Stratovania

I'm sure you know by now that cartoons based on video games were an important part of my formative years, which is probably why I'm so messed up now. And if you've watched any of these cartoons, you know how many odd changes were made from the actual games, especially in Captain N. Wanting to know whether these were simply the whims of clueless executives or matters with valid explanations, I once again consulted the Mushroom Guru. And I finally uncovered the Star Road that leads to the top, so no more tedious treks up Giant Snowy Mountain, or whatever that place is called!

Q: So, first of all, what's with King Hippo? Why did he change from flesh-colored to blue?
A: You'll notice that, in the game, he had a bandage over his belly, where he was weak. In an attempt to solve this problem, he drank an untested gypsy remedy, which turned his skin blue. It also contained a fair amount of estrogen, which is why his breast size increased.


Q: Princess Lana wasn't in any games, was she?
A: Actually, believe it or not, she was one of the villains in the game Super Glorious People's Devil Revolution Happy Fun Positive Thinking Jihad, which was never released due to its controversial mixture of philosophies, including communism, Satanism, pop psychology, and Islam. What's known of it is that it involves the main characters overthrowing the monarchy, and Princess Lana and her father King Charles are both bosses.


Q:Why was Captain N always claiming he remembered things from video games when they didn't actually happen in the games?
A: Well, people who play a lot of video games tend to dream about them. (Editor's Note: I know I do.) And heroes often have prophetic dreams. So Captain N, as both a gamer and a future hero, would occasionally dream about events from games that weren't actually in them, but were things he would later experience in Videoland. His memory tends to confuse the two, as happens sometimes. I still can't remember whether that yeti I saw the other day was a dream or reality.

Q: Why are the characters in the Super Mario Bros. 3 cartoon always referring to Earth as the Real World? Wouldn't the Mushroom World be MORE real to them?
A: It's actually a reference to the explorer Russula Real, the first inhabitant of the Mushroom World to successfully warp to Earth and back.

Q: Why is King Koopa bald in the cartoons?
A: His hair burned off when he fell into the lava at the end of the first game. That's also why he's never shown breathing fire in the show. Doctor's orders, you know.


Q: Why didn't Wart appear on the show?
A: He had a LONG recovery period after being taken out with those vegetables. It was a few years before he was even able to move around on his own. And he was too big for Ostros, so he made a group of Shyguys push him around in a wheelchair.

Q: What's with the flying Birdos? They don't fly in the game!
A: Of course not! They're all guarding specific areas. What kind of guards would they be if they flew off and abandoned their posts?


Q: Why did the Koopalings have different names?
A: Aliases, to try to throw the police off their track. It didn't really work, though.

Q: Why does Link talk in the cartoons, but not in the games?
A: How would you like it if someone were saying, "Excuse me, Princess!" every five minutes? Eventually Zelda got fed up and cast a Mute spell on him.

Q: But isn't there more than one Link?
A: Yes, but they're all...linked. Get it? Seriously, it's due to the transmigration of souls.


That's all for this week. And if you haven't read my previous Mushroom Guru columns, here are Part 1 and Part 2.

For all of the Links and Zeldas who have teamed up to fight Ganon and his minions throughout the history of Hyrule (not to mention alternate timelines), it's interesting that I don't think any of them ever got together romantically. There's apparently even been some online speculation that Link might be gay, although I don't know that he's shown interest in any males either. With this in mind, it's interesting that DiC's Zelda cartoon, made when there was only one game out [1], really played up the sexual tension between the hero and the princess. The cartoon was part of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show, aired on Fridays in lieu of a Mario cartoon. It appears to be a not uncommon opinion on the Internet that the Zelda cartoons were better than the Mario ones, and I will admit that they apparently took slightly more care with the Zelda episodes (although still not THAT much, since it WAS a DiC production, after all). In the show, Link was constantly hitting on Zelda in the most obnoxious ways possible, and there were occasional hints (especially in the episode "The Missing Link") that the princess secretly returned his affections but didn't want him to know. Another recurring character was Spryte, a fairy who had a crush on Link despite being much, much smaller than him. [2] It's Peter Pan and Tinker Bell all over again, I suppose. I guess it's Link's fault for dressing in that green outfit. And, of course, Ganon was there, and he was very hands-on in this take. He was always showing up in person to steal the Triforce of Wisdom, and insisting that nothing could stop him when he had both Triforces together, even though someone always did. I believe most of the monsters from the first game showed up at some point or other, but they were all morons. One odd rule on the show was that the monsters never actually died, but simply regenerated back in Ganon's Evil Jar, a fixture of his underworld throne room where he kept his henchmen when he didn't need them. They always were reluctant to imply actual death in cartoons of the era, so perhaps that was their way of avoiding it, but I suppose that regeneration kind of makes sense for video game characters anyway.


As with most shows, especially ones aimed at kids, there was never any real continuity. There was always some lame excuse for why Link and Zelda didn't just take the Triforce of Power that Ganon left out in the open. And of course the two heroes never got together; I suspect people would have complained of the show jumping the Zora if they had. When they appeared in a few Captain N episodes, however, they no longer bickered all the time, and Zelda did occasionally kiss Link. So their relationship presumably progressed at least slightly, albeit not on screen.

If anyone wants me to review individual episodes of the cartoon, let me know. I also still have the Super Mario World series to get through, if anyone cares. And if you DON'T care, well, EXCUSE me, Princess! [3]


[1] Actually, Zelda II was released in Japan in 1987 and in North America in 1988, while the cartoon aired in 1989. I don't think it makes any references to the second game, however (for instance, there are only two Triforces in the show, while the game brought in a third), so the writers presumably hadn't played it.
[2] Maybe someone should write fanfic in which Spryte hooks up with the Big Goron. Now THERE'S a size difference!
[3] Yeah, I had to work that in somewhere.

Since Wednesday is my typical day for writing about video games, I considered writing something about games featuring bears, but I don't think I can get an entire post out of that. Banjo-Kazooie, a series of games starring a banjo-playing bear with a bird for a best friend, immediately came to mind, but I've never actually played it nor seen it played. What I've read about it makes it sound pretty cool, but I've never been particularly good at action games. Also worth a mention is Moosh, the winged bear from the Zelda Oracle games. He's portrayed as rather cowardly and not too bright, but how can you not find a flying bear who attacks by butt-slamming his enemies to be cool?



One thing I wonder about is why bears are so prominent in our culture, particularly in works for children. I grew up on the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and had my own stuffed Pooh, who was actually orange until my mom covered him with beige fur. I also remember reading some of the Paddington books, although I can't remember a whole lot about them other than Paddington lived in London, claimed to originally be from Peru, and was obsessed with orange marmalade. And then there are the Berenstain Bears, whose occasional overtly Christian messages make me wonder if there was a Jesus Bear in their universe. Even the Three Bears are really just innocent victims of breaking and entering. They do eat Goldilocks in earlier versions of the tale, but more recent ones tend to have the girl escaping, presumably having learned her lesson about entering other people's (or bears') houses uninvited. Does this prominence stem from the popularity of teddy bears? The toy, as you probably know, was named after Theodore Roosevelt, due to a 1902 anecdote and subsequent cartoon in which Roosevelt refused to kill a captured bear for sport, but instead ordered a mercy killing. There were toy bears prior to this, but the first actual TEDDY bear, with its cute and upright appearance, was made by Morris Michtom. Well, that's what the story says, anyway; we all know that the truth is rarely that neat. The teddy bear on which the character of Pooh is based was made in England by J.K. Farnell, and I would assume his formal name "Edward Bear" is due to how "Teddy" can be a nickname for Edward as well as for Theodore. Teddy bears have gone through many variations over the years (my own lifetime has seen both Teddy Ruxpin and the Care Bears, and probably other sorts of teddies I'm forgetting), but they remain ubiquitous.



Even the Roosevelt story doesn't totally explain why bears have been deemed good toys and story protagonists for children, but they ARE pretty cute and furry, especially as cubs. They're also associated with hugs, and while a bear hug isn't something you'd want to experience, they perhaps give them impression that bears could give friendly hugs as well as deadly ones, if they really wanted to. Besides, the animals live on four different continents, so they'd be familiar to kids in many different parts of the world.

The instruction booklet for the original Super Mario Bros. refers to Princess Toadstool (later to be called Princess Peach) as the daughter of the Mushroom King, but her father is not to be seen in this game or any other. He doesn't show up in any of the cartoons either, and some of them suggest that the Princess is the sole ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom. In the comics and the books based on them, however, the Mushroom King shows up regularly, and is depicted as a total idiot.



I've heard that King Toadstool's look was modeled on the King of Grass Land from SMB3, and I guess there is a resemblance. It seems that Grass Land is often regarded as the same as the Mushroom Kingdom, which does make a certain amount of sense. Grass Land isn't exactly a grassland in the traditional sense of the word anyway, since it's full of hills and cliffs.

Even the media that give the Princess father don't give her a mother. For some reason, it seems to be common in fictional royal families for kings to be single parents of eligible young daughters. I think it's common in the Zelda games (as well as the cartoon) for Princess Zelda to have a father, but no known mother. This is also the case for Gwaelin in the first Dragon Quest game, and Marle in Chrono Trigger (although at least her late mother, Queen Aliza, was mentioned at one point). And it's not limited to video games. In a recent post, I talked about Ozma's father Pastoria, who isn't given a consort anywhere in the Famous Forty. And what about Princess Jasmine in Disney's Aladdin? I have to wonder why this situation is so common in fiction.

Ah, April Fool's Day. I thought it was amusing as a kid, but now I find it pretty irritating. Who knew that disagreements in sixteenth century France over when the new year occurred would result in people thinking it hilarious to put salt in the sugar bowl 400 years later? The first of April is also the Assyrian New Year, or Kha b-Nisan. Today's entry isn't on either of these occasions, however, but rather on Chain Chomps. If you think that's foolish, well, it's no more so than many of my other posts.



Chain Chomps first appeared in Super Mario Bros. 3, and are said to have been inspired by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto's childhood experience with a chained dog snapping at him. Despite essentially being just live balls attached to chains, the Chomps are quite dog-like. In Link's Awakening (yes, there are Chain Chomps in the Zelda series as well), Link has to rescue a pet Chain Chomp named Bow-Wow, and can temporarily lead him along to help fight monsters. In Super Mario RPG, Bowser finds a female Chain Chomp that he can use as a weapon, but he treats it like a pet. The Japanese name for the creature is actually "Wanwan," the rough equivalent of "woof woof."



By the way, did you know that Chain Chomps in SMB3 could break loose when the timer reached a certain time (160, according to the Mario Wiki). I think I might have watched that on purpose at one point, but it would have to be pretty scary if you came across it by accident without knowing about it beforehand. Sort of the opposite of that treasure ship, I suppose.



SMB3 also has Fire Chomps, which (not surprisingly) have fiery tails instead of chains. They can spit the fireballs from their tails, but they explode after running out. This could be why they appear in so few other games. And in addition to this self-destructive tendency, they can also be taken out by stomping, unlike the well-nigh-invincible Chain Chomps.

I have to admit that I've always liked Erdrick, the legendary hero in the early Dragon Quest games. The first two mention him as a figure from the past, and you play as his descendants. Then, in Dragon Warrior III, you actually play as Erdrick, although you don't find this out until the end. Apparently, "Erdrick" was retconned into a name only bestowed on great heroes by the King of Alfegard. In Japanese, the name of the hero is "Loto" (sometimes spelled "Roto"), and I've seen the suggestion that Erdrick is the guy's given name, and Loto his honorific name. I really don't know why they'd change the name so much for the English translation, but I quite like the sound of "Erdrick." It's also the name of a street in northern Philadelphia, by the way.

In the first Final Fantasy game, there's a grave in Elfland that purports to be that of Erdrick, who died in his twenties. Since DW3 starts on his sixteenth birthday, it's certainly possible that this is the same person, and even allows a few more years for extra adventures. And for that matter, "Alfegard" more or less means "Elfland." Oddly enough, I've heard that the Japanese version of this gravestone mentions not Loto, but Link. I can't help thinking of a grand battle taking place there in the distant past, in which both Erdrick and Link were killed. Since it's almost certainly not the same Link in every Zelda game (unless constant time travel and memory loss are involved), it's possible that one of them died on the Final Fantasy world, right? Actually, Captain N had episodes that took place in the worlds of all three of those game series, so maybe the show isn't as far off base as everyone thinks.

There are plenty of other cross-references in video games. Some of them can simply be considered homages (like how the magic whistle in Super Mario Bros. 3 plays the same tune as the one in the original Legend of Zelda), but there are also enemies appearing in both the Mario and Zelda series. Is this a case of parallel evolution, or a sign of travel between worlds? Link and Samus Aran both make cameos in Super Mario RPG, and the enemy Culex is probably supposed to be from the Final Fantasy universe. And while I've never played any of them, I understand that the Kingdom Hearts games have FF characters interacting with Disney cartoons, of all people. So maybe my own often-considered idea of having some video game characters visit Oz isn't as ridiculous as it might sound (although it would probably be just as cheesy).

I'm going to a concert tonight. That should be fun, but the lack of sleep won't be.