Saturday Supercade


Saturday Supercade is a 1983-1984 animated television series produced for Saturday mornings by Ruby-Spears Productions. It ran for two seasons on CBS.

Premise

Each episode is composed of several shorter segments featuring video game characters from the golden age of arcade video games.
The segments included:
Pitfall! and Q*bert rotated weekly while the other three were weekly.
During the second season, Q*bert and Donkey Kong remained while the Frogger, Donkey Kong Jr. and Pitfall! segments were replaced by shorts featuring:

Frogger

is an ace reporter of the swamp who works at The Swamp Gazette. He and his friends Shellshock "Shelly" Turtle and Fanny Frog go out in search of crazy stories to publish in the newspaper. Frogger also has to deal with his gruff boss and editor-in-chief Tex Toadwalker. As in the game, he often has an encounter with an alligator or gets flattened by a passing car.

Episodes

  1. "The Ms. Fortune Story"
  2. "Spaced Out Frogs"
  3. "The Who-Took-Toadwalker Story"
  4. "Hydrofoil & Seek"
  5. "The Great Scuba Scoop"
  6. "The Headline Hunters"
  7. "The Legs Croaker Story"
  8. "The Blackboard Bungle"
  9. "Good Knight, Frogger"
  10. "Fake Me Out to the Ball Game"
  11. "I Remember Mummy"
  12. "Here Today, Pawned Tomorrow"
  13. "Hop-Along Frogger"

    Donkey Kong

has escaped from the circus. He is on the lam, and Mario and Pauline are chasing the ape. As with the original game, Donkey Kong will often grab Pauline and Mario has to save her. Plots typically centered on them encountering crime with the villains conning the slow-witted Donkey Kong into doing their work and Mario and Pauline exposing the truth. After Mario and Pauline reveal the truth to Donkey Kong, the three of them team up to stop the antagonists' plans followed by Donkey Kong evading Mario and Pauline again.

Episodes

  1. "Mississippi Madness"
  2. "Gorilla Gangster"
  3. "Banana Bikers"
  4. "The Incredible Shrinking Ape"
  5. "Movie Mania"
  6. "Gorilla My Dreams"
  7. "Little Orphan Apey"
  8. "Circus Daze"
  9. "The Great Ape Escape"
  10. "Apey and the Snowbeast"
  11. "How Much is That Gorilla in the Window?"
  12. "Private Donkey Kong"
  13. "Get Along Little Apey"
  14. "Sir Donkey Kong"
  15. "The Pale Whale"
  16. "El Donkey Kong"
  17. "New Wave Ape"
  18. "Greenhouse Gorilla"
  19. "Hairy Parent"
  20. "Gorilla on the Trail"

    Q*bert

In a 1950s-inspired world set in the town of Q*Berg, a teenage fur-covered creature named Q*bert, his girlfriend Q*Tee, his brother Q*Bit, and his friends Q*Ball, Q*Val, and Q*Mongus must deal with the resident bullies Coily, Ugg and Wrongway, and Coily's girlfriend Viper. As with the video game, the segment features "block-hopping" scenes, "swearing" bubbles and occasional flying discs from the original game. New to the cartoon was Q*bert's use of "slippy-doos," a black ball projectile which he loaded and fired through his nose, producing an oil slick wherever the balls splattered. Slick and Sam are also featured.

Episodes

  1. "Disc Derby Fiasco"
  2. "The Great Q*Tee Contest"
  3. "Q*Ball Rigamarole"
  4. "Crazy Camp Creature"
  5. "Thanksgiving for the Memories"
  6. "Dog Day Dilemma"
  7. "Take Me Out to the Q*Game"
  8. "Noser P.I."
  9. "Hook, Line, and Mermaid"
  10. "Q*Historic Days"
  11. "Q*bert's Monster Mix-Up"
  12. "Game Shoe Woe"
  13. "The Wacky Q*Bot"
  14. "Q*Beat It"
  15. "Q*Urf's Up"
  16. "Little Green Nosers"
  17. "Rebel Without a Q*Ause"
  18. "Looking For Miss Q*Right"
  19. "The Goofy Ghostgetters"

    Donkey Kong Jr.

is sad to find that his father has run away from Mario and the circus. He befriends a greaser nicknamed "Bones" who has a motorcycle and offers to help Junior by finding his dad together. Donkey Kong Jr's catchphrase is "Monkey muscle!", which he tells to himself and Bones to inspire self-confidence. Bones often serves as the voice of reason when Donkey Kong Jr. bites off more than he can chew.

Episodes

  1. "Trucknapper Caper"
  2. "Sheep Rustle Hustle"
  3. "Rocky Mountain Monkey Business"
  4. "Magnificent 7-Year-Olds"
  5. "The Ventriloquist Caper"
  6. "The Great Seal Steal"
  7. "The Jungle Boy Ploy"
  8. "Junior Meets Kid Dynamo"
  9. "Amazing Rollerskate Race"
  10. "A Christmas Story"
  11. "Gorilla Ghost"
  12. "Teddy Bear Scare"
  13. "Double or Nothing"

    Pitfall!

, his niece Rhonda, and their cowardly pet Quickclaw the Mountain Lion explore jungles for hidden treasures, having many different adventures along the way. Quickclaw and Rhonda later appeared in and Super Pitfall.

Episodes

  1. "Pitfall's Panda Puzzle"
  2. "Amazon Jungle Bungle"
  3. "Raiders of the Lost Shark"
  4. "Tibetan Treasure Trouble"
  5. "Masked Menace Mess"
  6. "The Sabretooth Goof"
  7. "The Pyramid Panic"

    Space Ace

is the always smiling self-confident champion of the "Space Command", whereas when always "wimping out" to Dexter after being hit by the Infanto-Ray, he becomes clumsy and weak. With officer Kimberly, he works for Space Marshall Vaughn to keep the peace in the universe. They fight the evil alien commander Borf and keep him from invading Earth. Ace and Kim try to keep his 'wimping' situation secret and pretend that Dexter is Kim's little brother to Vaughn.
Again, as with Donkey Kong, Ruby-Spears took artistic license; in the video game, Dexter had certain chances to revert to Ace, his full-grown self, whereas in the cartoon the Ace/Dexter phases seemed to happen on their own and often at inconvenient times for the hero.
It was aired late night on Cartoon Network in the late 1990s, and segments have been shown between programs on Boomerang.

Episodes

  1. "Cute Groots"
  2. "Cosmic Camp Catastrophe"
  3. "Dangerous Decoy"
  4. "Moon Missile Madness"
  5. "Perilous Partners"
  6. "Frozen in Fear"
  7. "Age Ray Riot"
  8. "Wanted: Dexter!"
  9. "Phantom Shuttle"
  10. "Spoiled Sports"
  11. "Calamity Kimmie"
  12. "Three-Ring Rampage"
  13. "Infanto Fury"

    Kangaroo

Joey Kangaroo, his mother "K.O." Katy Kangaroo and Sidney Squirrel must stop the Monkeybiz Gang members Bingo, Bango, Bongo, and Fred, four meddlesome monkeys who are known from making trouble at the local zoo run by the zookeeper Mr. Friendly. The Monkeybiz Gang would cause trouble by trying to escape from the zoo and Katy would have to help keep them in line.

Episodes

  1. "Trunkfull of Trouble"
  2. "Zoo for Hire"
  3. "Bat's Incredible"
  4. "The White Squirrel of Dover"
  5. "The Birthday Party"
  6. "Having a Ball"
  7. "The Tail of the Cowardly Lion"
  8. "It's Carnival Time"
  9. "Lost and Found"
  10. "Joey and the Beanstalk"
  11. "Zoo's Who"
  12. "The Egg and Us"
  13. "The Runaway Panda"

    Cast

The Space Ace segments from the show occasionally appeared as filler in between shows on Boomerang and Toonami.
Warner Archive announced via their Facebook page that Saturday Supercade will be released through their made-on-demand DVD program. However, due to rights issues, some segments may not be able to appear. Currently they are researching the project and have no set release date.
On November 3, 2015, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released The Best of Q*Bert on DVD in Region 1. The 2-disc collection features 17 of the 19 episodes of the series. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand release, available exclusively in the US via Amazon.com and their CreateSpace MOD program.