I'm a big fan of this series and it's my favorite of the Mario cartoons. Though, technically SMB3 is a better executed series with less pop cultural parody episodes and more Mario vs Koopa in a natural Mushroom Kingdom setting. Actually, I find the few non-parody episodes the strongest of the Super Show episodes. I rewatched "Princess, Do you take this Koopa" yesterday, albeit the unofficial "restored" version with "White Wedding" spliced back in on Youtube, and I was amazed how they actually used a very obvious SMB 2 location instead of one of the themed lands they keep going to. It looks like they intended World 3-3, or at least 1-3, and I really liked seeing the video game world come alive in the series and wish they had a lot more of that in that series. Having said that, if the show were made today, I wouldn't completely count out parody and reference, but there's a main difference between a video game show produced back then and one produced now. Writers back then weren't as attached to video games and their mythos, while I'd tend to think that today's cartoon writers/show runners have video games so ingrained in their upbringing, they'd no doubt make the series as close to the original as possible. Ehhh... that strange Mega Man cartoon not withstanding, that is. If only Nintendo would get its head out of its ass and license a new Mario cartoon series. It's a shame that Super Mario World was the last Mario cartoon series, and that was almost 20 years ago.





