Captain N and More Games That Need Cartoons

I’m going to be completely honest with you – I wasn’t the biggest fan of Captain N: The Game Master. Castlevania is one of my favorite NES games, and it did my boy dirty. As serious as the game played, it was quite a shock that the cartoon treated Simon Belmont as an arrogant moron and the show’s punching bag (King Hippo pun intended). Other characters got off with less egregious changes – Mega Man was recolored and got a terrible voice. Pit got renamed to Kid Icarus to match the title of his game and also got a terrible voice. A new princess was introduced, leaving Peach and Zelda out in the cold (even though they had their own cartoons, Zelda did show up in later episodes of Captain N). Other video games made appearances in the show, with either a villain or setting borrowed for an episode or two, sometimes leaving out the main character completely.

Worse than the changes to some of my beloved games and characters was the fact they wouldn’t get their own shows. Castlevania, even if it were to keep some of Captain N’s goofier aspects, could have easily carried its own show with three games to get material from, as evident from Netflix’s admittedly much darker series. So that got me thinking, what other games deserved their own cartoon, especially if we’re not limiting ourselves to just Nintendo games? What about Atari, Sega, or even arcade games?

Sticking with the action genre with another game that made an appearance in Captain N is the Wizards & Warriors series. Kuros the hero got left out, but the evil wizard Malkil troubled the world of Excalibur (renamed from Elrond in the game) in a few episodes. Considering the different lands the hero fights through, and all the magical items he collects, there should be plenty to adapt to the cartoon. The music from the game would sound exceptional in the theme song.

Another action game I’d like to have seen adapted is Gauntlet. The original four-player arcade game with its quartet of heroes – Thor the Warrior, Merlin the wizard, Thyra the Valkyrie, and Questor the Elf – would give the writers a lot of room to play with while the never-ending dungeon could pose unlimited types of threats to them. Toss in Death who’s constantly chasing them, though you’d probably have to tone him down to not scare the kids watching.

The Legend of Zelda was one of the quintessential NES adventure games and definitely deserved its own cartoon. For another contender, I was torn between Faxanadu (which did get featured as a world in Captain N) and Legacy of the Wizard until I learned they were both part of the same Dragon Slayer series. Either of the two games would make a great cartoon though – Faxanadu has an incredible world of elves versus dwarves living inside the World Tree. The two races lived in harmony until the Evil One brought down a meteorite that turned the dwarves into monsters.

Legacy of the Wizard features the Drasle family, each with its own play style, even the dog! The Drasle family (short for Dragon Slayer) navigates through a labyrinth to find the four crowns that conceal the Dragon Slyer sword. You control each family member as they make their way through the game, clearing obstacles to open paths for other family members to venture further. While being classified as an RPG, the game has a lot of platforming and the map is like Metroid’s where players can go whichever direction they want.

There’s already a good Atari racing game adapted to the small screen with Pole Position, but there’s still room for a couple more. Hard Drivin’ was one of the hardest arcade racing games I’d ever played, employing realistic physics and a short time limit. One of the first arcades using 3D graphics, you drive your car around an obstacle course, including a huge loop. Every time you crash – and you will often – you get an instant replay that takes 10 seconds off your time. I think upgrading the car with all sorts of special features would make for an interesting cartoon. Just include a villain always trying to sabotage the obstacle course.

One of my favorite driving games wasn’t even a racer, but a police chaser called APB. Featuring a siren and a real working police light bar on top of the arcade cabinet, the game tasked you as a rookie cop driving around town and pulling over speeders and reckless drivers as you collected donuts to increase your time. The game itself had a funny Police Academy feel (your character got strangled by the captain if you got too many demerits) that a cartoon could totally lean on, not to mention the sometimes ludicrous suspects you had to capture each day.

Another popular genre of 8-bit games is the Shoot ‘em up (Shmup), characterized by a vertical or horizontal scrolling level where you blow away anything in your path. Gradius was always my favorite (the first appearance of the Konami Code!) and spawned an excellent sequel, Life Force. You control the spaceship with the coolest name ever – Vic Viper – in battles against hordes of enemy ships and monstrous creatures in space. The game is a follow-up to Konami’s Scramble, which also inspired my next entry – River Raid for the Atari.

After being told there were too many space shooters, lone programmer Carol Shaw developed a game where your pilot flies up the River of No Return, destroying tankers and helicopters and collecting fuel canisters to extend your attack. River Raid was the second biggest selling Atari game of 1982 after Ms. Pac-Man and was one of my all-time favorite Atari games. I could easily see it as a kind of Tail Spin series, and you have a blank slate to make up whatever character you want for the pilot.

If you love cartoons as much as I do, check out my books Old School Evil and Old School Evil: The Rejects on Amazon, or go to my site www.oldschoolevil.com.