Super Mario Bros. Cartoon Returns with Weird AI Upscaling

If you grew up in the late 80s or early 90s, you probably have a soft spot for The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!. It was a chaotic mix of live-action segments featuring professional wrestler "Captain" Lou Albano as Mario and a cartoon that brought the NES world to life long before Chris Pratt took over the big screen. Recently, the broadcast channel MeTV Toons decided to bring these episodes back to the airwaves, likely to capitalize on the hype surrounding upcoming Mario cinematic projects. However, there is a catch that has left fans feeling more than a little confused.

Instead of a clean, high-definition restoration, the episodes being broadcast appear to have been run through a low-quality AI upscaler. According to reports and social media posts from eagle-eyed viewers, the results are, frankly, a bit of a mess. The AI seems to have smoothed over the original hand-drawn lines to the point where they look like waxy, distorted versions of themselves. In some frames, characters look markedly different from their original designs, losing that gritty, low-budget charm the 1989 series was known for.

Perhaps the most hilarious—or tragic, depending on how much you love Mario—error occurs right at the start. The AI upscaler apparently struggled so much with the written text on the screen that it changed the title card to read "The Suele Mario Bros. Super Show." It’s a classic example of AI "hallucinating" when it doesn't understand the context of what it's looking at. It seems nobody at the station gave the footage a final quality check before hitting the broadcast button.

While the original 65-episode run wasn't exactly a masterpiece of animation, it represented a specific era of video game culture. For those who want to see the show as it was intended, many episodes are still available on YouTube in their original, non-AI-butchered form. It serves as a cautionary tale: while AI can be a powerful tool for restoration, using it without human oversight can turn a nostalgic trip down memory lane into a weird, uncanny valley nightmare.