Honestly, if you grew up in the early nineties, your Saturday mornings probably smelled like sugary cereal and looked like a fever dream of Italian plumbers flying through the air with raccoon tails. We need to talk about the adventures of the Super Mario Bros 3. It wasn't just a cartoon. It was a massive, weird, slightly clunky cultural phenomenon that tried to turn a pixelated masterpiece into a half-hour sitcom. Most people remember the game—obviously, it’s one of the greatest things Nintendo ever put on a cartridge—but the show? That’s where things get interesting.
It was 1990. Nintendo was king.
The show was produced by DIC Animation City, the same folks who gave us Inspector Gadget and Captain Planet. They had a monumental task: take the world’s most popular video game and make it make sense as a narrative. They didn't really succeed at making it "make sense," but they sure made it memorable.
What actually happened in the adventures of the Super Mario Bros 3?
Most episodes followed a pretty standard, albeit chaotic, formula. Bowser—or King Koopa, as he was almost exclusively called back then—would hatch some hair-grown scheme to take over the Mushroom Kingdom or, occasionally, the "Real World." This was a big deal. The show leaned heavily into the idea that Mario and Luigi were from Brooklyn. They had the accents. They had the attitude. They had a weirdly specific obsession with pasta that felt a little bit like a caricature, but we loved it anyway.
Unlike the previous show, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, this iteration ditched the live-action segments with Lou Albano. It went full animation. It also introduced the Koopalings, though if you look back now, their names will mess with your head.
See, the game gave them names like Ludwig von Koopa and Lemmy Koopa. The cartoon writers? They went a different way. We got Cheatsy, Big Mouth, Kootie Pie, Hop, Hip, Bully, and Kooky von Koopa. It’s one of those weird bits of trivia that separates the casual fans from the people who spent way too much time reading the back of the box. Kooky was basically a mad scientist. Big Mouth wouldn't shut up. Kootie Pie was a spoiled brat. They had personalities that, while one-dimensional, gave the show a sense of family dynamic that the games wouldn't touch for years.
The stakes were usually low, but the energy was high. One week they’re in "London" (which looked suspiciously like a generic city with a Big Ben slapped in the middle), and the next they’re dealing with a giant gold statue of Koopa.
The power-ups were the real stars
If you watched the adventures of the Super Mario Bros 3 for the plot, you were doing it wrong. You watched it to see the power-ups. Seeing the Super Leaf in action was the highlight of my week. Mario would grab a leaf, poof into a raccoon suit, and suddenly he’s flying. It looked nothing like the game physics, but it didn't matter.
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They used the Frog Suit. They used the Tanooki Suit. They even used the Warp Whistles. It felt like the writers had a copy of the NES manual on their desks and were just checking things off a list. "Okay, we used the P-Wing, now let's make an episode about the Kuribo's Shoe."
The animation was... well, it was DIC in the 90s. Sometimes Mario’s overalls would change color mid-scene. Luigi’s voice would occasionally swap with Mario’s. It was messy. But that messiness gave it a human quality that modern, polished CGI shows lack. You could tell people were drawing this as fast as they possibly could to meet a deadline.
Why the "Real World" episodes felt so weird
One of the most jarring things about the show was how often the Mario brothers went back to Earth. In the episode "Toddler Terrors of Time Travel," they end up in Brooklyn as babies. In "Kootie Pie Rocks," Bowser kidnaps Milli Vanilli.
Yes. That actually happened.
The Koopalings kidnapped a real-world pop duo. This is the kind of stuff that makes the adventures of the Super Mario Bros 3 such a bizarre time capsule. It wasn't just a game adaptation; it was trying to be part of the 1990 zeitgeist. They even had an episode where they parodied the "New Kids on the Block." It’s fascinating and cringeworthy at the same time. You’re watching these icons of gaming interact with the fleeting pop culture of the Bush senior era.
The Milli Vanilli incident
Let’s stick on this for a second because it’s a perfect example of how the show operated. In the episode "Kootie Pie Rocks," Kootie Pie wants to see a Milli Vanilli concert. Koopa, being a "good" dad, just steals the band. Mario and Luigi have to rescue them.
The weirdest part? The show used actual Milli Vanilli tracks like "Girl You Know It's True."
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Of course, shortly after the episode aired, the lip-syncing scandal broke. Nintendo and DIC were left with an episode featuring a disgraced band. Later airings had to have the music stripped out or replaced with generic synth-pop. It’s a legendary piece of "oops" history in animation.
The legacy of the Koopalings
The show gave the Koopalings more dialogue than they’d get in the games for the next two decades. In the games, they were just bosses at the end of a world. In the cartoon, they were a bickering family.
- Kooky von Koopa (Ludwig) was the brains. He built the weird gadgets.
- Big Mouth (Morton) was the talker. He’d ramble until everyone’s ears bled.
- Cheatsy (Larry) was the sneaky one.
- Kootie Pie (Wendy) was the tantrum-thrower.
- Bully (Roy) was the muscle.
- Hip and Hop (Lemmy and Iggy) were the twins.
They were distinct. For a kid, this was lore. Before the internet gave us wikis for every single minor character, this show was our primary source for who these guys actually were. Even though the names were "wrong" compared to the manual, they felt "right" because we saw them every Saturday.
It wasn't just about the brothers
Princess Toadstool (Peach didn't really exist as a name in the West yet) was actually pretty capable in this show. She wasn't just waiting to be rescued in every single episode. She frequently took charge, used power-ups, and outsmarted Koopa. Toad, voiced by John Stocker, was the comic relief, often yelling "Bumping Bubbles!" or some other nonsensical catchphrase.
The dynamic was a quartet. It wasn't just Mario and Luigi. It was a team of four heroes against a family of turtles.
The technical side of the show
Technically, the adventures of the Super Mario Bros 3 was part of a block. It usually ran alongside Captain N: The Game Master. This was the ultimate marketing machine. You’d watch Mario, then you’d watch a show that featured Simon Belmont and Mega Man.
The animation style was a bit more refined than the Super Show, but it still had that soft, grainy look of 90s cel animation. The colors were vibrant—lots of primary reds and blues. The music was a mix of Koji Kondo’s original game themes rearranged for a TV orchestra and original, synthesized tracks. Hearing the "Underworld" theme kick in when they entered a pipe was a Pavlovian trigger for every kid in the neighborhood.
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Addressing the misconceptions
A lot of people think this show lasted for years. It didn't. There were only 26 episodes. Because it was syndicated and repeated so often, it felt like it was on forever.
Another common mistake is confusing it with Super Mario World, the follow-up cartoon. That one had Yoshi and took place in Dinosaur Land. This show, the SMB3 one, was strictly about the eight worlds of the NES game (though they mostly hung out in Grass Land or Pipe Land).
Why we still care about this cartoon
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, sure. But there’s more to it. The adventures of the Super Mario Bros 3 represents a time when video games were "the frontier." There were no rules for how to adapt them. Hollywood hadn't figured out a formula yet. Everything was experimental.
Today, Mario is a carefully managed brand. Every "wahoo" is approved by a committee. Back in 1990, the creators were just throwing Milli Vanilli and Brooklyn plumbers into a blender to see what happened. It was wild. It was unpredictable. It was often stupid. But it had a soul.
It captured the feeling of playing the game—that sense that anything could be around the next corner, whether it was a giant boot or a secret flute.
Actionable insights for the retro fan
If you’re looking to revisit this era, don't just watch the show. Do it right.
- Check the Credits: Look for the name "Rob Piluso" or "Andy Heyward" if you want to see who was steering the ship at DIC.
- Compare the Names: Play the NES game and then watch an episode. It’s a fun mental exercise to see how the Koopaling personalities in the show influenced (or didn't influence) their modern portrayals in games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
- Hunt the Milli Vanilli Version: If you can find an old VHS tape from the early 90s, check if it has the original music. The DVD releases usually have the scrubbed, generic audio. It’s a piece of "lost media" history.
- Context Matters: Remember that this show was competing with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It had to be loud and fast to survive.
The show isn't high art. It’s a loud, colorful, slightly broken artifact of a time when the Mushroom Kingdom was still being built. But if you want to understand the DNA of Mario’s jump from the console to the screen, you have to start here. It was the first time we saw these characters as more than just sprites. They were loud, they were Italian, and they were ready to fly.