I was reading the other day about the Super Mario bros. Super Show, out of curiosity. I discovered that on (I believe) Fridays, the Mario Show would be replaced by The Legend of Zelda cartoon. I had never heard of it. Therefore, I set out to watch the first episode:

It is awful, completely awful. Other than the settings, the music and the characters, it is completely different from the games! I knew it was going to be bad, but i had no idea it would quite this bad. Apparently, Link says "Excuuuuuuse me, Princess!" a total of 29 times in 13 episodes. He says it twice in this one. Link is not supposed to talk, either. And, it might have been okay to make him talk, but it was not okay to make him into a complete jerk in doing so!

Also, I laughed a lot at that beginning sequence!

Anyone remember anything about this show? Feel free to discuss this, awful, awful cartoon!

Awful by today's standards maybe.

I'm surprised you hadn't heard of this show sooner. I have the complete season on DVD, and no, I don't think it's good (it's the worst monstrosity ever created), but I'm such a big Zelda fan I felt compelled to get it despite how awful it is.

Also, this is why I think Nintendo should make a Zelda movie. It could not possibly ever be as terrible as this was. Between these and the CD-i titles, the series has enough of a dark side that I don't care if they take a few more chances. As long as Link doesn't whine like a prepubescent boy, I think it could pass.

I knew about the CD-i games, but I had never heard of the cartoon... and I probably would be better off if I didn't know about it now!

I watched it religiously back in the day and loved it. Even though it was bad. I looked forward to Fridays episodes so much because of the Zelda cartoons
(Plus, freaking Captain Lou Albano as Mario? Oh HELL YES!)

I also have the complete Zelda cartoon dvd — it was recently a GameStop PowerUp rewards, so yay free!

I knew about these cartoons; they're alright. What you may not know though is that there is an anime movie about Mario that was made in 1986. I recently saw parts of it on youtube. It's entirely in Japanese, but I thought it would be interesting to share that.

Edit: Now that I'm at a proper computer, I found the relevant videos.

This video has English subtitles, but the video quality is pretty bad:
http://youtu.be/HpHiVUKNwTg

This video is an English dub, and has better picture quality. Peach's voice is pretty annoying though:
http://youtu.be/y-2Y2CtHt_U

And to be complete, here is the plain Japanese movie w/o subtitles or fan dubs. The video quality on this is good too:
http://youtu.be/i6DOSyjD4Us

I would be interested to hear what you think of the movie.

I'd wonder how a Zelda movie would turn out, but maybe something like Metroid or Star Fox would be worth checking out.

We have a Zelda cartoon, and plenty of Mario cartoons and two live-action films. The closest to any non-VG Metroid media is Other M.I.A.

Though considering the quality of all the cartoons and movies and some bits of dialogue in Other M, it's probably a blessing.

Never really bothered watching it, but I always knew it existed. Now that you actually shared me the first episode, I couldn't say no.

The Zelda cartoon was better than I expecting, it had pretty good animation and managed to keep me entertained during the whole episode.
Still, it is pretty terrible, but not as bad as you make it sound.

i watched the legend of zelda cartoon back when it aired in the 80s and i thought it was really cheesy compared to the super mario cartoon. and link was annoying.

They stopped showing the Super Mario bros. show in the UK about 5 - 4 years ago on Pop.

this! I used to watch the Super Mario Bros/Super Show back in 89' religiously on weekends along with Legend of Zelda. Zelda which was obviously more special since it wasn't as on frequently.....And whenever it was, it was OMFG cheesy hyrule magic right before your eyes. And boy oh boy do they still hold up. Zelda is Cheesy 'awesome' late 80's Classical animation at it's finest and the same can be said for Super Mario Bros Super Show, along with it's cooky pee wee's playhouse inspired Live SMB segments. I absolutely love the fact that they use music(different renditions) and the actual SFX straight from SMB1,2 and lOZ.

I think the Zelda cartoon is a big part of the reason people want Link to remain a silent character. lol i got sick a few years back and had a LoZ cartoon marathon... it was just horrible. great for putting me to sleep, though :3

I liked these just for the fact that they were based on two of my favorite game franchises!

Exactly how I obtained mine! There never were any decent rewards I could afford before so I figured that, as a fan, why not at least own this (admittedly bad) piece of Zelda history?

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Captain N yet. While I wasn't around when it came out, I have seen several episodes on YouTube. And all I have to say is, yikes. Pit (who is erroneously called Kid Icarus in the show) has huge head, is constantly flying, and sounds like he's going though puberty, Mega Man has a voice almost like that of Popeye, and Simeon Belmont is a self-obsessive jerk. Yeah... The best episode I've seen is when Link and Zelda appear in an episode. And when they run into Ganon again he says, and I quote, "Link how nice to see you again! And you've brought friends for my coming out party!" I'm not kidding you, those where his very words!

It kept me entertained, too, but not for its intended reason!