Adaptendo: Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr.
There are a lot of really strange adaptations of videos games out there. We all know how weird the Super Mario Bros. movie is and how much the Zelda cartoon deviated from its source material, but I wanted to take a look at some of the more obscure adaptations of Nintendo games there are out there. I figured I should start by looking at what was probably the first example of a Nintendo title being turned into some other form of media, so let’s take a look back at the Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. cartoons that aired as part of CBS’s Saturday Supercade block from 1983 to 1985.
The show was produced by Ruby-Spears Productions, who were also responsible for Alvin and the Chipmunks, Thundarr the Barbarian, and Chuck Norris and the Karate Kommandos. Yes, that last one was an actual cartoon.
Anyway, as early video games didn’t have much in the way of plot, Saturday Supercade took plenty of liberties when it came to adapting them into cartoons. Frogger was now a turtleneck sweater-wearing journalist, Pitfall Harry was pals with a talking mountain lion who bore an uncanny resemblance to the Pink Panther, and Mario was a hopeless loser who failed at the simplest of tasks.
The Donkey Kong cartoon was made during the period when Mario was a bit more morally ambiguous. Prior to Super Mario Bros., he wasn’t really a hero so much as a monkey-hating jerk. Mario was in his confused adolescent stage where he didn’t really know what job he wanted. Carpenter? Plumber? I don’t even think it was established that Mario was Italian yet. Saturday Supercade’s Donkey Kong cartoon cast him as a worker at the circus tasked with capturing a runaway ape – Donkey Kong.
Mario in a rare moment of not failing
That’s more like it
Donkey Kong was generally depicted as a calm, carefree ape, who responded to Mario pursuing him by tossing around barrels and banana peels while shouting his name. Just like in the game, he’d occasionally capture Pauline, who I guess he must’ve had a thing for. Unlike in the original Donkey Kong game, Saturday Supercade’s Pauline wasn’t Mario’s love interest – she was his niece (which I guess would make her Luigi’s daughter). While the plot generally revolved around Mario trying and failing to capture DK, the giant ape would often get himself into weird situations like joining a rock band or being adopted by a small child
This actually happened
As did this
Strangely, Stanley the Bugman, the protagonist of Donkey Kong 3, also made an appearance near the end of the show’s run. In the game he just looks like a stand-in for Mario, but the Saturday Supercade version looks a bit more… deformed.
Also, Mario was voiced by Peter Cullen. So yes, Mario is Optimus Prime.
Not canon
Also in the original Saturday Supercade block was Donkey Kong Jr., a cartoon that revolved around Donkey Kong’s surprisingly literate son and the search for his father. Junior travelled around on a motorbike with a greaser named “Bones” who apparently had no problem with helping out a talking monkey.
Donkey Kong Jr.’s catchphrase he often spouted to inspire confidence was “Monkey Muscle!” Looking back, it was a pretty blatant rip-off of Scrappy-Doo’s “Puppy Power!” – and when you’re trying to imitate Scrappy-Doo, there’s something very wrong. Donkey Kong Jr.’s adventures didn’t end up lasting for very long, though; his cartoon was eventually canned to make way for Space Ace and Kangaroo.
But it was a Saturday morning cartoon, so he still had time to save Christmas.
None of the cartoons on Saturday Supercade were terrible. They had simple storylines, but then so did the games they were based on. Sure, the animation looks a bit rough by today’s standards, but it was still better than the stuff Hanna-Barbera was putting out at the time (such as the original video game cartoon, Pac-Man). And while basing a bunch of cartoons off games with virtually no plot was a strange idea, it was hardly the strangest thing Ruby-Spears ever produced.
Seriously, was there anything cartoons in the 80s couldn’t sell?
