Saturday Supercade

"Saturday Supercade! Gather 'round, we'll get your video friends together."

An hourlong Animated Anthology of shorts, produced by Ruby-Spears for CBS, based on early 1980s video games. As might be expected with the limited amount of plot in the games of that era, the stories diverged wildly from the games out of sheer necessity. The following games were featured:
 * Donkey Kong
 * Donkey Kong Junior
 * Frogger
 * Kangaroo
 * Q*bert
 * Pitfall
 * Space Ace

This series was unusual in that it collected characters from different video game companies. The character most obviously lacking, of course, was Pac-Man, who already had his own competing show on ABC.

Each game appeared to exist in its own universe, with the exception of the Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr stories, which shared one.

"DK Jr: "Monkey Muscle!""
 * Adaptational Heroism:
 * In Q*bert (the video game) Sam and Slick are enemy characters, undoing Q*bert's work by changing the blocks back to their original colors. In the cartoon, they're good guys.
 * Donkey Kong was at least upgraded to Anti-Villain, being a lovable shnook who had no animosity towards anyone, least of all Mario and Pauline, and who can blame him for wanting to escape the circus?
 * Boxing Kangaroo: In Season 2, "K.O. Katie" Kangaroo in Kangaroo. In her Kangaroo Pouch Space she can hold lots of things, including her all-powerful boxing gloves. (In one lead-in bumper to Donkey Kong, Katie pulled out Donkey Kong, who himself was wearing boxing gloves, while looking for the gloves.)
 * Bratty Half-Pint: Donkey Kong Jr. is basically Scrappy-Doo turned into a powerful monkey.

"Mario: "It's not easy when you're dealing with..." DK: "DONKEY KOOOOOONG!!""
 * Canon Immigrant: The new characters from the Pitfall! cartoon were then used in the game's first sequel, Pitfall! 2, and even showed up in some later games (such as Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure).
 * Chaste Toons: According to this show, Pauline is Mario's niece. This becomes Hilarious in Hindsight when you realize that this would make Luigi her father.
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: Bob Sarlatte at Frogger, B.J. Ward as Fanny Frog and Marvin Kaplan as Shellshock "Shelly" Turtle in Frogger, Soupy Sales as Donkey Kong, Frank Welker as Donkey Kong Jr., Peter Cullen as Mario and, in the Space Ace segments, Nancy Cartwright as Kimberly and |Sparky Marcus as Space Ace/Dexter.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: Considering that the games adapted for this show were all licensed by different companies, it'd be hard to see this in full form on TV again, or on DVD. It doesn't help that the segments are all individually owned by different companies (but Warner Home Video has recently said it has plans...)
 * No Celebrities Were Harmed: In the Q*bert segments, Julie Dees revived her Mae West impression for Coily's girlfriend, Viper.
 * Obligatory Joke: Frogger was Squashed Flat every episode, and then re-inflated, usually with a bicycle pump.
 * Overly Long Tongue: Frogger has one, and it comes in handy more often than one would assume.
 * Road Runner vs. Coyote: The Donkey Kong segments.
 * So Once Again the Day Is Saved:


 * Spin-Off: The Donkey Kong Jr segments are this to the Donkey Kong ones; Junior's goal is to find his dad, who is, naturally, running from Mario and Pauline. Unfortunately, Junior gets sidetracked a lot.
 * Trademark Favorite Food: Donkey Kong's appetite for bananas made its first appearance here.