the Nostalgia Critic made a side-by-side comparison of those two shows in terms of quality and effort.

Legend of Zelda

From the original NES debut in 1986 to the present day, the tale of Link's adventures through the land of Hyrule to rescue princess Zelda and defeat the evil Gannon has seen many different versions. The one offered by the American animated series produced by DiC Entertainment in late 1989 is among the least memorable and perhaps rightly so. With the show's repetitive plot lines, less-than-appealing animation, an annoying sidekick, and Link's "Well, excuse me, princess" one-liner (which has since became a famous in-joke among gamers), it was no surprise that it lasted only 13 episodes. On a positive note, the animation by itself is not as terrible as the animated cutscenes found in Legend of Zelda titles made for the Philips CD-I.

Battletoads

If a cartoon show getting canceled after one season was considered bad enough, a cancellation after only one episode takes the bad image of video game-based cartoons to a whole new level. Based on a side-scrolling beat-'em-up developed for the NES by Rare, this show (technically, the only episode ever made in existence) aired in 1992 during the Thanksgiving weekend by (no surprise at this point) DiC Entertainment and never got off the ground as a series. The fact that it was directed by Kent Butterworth and written by David Wise, mainly known for their respective works as an animation director and writer for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series, did nothing to remedy that. Anyone entering 'Battletoads cartoon' into the YouTube search and viewing that lone episode will see the many reasons why this cartoon was a doomed failure from the terrible animation to the terribly written plot, which went like this:

Three junior high school nerds suspended for being losers were chosen by an inept princess and her loyal oddball turkey professor from a far distant galaxy to become super strong humanoid amphibians to protect said princess from the cute evil forces of a child's image of a dominatrix with their shape-shifting arms as weapons.

I could have briefly talked about cartoons featuring Mega Man, Super Mario Bros., and Pac-Man. Then again, you can see where I'm going with this. If there were a common moral to be had with all these stories of blatant cash-ins and indirect insults to both fans of classic video games and fans better cartoons, I would put it this way:

If you see a well-designed video game, focus on playing that. If you see a well-written and animated cartoon show, focus on watching that. If you seek on putting the best of both worlds into one video-game based cartoon show, do it in a way that would actually be appealing to fans without being a rushed merchandising scheme. Otherwise, don't do it at all and just focus on either video games or cartoons.

Of course, that's just my opinion as a fan-soon-to-be-designer of video games. In general terms, cartoon shows of this ilk are best left forgotten by the video game community and at least remembered as textbook lessons in a cartoon's production and distribution.