
This 60 minute Saturday morning animated series chronicled the adventures of a young boy named Kevin who was sucked into his TV set and transformed into a video game superhero named Captain N (this was illustrated in the show’s live action main title sequence).
Kevin (a.k.a. Captain N), his dog Duke, and his new friends—Mega Man the robot (from his own self-titled game), Princess Lana, Simon Belmont (from Castlevania), and Kid Icarus (also from a self-titled game)—went on various Nintendo-inspired adventures in Videoland. Their primary nemesis was the evil Mother Brain, the chief baddie from Nintendo’s Metroid. Using his Nintendo-styled control pad, Captain N was master of his video game world, altering the plot, pausing the action, etc.
In the fall of 1990, Mario and Luigi, the stars of the syndicated Super Mario Bros. Super Show (and the wildly popular Super Mario Bros. video game series), were added to the show. Re-titled Captain N and the Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, the series had a featured segment in which the Mario Bros. came to the aid of Princess Toadstool as they did battle with King Koopa and his seven kids.
In the fall of 1991, the series was re-titled Captain N and the New Super Mario World in an attempt to cross-market the show with Nintendo’s latest Mario Bros. video game. The show ran on NBC until the network dropped nearly all of its cartoon slate in 1992. Re-titled Captain N and the Video Game Masters (and minus Mario and Luigi), the program then moved to syndication, where new episodes were mixed in with older ones.