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It has been over two years, but I finally got around to (re)watching the rest of Captain N: The Game Master.
And... no, unlike Dungeons and Dragons and (Slimer and) The Real/Extreme Ghostbusters, it doesn't really hold up all that well, sadly. I'd say it was probably better than the absolute worst of the later seasons of RGB, but that's not saying much. As a whole, it just had way more of a "meh, whatever, it's a cartoon for children, who cares if it's actually good or not" overall feel to it than either of the other two did.
It's kind of difficult to say which of the two main seasons I liked better (or hated worse, as the case may be). The first season didn't have Game Boy in it, but Link and Zelda didn't start showing up until the second season (in four episodes, total, or five if you count the clip show, neither version of which I actually bothered to watch). That said, speaking of Game Boy, even though he was still the worst of the characters voiced by Frank Welker out of the three shows so far that I've written posts about, he didn't actually bother me nearly as much as I thought he would (at least once they got past that godawful episode that first introduced him), mainly because he wasn't really any more or less shitty than any of the already existing cast of sort of shitty characters in this. Simon Belmont was still the worst by far, though. Honestly, the more I watched it, and once I got past the utter bizarreness of it (or maybe because of the utter bizarreness of it), the more Mother Brain and her Audrey II voice grew on me, to the point where I'd say she basically made/stole the show. The rare few episodes that didn't involve Mother Brain at all were significantly poorer for her absence.
As such, it was too bad that Mother Brain (and King Hippo and Eggplant Wizard) only showed up in one (new) episode of season 3. Ah, season 3. The one where almost half of it consisted of reruns, all of the episodes including the reruns were shortened by half when compared to the previous seasons, the characters in the newly created episodes were way off-model and looked visually (even more) shitty due to being animated by a different studio than the one that did the first two seasons, and the plots of each episode were even more inane. Also, Link and Zelda didn't show up anymore (well, other than in the rerun of "Quest for the Potion of Power," which was actually the only rerun kept fully intact, aside from being split into a two-parter)... but maybe that was a good thing? Lastly, this was the season that had Alucard show up as a 90s skateboarder kewl dude who turned out to be a backstabbing asshole. (At leastDraculaThe Count wasn't wearing that ludicrous yellow suit in season 3, for what very little that was worth). Enough said on that shit.
And, seriously, as a vehicle for shilling Nintendo games, most of the episodes did a really piss poor job of showcasing the games. The Faxanadu episode, for instance, had a fucking Elvis impersonator as one of the main characters in it, for crying out loud. The Tetris-based episodes had... people... living on the world of "Tetris." (I mean, granted, I don't know how the hell else they could have made two whole episode revolving around Tetris, but still. Anyway, the Tetris ones were also the ones that involved Princess Lana's brother. Like... okay.) And some of them hardly even mentioned the name of the game that I recall, e.g. the couple about Dragon Warrior called the world in which the episodes took place "Dragon's Den." I think someone might have said the phrase "dragon warrior" once, in passing, and certainly not in any obvious way that screamed "Hey, kids, this is the name of the game we're referencing here, so bug your parents to go buy it!" Seriously, if I'd been a kid watching those episodes and had actually been interested in the actual game, I'd have been looking for a game called "Dragon's Den," not Dragon Warrior. In the Faxanadu based episode, at the very least, they called the world on which the episode took place, you know, "Faxanadu."
Out of all of them, I'd say that first Legend of Zelda episode (which I already talked about), and maybe the Paperboy one were the most faithful to the source material (at least relative to all the others, anyway). Of the ones that weren't faithful at all, but which I still liked okay were the first one involving Lana's father, the one with Mega Girl, the one where some of Kevin's schoolmates from the real world were brought in for a little while, and the one with Rush the Robodog (the only one in this list that came from season 3). And... I kind of liked the one about Wombatman (who had showed up in an earlier episode as a throwaway joke), despite how super dumb it was (mainly for the really shitty parody of the 1960's Batman theme). The rest were just... meh.
Anyway, it wasn't completely unwatchable or anything, but it just... wasn't that good, over all. Not sure I'd recommend it the same way I would the D&D cartoon or the Ghostbusters stuff. It's sad, because I remember liking it a lot more as a kid. Oh well. *sigh* While I didn't feel like officially snarking on the rest of it in post form the same way I did the first five episodes, you can rest assured that I was still doing it while watching it.
And... no, unlike Dungeons and Dragons and (Slimer and) The Real/Extreme Ghostbusters, it doesn't really hold up all that well, sadly. I'd say it was probably better than the absolute worst of the later seasons of RGB, but that's not saying much. As a whole, it just had way more of a "meh, whatever, it's a cartoon for children, who cares if it's actually good or not" overall feel to it than either of the other two did.
It's kind of difficult to say which of the two main seasons I liked better (or hated worse, as the case may be). The first season didn't have Game Boy in it, but Link and Zelda didn't start showing up until the second season (in four episodes, total, or five if you count the clip show, neither version of which I actually bothered to watch). That said, speaking of Game Boy, even though he was still the worst of the characters voiced by Frank Welker out of the three shows so far that I've written posts about, he didn't actually bother me nearly as much as I thought he would (at least once they got past that godawful episode that first introduced him), mainly because he wasn't really any more or less shitty than any of the already existing cast of sort of shitty characters in this. Simon Belmont was still the worst by far, though. Honestly, the more I watched it, and once I got past the utter bizarreness of it (or maybe because of the utter bizarreness of it), the more Mother Brain and her Audrey II voice grew on me, to the point where I'd say she basically made/stole the show. The rare few episodes that didn't involve Mother Brain at all were significantly poorer for her absence.
As such, it was too bad that Mother Brain (and King Hippo and Eggplant Wizard) only showed up in one (new) episode of season 3. Ah, season 3. The one where almost half of it consisted of reruns, all of the episodes including the reruns were shortened by half when compared to the previous seasons, the characters in the newly created episodes were way off-model and looked visually (even more) shitty due to being animated by a different studio than the one that did the first two seasons, and the plots of each episode were even more inane. Also, Link and Zelda didn't show up anymore (well, other than in the rerun of "Quest for the Potion of Power," which was actually the only rerun kept fully intact, aside from being split into a two-parter)... but maybe that was a good thing? Lastly, this was the season that had Alucard show up as a 90s skateboarder kewl dude who turned out to be a backstabbing asshole. (At least
And, seriously, as a vehicle for shilling Nintendo games, most of the episodes did a really piss poor job of showcasing the games. The Faxanadu episode, for instance, had a fucking Elvis impersonator as one of the main characters in it, for crying out loud. The Tetris-based episodes had... people... living on the world of "Tetris." (I mean, granted, I don't know how the hell else they could have made two whole episode revolving around Tetris, but still. Anyway, the Tetris ones were also the ones that involved Princess Lana's brother. Like... okay.) And some of them hardly even mentioned the name of the game that I recall, e.g. the couple about Dragon Warrior called the world in which the episodes took place "Dragon's Den." I think someone might have said the phrase "dragon warrior" once, in passing, and certainly not in any obvious way that screamed "Hey, kids, this is the name of the game we're referencing here, so bug your parents to go buy it!" Seriously, if I'd been a kid watching those episodes and had actually been interested in the actual game, I'd have been looking for a game called "Dragon's Den," not Dragon Warrior. In the Faxanadu based episode, at the very least, they called the world on which the episode took place, you know, "Faxanadu."
Out of all of them, I'd say that first Legend of Zelda episode (which I already talked about), and maybe the Paperboy one were the most faithful to the source material (at least relative to all the others, anyway). Of the ones that weren't faithful at all, but which I still liked okay were the first one involving Lana's father, the one with Mega Girl, the one where some of Kevin's schoolmates from the real world were brought in for a little while, and the one with Rush the Robodog (the only one in this list that came from season 3). And... I kind of liked the one about Wombatman (who had showed up in an earlier episode as a throwaway joke), despite how super dumb it was (mainly for the really shitty parody of the 1960's Batman theme). The rest were just... meh.
Anyway, it wasn't completely unwatchable or anything, but it just... wasn't that good, over all. Not sure I'd recommend it the same way I would the D&D cartoon or the Ghostbusters stuff. It's sad, because I remember liking it a lot more as a kid. Oh well. *sigh* While I didn't feel like officially snarking on the rest of it in post form the same way I did the first five episodes, you can rest assured that I was still doing it while watching it.
