The most memorable TV shows adapted from video games

These days, it is fairly canonical that Mario and Luigi have broad Italian accents. If you are of a certain age, though, you may remember when the plumber brothers spoke with gruff Brooklyn accents. “The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!” played a part in that. It’s best remembered for Lou Albano — that is, Captain Lou Albano of pro wrestling fame — playing Mario in the live-action segments. The show also features cartoons of both the world of “Super Mario Bros.” and “The Legend of Zelda” as well.

Sure, Albano singing “Do the Mario” is fun in a goofy way, but few are considering “Super Show!” high-quality television. “The Last of Us” brought video games to prestige TV. It helps that “The Last of Us” is a post-apocalyptic game with a lot of backstory and plot, as opposed to Mario’s games. The show earned several Emmy nominations for its first season.

“Fallout” lands somewhere between “Super Show!” and “Last of Us” in terms of heft. It’s another post-apocalyptic drama, but “Fallout” is a world with a bit more humor and pulpy action. After all, the Amazon Prime show features Walton Goggins as a skull-faced gunslinger. That’s not exactly high art, but it also rules.

The first “Halo” game was huge for the Xbox, and it felt ubiquitous for a minute there. Not since “Goldeneye” had a console game spawned so many multiplayer hangouts. That was the early 2000s, though. Why did it take until 2022 for the show to debut? Two words: development hell. The effort to bring “Halo” to television began in 2013. It moved from Showtime to Paramount+, a service that did not even exist in 2013. And yet, in spite of it all, the first season was reasonably well-received, and the second season actually got even better reviews than the first. Development hell did not claim “Halo” for good.

You may have played the game where you chase V.I.L.E. agents across the globe, including a certain hat-wearing sticky-fingered filcher, on your computer, but “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” also came out on the Genesis and Super Nintendo. While there was a narrative cartoon version on Netflix, our hearts remain with the game show. It’s all about Lynne Thigpen as Chief saying “gumshoe” in our books.

Two elements went into the crafting of the bizarre family sitcom “Maniac Mansion.” One was “SCTV,” as the show starred “SCTV” alum Joe Flaherty and featured writers and guest performers from the show. Indeed, “Maniac Mansion” was a Canadian co-production. Then, there is the 1987 video game of the same name that ostensibly inspired the show. We say “ostensibly,” because the show had little to do with the games.

The very successful horror game series “Resident Evil” led to a film series starring Milla Jovovich. The movies are dumb fun, for the most part. Netflix decided to try and get into the “Resident Evil” space with a TV show, but it was received poorly, with critics saying it lacked the fun of the films. It was canceled after one season.

A bunch of cartoonish characters driving around creating havoc. That’s a good premise for a video game, but can you turn it into a TV show? If you’re willing to lean into it and not be shy of language and violence, sure. Having Anthony Mackie and Stephanie Beatriz as the stars also helped. Wisely, the primary character from the games featured is Sweet Tooth, the machete-wielding clown with an ice cream truck. If you remember anybody from that game, it’s probably him.

Hey, turning a video game into an animated show! What a novel concept! “Castlevania” is a popular video game series that involves vampires, so that helps provide fodder for a TV show, certainly more than a plumber fighting turtles and mushrooms. Netflix’s animated “Castlevania” show focuses on Trevor Belmont, and it ran for four seasons and 32 episodes. There was also a followup series called “Nocturne” as well.

With its goofy gameplay and stylistic worlds, “Earthworm Jim” was an easy choice for adapting into a kids’ cartoon. While the game was notoriously fairly difficult, watching Jim’s adventures was a breeze for kids in the ‘90s. Like the games, “Earthworm Jim” the show could be absurdist, and it would often break the fourth wall. Also, Homer Simpson himself Dan Castellaneta voiced Jim.

Somehow, there have been multiple TV shows based on an arcade classic that is just a yellow circle man eating dots and avoiding ghosts. The 1982 show is the one that became a famed, if maligned, Saturday morning cartoon. Trying to craft enough of a narrative from “Pac-Man” for a show was not exactly an easy thing to do, and old Saturday morning cartoons were not always the most creatively ambitious. Memorably, the second season of “Pac-Man” was paired with “Rubik, the Amazing Cube.” Yes, there was also a Rubik’s Cube cartoon.

“Cuphead” became something of a cult classic in 2017. The game is noted for old-school cartoon graphics that look cool, but also for being immensely difficult. Riding the wave of the “Cuphead” phenomenon was, yes, Netflix. Like the game, “The Cuphead Show!” was a throwback, in that it had a 1930s-style feel and relied heavily on slapstick comedy.

“You Don’t Know Jack” is the aggro, sometimes obnoxious, answer to “Jeopardy.” It was the trivia game for people who wanted some edge to their trivia games, and it helped set the table for the Jackbox game landscape. “You Don’t Know Jack” was turned into an ABC game show. They worked hard to get Paul Reubens to host in the guise of Troy Stevens (Tom Gottlieb reprised his role of Cookie from the games). After all that effort, though, the game show lasted all of six episodes. With how game shows are produced, they probably shot all of those in a single day, two tops.

Sonic was Sega’s answer to Mario, the face of the most-popular game and the de facto mascot for the brand. Mario had a cartoon, so why wouldn’t Sonic as well? As an anthropomorphic hedgehog, there was something more fantastical about the world of Sonic. They even got Jaleel White to voice Sonic! And yet, “Sonic the Hedgehog” only lasted for 26 episodes.

And finally, another run at turning the “Sonic” universe into a TV success. This time, “Knuckles” has narrative heft behind it. It’s a spinoff of the “Sonic the Hedgehog” movies that overcame initial bad buzz and a global pandemic to prove rather successful. This spinoff show on Paramount+ focuses on the antihero echidna Knuckles, now voiced by Idris Elba. It’s only a six-episode limited series, probably a way to bridge the gap to a third film, but hopefully it’s not just the spinning of wheels.