"Captain N: The
Game Master" consisted of 34 original
episodes. It premiered on
NBC on September 9, 1989. The episode length for Season 1, excluding
commercials and the theme songs, was about 20 minutes.
The show is about a fifteen year old boy named Kevin Keene who lives in Northridge, California. One night, when Kevin (Dorian Barag) is playing Punch-Out when he was supposed to be doing his homework and cleaning his room, he gets pulled through his television set His dog, Duke, jumps in after him.
They become cartoon characters, and end up in a universe called Videoland. It appears that, in this universe, all of the characters from Kevin's video games are real.
Kevin is greeted by Princess Lana, the Ruler of Videoland. For the past seven years, Mother Brain (the villain from "Metroid"), has been trying to conquer
Videoland. The Princess was losing the war. But then, an ancient prophecy was fulfilled, and Kevin was brought to them to save Videoland.
Kevin and Duke join the N Team, which consists of Lana, Mega Man, Kid Icarus, and Simon Belmont. Season 1 ran in the 1989-1990 season.
Season 2 of Captain N had the same episode length as Season 1, but there was a Super Mario Bros. 3 episode before and after it. The one-hour (commercials
included) show was collectively called "Captain N & the Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3" and was proclaimed Number 1 in its time slot! During Season 2, the
N Team got an additional member, a supercomputer named Gameboy that looks like, well, a Gameboy! Kevin also meets Link, his favorite video game hero,
and Princess Zelda.
Link and Zelda appeared in four episodes of Captain N. The four episodes are "QUEST FOR THE POTION OF
POWER", "HAVING A BALL", "ONCE UPON A TIME MACHINE", and "THE TROJAN DRAGON". Zelda's father has apparently died by this time, and Zelda is now the Ruler of Hyrule. Link's hair is longer. Also, the two of them seem a bit more mature (Than in the Legend of Zelda Cartoon), and Link has seemed to stop asking Zelda for a kiss, but she does kiss him finally!
Season 2 ran in the 1990-1991 season.
Season 3 really took a turn for the worse! The animation quality was downgraded severely, and the episode length was reduced to about 10 minutes, 30 seconds -
half the length of Seasons 1 and 2! The show came after a Mario episode. The half hour (commercials included) show was called "Captain N and the New Super
Mario World". Season 3 had only seven new episodes, that I know of. Season 3 ran in the 1991-1992 season.
The last completely new episode of Captain N that aired was "THE FRACTURED FANTASY OF CAPTAIN N" on October 26, 1991. It ended like any other episode, so there was no sense of closure to the series.
This was then followed by edited ten-minute versions of twenty-minute episodes from Seasons 1 and 2. Among those are "THE INVASION OF THE PAPER
PEDALERS", "THREE MEN AND A DRAGON", and "NIGHTMARE ON MOTHER BRAIN'S STREET", and "MR. AND MRS. MOTHER BRAIN".
According to the book "Totally Television" by Alex McNeil, the last date any episode of Captain N aired on NBC was July 25, 1992.
Episode Guide:
01 KEVIN IN VIDEOLAND
02 HOW'S BAYOU (Version 1)
03 THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME MASTER
04 VIDEOLYMPICS
05 MEGA TROUBLE FOR MEGALAND
06 WISHFUL THINKING
07 THREE MEN AND A DRAGON
08 MR. AND MRS. MOTHER BRAIN
09 NIGHTMARE ON MOTHER BRAIN'S STREET
10 SIMON THE APE-MAN
11 IN SEARCH OF THE KING
12 METROID SWEET METROID
13 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MEGAMAN
14 GAMEBOY
15 QUEST FOR THE POTION OF POWER
16 HAVING A BALL
17 ONCE UPON A TIME MACHINE
18 THE TROJAN DRAGON
19 THE FEUD OF FAXANADU
20 THE BIG GAME
21 I WISH I WAS A WOMBATMAN
22 QUEEN OF THE APES
23 THE LOST CITY OF KONGOLAND
24 THE INVASION OF THE PAPER PEDALERS
25 THE TROUBLE WITH TETRIS
26 GERM WARS
27 WHEN MOTHER BRAIN RULES (Version 1)
28 MISADVENTURES IN ROBIN HOOD WOODS
29 RETURN TO CASTLEVANIA
30 THE FRACTURED FANTASY OF CAPTAIN N
31 PURSUIT OF THE MAGIC HOOP
32 TOTALLY TETRISIZED
33 A TALE OF TWO DOGS
34 BATTLE OF THE BASEBALL KNOW-IT-ALLS
35 HOW'S BAYOU (Version 2)
36 THREE MEN AND A DRAGON (fifteen-minute version)
37 MR. AND MRS. MOTHER BRAIN (fifteen-minute version)
38 NIGHTMARE ON MOTHER BRAIN'S STREET (fifteen-minute version)
39 QUEST FOR THE POTION OF POWER, PART 1 (fifteen minutes)
40 QUEST FOR THE POTION OF POWER, PART 2 (fifteen minutes)
41 WHEN MOTHER BRAIN RULES (Version 2)
-Information from http://members.tripod.com/~captain_n/main.html