Saturday Supercade is an American 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 Qbert rotated weekly while the other three were weekly. During the second season, Qbert (now weekly) and Donkey Kong remained while the Frogger, Pitfall! and Donkey Kong Jr. segments were replaced by shorts featuring:

Segments

Frogger

Frogger (voiced by Bob Sarlatte) is an ace reporter of the swamp who works at The Swamp Gazette. He and his friends Shellshock "Shelly" Turtle (voiced by Marvin Kaplan) and Fanny Frog (voiced by B.J. Ward) go out in search of crazy stories (sometimes about human behavior) to publish in the newspaper. Frogger also has to deal with his gruff boss and editor-in-chief Tex Toadwalker (voiced by Ted Field Sr.). As in the game, he often has an encounter with an alligator or gets flattened by a passing car. Unlike the game, Shelly revives Frogger using an ordinary air pump.

Episodes

Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong (voiced by Soupy Sales) has escaped from the circus. He is on the loose and Mario (voiced by Peter Cullen) and Pauline (voiced by Judy Strangis) 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

Season 1 (1983)

Season 2 (1984)

Pitfall!

Pitfall Harry (voiced by Robert Ridgely), his niece Rhonda (voiced by Noelle North), and their cowardly pet Quickclaw the Mountain Lion (voiced by Kenneth Mars) explore jungles for hidden treasures, having many different adventures along the way. Quickclaw and Rhonda later appeared in Pitfall II: Lost Caverns and Super Pitfall.

Episodes

Q*bert

In a 1950s-inspired world set in the town of QBerg, a teenage fur-covered creature named Q*bert (voiced by Billy Bowles), his girlfriend QTee (voiced by Robbie Lee), his brother QBit (voiced by Dick Beals), and his friends QBall (voiced by Frank Welker), QVal (voiced by Robbie Lee), and QMongus (voiced by Frank Welker) must deal with the resident bullies Coily, Ugg and Wrongway (all three voiced by Frank Welker), and Coily's girlfriend Viper (voiced by Julie McWhirter). 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 (both voiced by Frank Welker) are also featured.

Episodes

Season 1 (1983) Season 2 (1984)

Donkey Kong Junior

Donkey Kong Jr. (voiced by Frank Welker) is sad to find that his father has run away from Mario and the circus. He befriends a greaser nicknamed "Bones" (voiced by Bart Braverman) 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

Kangaroo

Joey Kangaroo (voiced by David Mendenhall), his mother "K.O." Katy Kangaroo (voiced by Mea Martineau), and Sidney Squirrel (voiced by Marvin Kaplan) must stop the Monkeybiz Gang members Bingo, Bango, Bongo, and Fred (all four voiced by Pat Fraley and Frank Welker), four meddlesome monkeys who are known from making trouble at the local zoo run by the zookeeper Mr. Friendly (voiced by Arthur Burghardt). The Monkeybiz Gang would cause trouble by trying to escape from the zoo and Katy would have to help keep them in line.

Episodes

Space Ace

Space Ace (voiced by Jim Piper) is the always smiling self-confident champion of the "Space Command", whereas when always "wimping out" to Dexter (voiced by Sparky Marcus) after being hit by the Infanto-Ray, he becomes clumsy and weak. With officer Kimberly (voiced by Nancy Cartwright), he works for Space Marshall Vaughn (voiced by Peter Renaday) to keep the peace in the universe. They fight the evil alien commander Borf (voiced by Arthur Burghardt) 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

Cast

Additional voices

Rebroadcast and home video

The Space Ace segments from the show occasionally appeared as filler in between shows on Boomerang and Toonami. The series has become considered partially lost in recent years due to a lack of rereleases and rebroadcast. In 2010, Warner Archive announced via their Facebook page that Saturday Supercade would be released through their made-on-demand DVD program, but some segments may be cut due to rights issues. As of 2024, no further information has been released. In November 2015, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released The Best of Q*Bert on DVD in Region 1. The two-disc collection features 17 of the 19 episodes of the series. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) release, available exclusively in the US via Amazon.com and their CreateSpace MOD program.