A while back, I wrote about two of my favorite subjects combined:videogames and cereal. Now I want to take you through another avenue of pop culture history that will help to complete the trifecta of the things that, for over 20 years, have made gamer children’s days brighter; heck, adults love ’em too!
I’m talking about the marriage of television shows, namely cartoons, with videogames. There really is nothing better to go along with a big bowl of game themed cereal than a morning block filled with game themed programming. And fortunately for us, there have been plenty of them broadcast all over the world for the past 20 years. But this means that there is way too much to cover to contain it all in a single article.
The following is just part one of this journey back through television and gaming history, with screenshots, video, and commentary covering the first two videogame cartoons ever made.
Like many other things, videogame television all started withPac-Man.
Pac-Man: The Animated Series/1982-1984/Hanna-Barbera
The epidemic ofPac-ManFever in the early 80s was responsible for the kick start of real-world game paraphernalia, including t-shirts, Pac shaped food products, and of course, a cartoon.Pac-Man:The Animated Serieswas first of its kind, and the first in a long line of cartoons based on games that have little to no back story. This gave the creators a lot of freedom with the settings and situations they can put the game’s characters in.
InPac-Man‘s case, they made him a family man, which makes sense seeing as how the games chronicled his meeting Ms. Pac-Man, falling in love, and having a child. The three lived together in a very Pac-centric world, where everything was spherical, bright, and Power Pellets grew freely on trees. Here, their world may have no longer been a maze set against a black background, but it did retain one environmental aspect from the games: there were a bunch of pesky ghosts always flying about. The four original boy ghosts and the girl ghost Sue fromMs. Pac-Manall served to be a constant collective pain in the Pacs’ nonexistent necks.
Many of the plots used forPac-Manwere loosely derived from or inspired by other works in television and film. Take for example the episodesMr. Jekyll and Mr. Pac-ManandSuper-Pac vs. Pac-Ape, which have pretty predictable plots if you take the titles into consideration. Nearly every episode of this program borrowed some element from a work of media other than the videogames, perhaps because it was kind of hard to squeeze a bunch of varied stories out of the game series.
Pac-Man: The Animated Serieswas also very interesting in that it inspired a few completely newPac-Mangames based on the mythos of the television series.Pac-LandandPac-Man 2: The New Adventuresboth gave Pac-Man arms, legs, a hat, and the world of Pac-Land to romp through, sidescroller style. Ideas traveling from games to TV and then back to games is a phenomenon that, to my knowledge, has not happened with another videogame cartoon to date.EDIT:Apparently,Pitfall II : The Lost Cavernsfor the Atari 2600was based off of thePitfallcartoon described in the next section. But these are the only ones.. I think!
Saturday Supercade/1983-1985/Ruby-Spears
Next, in 1983, cameSaturday Supercade, a block of videogame cartoons that aired Saturday mornings on CBS. The shorts included in this 30 minute block were inspired byFrogger,Kangaroo,Q*Bert,Space AceandPitfall. Its two flagship cartoons were based on the wildly popularDonkey Kongseries of games, withDonkey KongandDonkey Kong Juniorgetting their own respective cartoon segments.
LikePac Man: The Animated Series, most of these simplistic games had very little about their worlds set in stone. This caused some of these arcade favorites to be dropped into very odd settings. For example, Q*Bert was still a fuzzy orange ball who had to hop away from purple snake enemies, but he wore a letter jacket and lived in 1950s era America. Frogger would still be flattened on a regular basis, but he worked as a newspaper reporter with a female frog and a turtle.
The Kong cartoons were interesting in that they were separate entities, yet linked to one another.Donkey Kongwas a methodical program, centering around Mario and Paulina’s futile chase to recapture the big ape after he escapes from the circus. Meanwhile,Donkey Kong Juniorwas a continual story that nipped at the heels of the parent show, as Junior and a human biker follow Senior’s trail so that father and son can be reunited. Ruby-Spears again chose to change a pretty blatant relationship by making Paulina into Mario’s niece. What they had against romance in videogames, we’ll never know.
The freedom of the writers to fill in the blanks in these characters’ personalities also caused many of them to fall into well-established cartoon stereotypes. The characters ofQ*Berttended to tack the letter Q onto every word, in the same way that the Smurfs often replaced random words with “smurf” (Pac-Manalso did this to a certain extent with the prefix “Pac”). Donkey Kong Junior was given a catchphrase (“Monkey muscle!”), which drew many parallels to a certain small cartoon dog’s battle cry (“Puppy power!”).
Saturday Supercademay not ever be able to live on asPac-Manhas due to licensing issues. There’s not much left of it today, but what is still around has been graciously ripped from VHS recordings of old broadcasts and uploaded to the Internet to share with everyone.
Additional material:Donkey Kong: The Great Ape EscapeDonkey Kong Junior: A Christmas StoryQ*Bert: Q-urf’s UpFrogger: Here Today, Pawned TomorrowKangaroo: Trunkful of TroublePitfall: Masked Menace MessSpace Ace: Wanted: Dexter!CBS bumpers, 1982-1985
BONUS!Dragon’s Lair/1984-1985/Ruby-Spears
There isn’t much to say about this cartoon; it was basically the game in an uncontrollable, episodic format. LikeSpace Ace, Don Bluth was not responsible for the animation, making it a much lower quality production than the original. Oddly enough, even though its sister cartoonSpace Acewas part of theSaturday Supercade,Dragon’s Lairwas aired around the same time on CBS’ competition, ABC.
That’s all for part one ofFrom the Console to the TV Station, but there is plenty more to come! Be sure to tune in next week for, among other things, a comprehensive look at the many television shows that featured gaming’s two biggest stars: Mario and Sonic. See you then!
