Title- Kevin in Videoland (September 9, 1989)
New/Guest Voices
King Hippo/DK- Gary Chalk
Dr Wily-Ian James Corlett
Eggplant Wizard-Mike Donovan
Narrator/Kevin Keene-Matt Hill
Kid Icarus-Alessandro Juliani
Simon Belmont-Andrew Kavadas
Mega Man-Doug Parker
Mother Brain-Levi Stubbs
Princess Lana-Venus Terzo
Duke-Tomm Wright
Games- Metroid, Donkey Kong
This series is fondly remembered by many kids of the 80’s and can still be enjoyed today. Based on various Nintendo entertainment system games, the plots of the episodes would take place in various gaming worlds, becoming some games only ventures outside of the games themselves.
This episode is absolutely excellent as an introduction and easily is one of the show’s finest. It takes place on a variety of worlds and introduces us to the main characters. Many people have complained about the designs on this show, I admit they do vary from the games artwork, but I think that you can see how they got there from the bare sprites ingame, that and also their interpretation of how they felt the characters would look outside of 8 bit, a bit like an interpretation of a book. The art in this episode is very impressive, easily it shines, being a pilot episode you can tell they wanted to make an impression.
The characters are well shown, Lana is displayed as a leader who’s trying all last resorts to save her kingdom, she feels she needs to live up to her father and is shown to be upset about Kevin’s initial denial to save the kingdom. Kevin is shown well too, he appears out of place and doesn’t take the simple ‘yeah sure lets save everyone’ approach, instead he’s only really initially helping to achieve his own aim. Simon is brilliant, a few people don’t like his change but I feel he’s much better for it, if he were just a typical warrior there wouldn’t be any diversity in the heroes, as it is he’s a complete asshole, he basically just wants to achieve everything himself, he’s a narcissistic, self serving guy, and he does create most of the genuinely funny situations through his arrogance. Mother Brain is cool and seems quite threatening in this episode, she’s been going at this war for years now, she has an army, most bad guys just send in two comic relief henchmen and hope for the best, she does have the comic relief henchmen though and this is probably their starring roles. King Hippo’s the guy who’s old job was being punched in the stomach and face a lot, yeah he was a boxer, dunno what turned him to the evil side, probably paid better, then again I doubt it would be worse than being punched repeatedly. Eggplant Wizard rocks, end of, he’s just a minor enemy from Kid Icarus, he makes the more smart part of the the duo, while not exactly of average intelligence he still can surprise you. Finally Kid Icarus and Megaman have their characters fleshed out in later episodes.
Back to the actual episode, as said the art is amazing throughout, whilst the occasional bit of screwed up animation appears (Mother Brains holograms first line is spoken without lip movement) it’s only if you’re watching closely you notice anything like that, it appears for about a second literally. Anyway, the episode makes nice use of showing us warp zones, the Donkey Kong part’s cool, but my favorite part of the episode, has to be the chase through the Metroid lower levels. It’s great and features many cameos from enemies from Metroid.
Overall an outstanding episode, one of the show’s best and a great start.
