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solarsonicsoda · 3 months ago

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Rating 500+ Theme Tunes - #21: Captain N: The Game Master

Who Game Over'd and made him the Game Master?! This show follows video game enthusiast Kevin as he enters Videoland to help save their Princess Lana defeat Mother Brain (yes, from Metroid) alongside Simon Belmont, Mega Man, and Kid Icarus (yes, those ones). Mother Brain is voiced by Levi Stubbs, who plays Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors, which is really cool! Anyway, Simon is a goofy himbo, Mega Man talks like a gremlin who uses the prefix "Mega-" on words, and Kid Icarus is called Kid Icarus. There's also a dog, and later a sentient Game Boy!

Yes, this is a cartoon not about a specific video game, but about Nintendo in general. Well, I have heard that Nintendo is never mentioned explicitly in the entire show for legal reasons pertaining to adverts. However, I have been unable to verify this, so who knows. It aired as a package deal with shows like Mario 3, Super Mario World, and Zelda in various forms, which even had its own theme! The show is also one of those notoriously unpolished pieces of animation. One episode has various shots missing their backgrounds, and it was even released like this on DVD! There's also the clipshow episode that had clips missing voices or music. What a show.

As for my own experiences with this show, I actually watched a good bit of this show. As I mentioned, it was often tied-in with Mario cartoons, and I watched a good deal of them on Pop back in the day! I always remember that sometimes when returning from the break, my Mario show would become about this dork in video game world. I did not care for this. I legitimately remember very little about the show other than the intro with its live-action and how the show generally looked, so I think I often ignored it or changed the channel. A glowing review! Let's dive back into that theme though!

Captain N: The Game Master Theme Song

Listen to this shit. Honestly, what is going on. It's a bit of an assault on the senses, because things are just happening constantly. So many rapid introductions to characters, each in a more and more jarring way. The way each character's portion of the song comes about feels so disjointed and unsatisfying, I really don't like it. It's almost entirely these different voice lines over a fairly unremarkable tune, so it's just a recipe for disaster. Icarus' voice line does include a really aggressive voice crack though, which I always think is very funny. Very few things manage to be so off-the-wall whilst also having so little personality or charm! Genuinely impressive.

Just taking a quick detour with things that won't affect my rating: what the fuck is going on here? Like look at these visuals. Why does Mega Man look like... that? Why is Simon Belmont so vain? WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT GREEN POLYGON MAN JUMPING THROUGH THE TV WHAT IS THAT WHAT THE FUCK?! You should also look up Alucard's appearance in this show, I find it quite a humorous interpretation (not on purpose). But there's also just so much wrong here even from what little world-building had been established in these games so far. Look at the map. Mother Brain lives in Metroid? Simon lives in Castlevania? Huh? I just think it's all very dumb.

Anyway, let's wrap this up. If I were to compare this theme to one of the games featured in this show, it would not be Mario or Punch-Out or anything like that. I think the closest pick would be something more like Jordan vs. Bird: One-on-One. This one gets an F!

Stay tuned for more and be sure to send in any suggestions for other shows you'd like to see done (after the 500 already in the pipeline that is). Check out the intro to this series here, and check out the tier list.