Despite the initial dominance of the original Famicom (known as the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America), NEC Home Electronics’ PC Engine (or TurboGrafx-16) and Sega’s Mega Drive (also known as the Genesis) began to overtake the aging console when they debuted in 1987 and 1988, respectively. Both systems were 16-bit and outperformed it in both graphics and sound. Nintendo commissioned the development of a new console, to be dubbed the Super Famicom, or the Super Nintendo Entertainment System when it reached America. The console was designed by Masayuki Uemura. While comparable to the other systems at the time in graphics and sound, the system was made adaptable to a variety of enhancement chips that would be integrated into game cartridges to further set the SNES apart. The system was launched in Japan on November 21, 1990 to instant success; selling out its initial 300,000 units within hours and becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era.
Super Mario World was one of the launch titles for the system, and was bundled with the North American version upon its release the following year. The game was directed by Takashi Tezuka and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto, with Shigefumi Hino as the graphics designer. The game was a bit of wish-fulfillment on the part of the production team as after they had completed the original game they wanted to have Mario riding on a horse. But that was not graphically possible until the SNES came around.
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| Dinosaur Land. |
World (known
as Super Mario Bros. 4 in Japan) had
Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach travel to Dinosaur Land
to recuperate from their battle with Bowser.
However, Bowser had also chosen that place with his Koopalings to rebuild his
forces and attack anew. Bowser had kidnapped the Princess again and imprisoned
the citizens of Dinosaur Land—cute, colorful dinosaurs with long tongues known
as Yoshis—in magical
eggs. Mario and Luigi freed one of them, named Yoshi, and together they set out
to stop Bowser, free the dinosaurs, and save the Princess.
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| Mario, Luigi, Toadstool and Yoshi. |
The game introduced several new elements to the franchise. Yoshi, for instance, could eat enemies and, depending on what kind of enemies those were, would gain a special ability like flight or fireball breath. Eating berries also caused Yoshi to lay an egg containing a power-up. Debuting power-ups included the Cape Feather, which gave the brothers a golden cape that allowed them to take off from a running start and glide through the air, and a Power Balloon that allowed them to inflate for a limited time and fly. New enemies included Chargin’ Chuck, a turtle in football gear; Dino Rhino, a slow-moving dinosaur; Dino-Torch, a small dinosaur that breathed fire; Fish Bone, a slow-swimming fish skeleton; Monty and Mega Moles, which were evil moles that came in small and giant size, respectively; and Wiggler, a happy caterpillar that became enraged when jumped on. The extra item system from Mario Bros. 3 was refined to include the ability to hold an extra item in the actual game screen rather than having to return to the overworld map to access it.
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| Mario trying to teach the Cave People football. |
As a result of the new game and its
popularity, DiC
Entertainment and Reteitalia,
S.p.A. began work on a new animated series incorporating
elements of the game. Super Mario World was
largely a continuation of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3,
featuring the same cast and most of the same characters. However, a new
animation studio, Pacific
Rim Productions, Inc., was used on the series resulting in
similar but noticeably different character designs. The series would follow the
game fairly closely while taking some liberties with the names of some
locations and characters, as well as maintaining continuity with the earlier Mario Bros. shows such as the Mario
Bros. retaining their colorful coveralls rather than the blue ones as in the
new games.
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| Oogtar being eaten by a piranha plant. |
The series focused on Mario (Walker
Boone) and Luigi (Tony Rosato) living with Princess Toadstool (Tracey Moore) in
Dinosaur Land (sometimes called Dinosaur World). Unlike the game, the land was
populated by cavepeople as well as dinosaurs. Mario often spent a lot of time
trying to make the cavepeople’s lives easier by introducing modern inventions
that they were currently living without, such as cars and television. Taking
the place of Toad
from the previous shows was Oogtar (voiced by Toad’s actor John Stocker), a
pre-adolescent caveboy. The heroes were also joined by Yoshi (Andrew Sabiston),
a curious child-like dinosaur with a large appetite and numerous phobias that
was discovered as an egg by Luigi. Following the Marios to Dinosaur Land was
King Koopa (Harvey Atkin) and his Koopalings (who retained their Mario 3 cartoon names): Bully (Dan
Hennessey), Kooky (Michael Stark), Big Mouth (Gordon Masten), Hip and Hop (both
Tara Strong), Kootie Pie (Tabitha St. Germain) and Cheatsy (James Rankin). Of
the entire cast, only Atkin and Stocker appeared in all three Mario cartoons. The Cape Feather made an
appearance, used primarily by Mario, and the Fire
Flower returned with a new design making it resemble an
orange rose.
Super Mario World debuted on NBC on September 14,
1991, making it the second (and, so far, last) Mario show to air on
Saturday mornings. The show’s episodes typically ran 11 minutes and were
paired up with episodes from the third season of Captain N: The Game Master for a half-hour
block called Captain N and the New Super
Mario World. It was written by Kristofor Brown,
Eleanor
Burian-Mohr, Paul Dell,
Jack Hanrahan,
Phil Harnage,
Perry Martin,
Martha Moran,
Frank Ridgeway,
George Shea,
Brooks Wachtel
and Steven Weiss.
The series’ theme was composed by Mark
Mothersbaugh and was played over an intro animated by
Canvas, Inc. The intro featured a noticeably higher quality of animation than
the rest of the show, which likely suffered to the same budget cuts that
plagued Captain N’s third season
quality.
The
show ran for a single season of 13 episodes and was cancelled along with Captain N as NBC sought to move away
from animation into more teen-oriented programming following the success of Saved by the Bell. It was the
shortest-lived of the three Mario shows. World
was later shown from September 1992 to September 1993 in the syndication
package Captain N & The Video Game
Masters along
with Captain N, The
Legend of Zelda and
Mario Bros. 3. From 1994-1997, World was paired up with reruns of 40 of
the cartoon portions of The
Super Mario Bros. Super Show for
the syndication package Mario All-Stars (named
after the compilation
game
that included all the original Mario console games and later World). All-Stars aired six days a week on the The
Family Channel and on USA Network on
weekdays.
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| Mario World on DVD apart from Captain N. |
Unlike the other Mario shows, World didn’t see as wide a home video release in North America. “The Night Before Cave Christmas” was included on the 1996 VHS Super Mario Bros. Super Christmas Adventures from Buena Vista Home Video. Two VHS tapes were released in the United Kingdom, however. In 2007, Shout! Factory and Vivendi Entertainment in North America and Roadshow Entertainment in Australia released Captain N and the New Super Mario World to DVD after legal issues involving Yoshi’s use were resolved. In 2013, NCircle Entertainment released the complete series independent of the Captain N segments in two volumes, later collected into one volume. WildBrain, the current rights holders of the DiC library, have uploaded the entire series to YouTube on their official channel. Additionally, the series has been made available to stream on Paramount+ and Amazon Prime Video.
Originally posted in 2017. Updated in 2024.
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