Mini-DVD Review: The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 (June 26); Solomon's Weekly Rant: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Mini-DVD Review: The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 (June 26); Solomon's Weekly Rant: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Welcome to another edition of mini-DVD reviews. This week we take a look at Shout! Factory's The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3. The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 is the short-lived 1990 animated series that was based on the very popular video game! See my mini-DVD review of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3:

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 (Shout!, $29.99) brings all 13 half-hours from the short-lived animated series based on the popular video game!
In this series, after sending King Koopa into the banishment zone, Mario & Luigi finally made it home to Brooklyn! But just when the Mushroom People thought they were safe, Koopa escaped and brought with him seven of the most vile creatures the world had ever known: the Koopa Kids. Can Mario and the gang get rid of them? Each episode runs approx. between 23-24 minutes. The lowest one is 22:52, which is the first episode. The highest one is 24:12. There are 5 chapter stops, which is always handy. There are 13 episodes, but actually it is 26, since each half-hour has two mini-episodes. The video is decent, I think a bit better than The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, but that was a bit older. This series doesn't have any live action segments, like the other series. The closing logo is the DiC out the window logo, if you know what I mean. The audio is decent, nothing too bad about it. Packaging has a nice yellow outer box with Mario flying it seems on the front cover...the back cover has information on the series and set and a picture of King Koopa and the Koopa Kids. Inside the box is three slim cases. Each disc has its own slim case. The first two discs cover all the episodes, while the third disc is the extras.
The menu screen has Play All and Episodes for discs one and two. The main menu is video game style, with great sound effects. Disc one features Mario in the video game and disc two is Luigi.
Moving on to the extras. The extras are found on disc three. The menu is a notebook, with a list of items we can select. It is titled Writer's Bible. Then it says Table of Contents, then we get a list of items: The Back Story, The Series, The Characters (Heroes - Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and Toad; Villains - King Koopa and the seven Koopa Kids), The Worlds (21 section of photos!), The Music (10 cool songs, like a soundtrack). Besides the latter two categories, each category has a short video describing the item, usually 1-3 minutes.
I highly do recommend any fan of Super Mario to pick up this set, especially if you have started to pick-up The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. Can Super Mario and Luigi and the gang get rid of the Mushroom Kingdom of Koopa and his deviant minions? Find out yourself!
-- Reviewed by Pavan

(4/5 stars)

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Solomon's Weekly Rant
Saturday, June 30, 2007
"Sony Picture Home Entertainment Needs To Show Some Class to Classic TV"
By Solomon Davis

If a DVD company wants TV fans to enjoy the TV shows they release on DVD, why do they have such a lazy and uncreative way of distributing the DVD to TV fans? I thought the purpose of releasing DVD's was to entertain fans not just make a profit. Why does Sony seem uninterested in putting together a nice DVD set for us to purchase? The season set releases by Sony are always slow with no bonus features included on the DVD. We should at least get to see some sort of nice extras that goes well with the season on the DVD, look at Anchor Bay's Three's Company sets, they were well made. But it appears Sony doesn't care about bonus features just making money after making us wait 12 months for the next season of certain shows.
You would think if Sony would put out powerful DVD sets since the wait is so long but it's just the same old lazy sets with Bonus Previews included. And since when did bonus previews become an attractive feature on a DVD set? I'm sure 97% of TV fans who purchase DVD's released by Sony did not watch one second of Bonus Previews because it falls no where near the category of ENTERTAINMENT...and plus they are OUTDATED! I also hear that poor sales is the reason for some of the slow releases by Sony and if that's the case then why are the seasons still released if Sony feels it won't make any money? Sony can at least release two seasons of a certain show a year instead of making us wait almost a year so we can see CRAP. If Sony is going to release crappy DVD sets, then we should get it a lot faster. Why should Sony wait to release seasons 7 to 11 of The Jeffersons? Just give us our crappy DVD season sets so we can have a compete crappy TV collection of our favorite shows. And can you believe that it has taken Sony almost 6 years to release just six seasons of The Jeffersons? The first season was released in 2002 and now in 2007 fans of The Jeffersons can only buy up to season 6 on DVD. That is what you call the true definition of LAZY and it really confuses me why Sony can't be more like studios like Shout! Factory when releasing shows on DVD. It makes no sense that 2008 is 6 months away and there is still no word on when season 7 of The Jeffersons will be out on DVD. And since it's very likely Sony will give us more crappy DVD sets, the future releases of Sony TV shows should be included in a box of cereal as a BONUS for buying the cereal. That way we wouldn't care about bonus features, just the episodes and good quality.
Sony needs to take DVD release lessons from other studios like Warner Bros. or Shout! since their TV shows has very nice bonus features like the "Gag Reel" on the season 3 DVD of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and "the never before seen unaired pilot episode" of Full House on the season 1 DVD of Full House. Sony did try to top those features by including a small booklet of pointless TV fun facts with the season 3 DVD release of Sanford and Son. Sony has no clue at all on how to give TV fans their money's worth. Then Sony tries to really be creative and make a profit off the recent CBS One Day at Time Reunion with the season 1 DVD release of One Day at a Time. A reunion that was seen by everyone on CBS in February of 2005 was given to us as a BONUS? That should have been on the last season, not the first season. The Sanford and Son booklet looks kind of attractive compared to that poor feature. So basically out of 31 seasons of Sony DVD's I have purchased, I only saw two bonus features. No cast commentary or bloopers just some cereal box giveaway like a 3 page Sanford and Son booklet. We are actually paying money for SEEN BEFORE FOOTAGE on a DVD which gives off this message, "just put anything together so we can make money off of TV fans." Should we be annoyed with Sony for their crappy bonus features and untimely releases or with ourselves for discovering our favorite shows in syndication? Though at least Sony is releasing a lot of their sitcoms (much more than other companies), it's just that they are bare-boned and sometimes edited.

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DISCLAIMER: Remember, Solomon is not the voice of SitcomsOnline. He is just stating his opinions and does not reflect what SitcomsOnline says or thinks. It is just his 'View' but it is always quite entertaining.