Saturday Supercade
Saturday Supercade is an American Saturday-morning animated anthology television series produced by Ruby-Spears Productions for CBS. It aired for two seasons from September 17, 1983 to December 1, 1984. It is an anthology series consisting of four 11-minute segments based on various video games, primarily from the golden age of arcade video games. In the first season, these segments included Frogger, Donkey Kong, and Donkey Kong Jr., with the fourth segment rotating weekly between Pitfall! and Q*bert. In the second season, the lineup of segments was revised to feature Q*bert, Donkey Kong, and new additions Kangaroo and Space Ace.
Segments
''Frogger''
is an ace reporter of the swamp who works at The Swamp Gazette. He and his friends Shellshock "Shelly" Turtle and Fanny Frog go out in search of crazy stories to publish in the newspaper. Frogger also has to deal with his gruff boss and editor-in-chief Tex Toadwalker. 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''
has escaped from the circus and is on the loose, with Mario and Pauline are chasing the ape. Similar to the original game, Donkey Kong will frequently grab Pauline and Mario has to save her. Plots typically center around the trio 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!''
, his niece Rhonda, and their cowardly pet Quickclaw the Mountain Lion 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 Q*Berg, a teenage fur-covered creature named Q*bert, his girlfriend Q*Tee, his brother Q*Bit, and his friends Q*Ball, Q*Val, and Q*Mongus must deal with the resident bullies Coily, Ugg and Wrongway, and Coily's girlfriend Viper. 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 are also featured.Episodes
Season 1 (1983)
Season 2 (1984)
''Donkey Kong Junior''
is searching for his father Donkey Kong, who has run away from a circus where Mario is its ringmaster. He befriends a greaser nicknamed "Bones", who has a motorcycle and offers to help Junior by finding his dad with him. 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, his mother "K.O." Katy Kangaroo, and Sidney Squirrel must stop the Monkeybiz Gang members Bingo, Bango, Bongo, and Fred, four meddlesome monkeys who are known from making trouble at the local zoo run by the zookeeper Mr. Friendly. 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''
is the always smiling self-confident champion of the "Space Command", whereas when always "wimping out" to Dexter after being hit by the Infanto-Ray, he becomes clumsy and weak. With officer Kimberly, he works for Space Marshall Vaughn to keep the peace in the universe. They fight the evil alien commander Borf 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.
In the late 1990s, reruns of the show aired late at night on Cartoon Network. Segments have also been shown between programs on Boomerang.
Episodes
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 reruns from rights issues. In 2010, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, who owns home distribution rights to Ruby-Spears programs, announced via their Facebook page that Saturday Supercade would be released through their Warner Archive Collection label, which had not materialized as of 2026.
In November 2015, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released The Best of Q*Bert on DVD in Region 1; Sony Pictures owned the rights to Q*bert due to Columbia Pictures owning Gottlieb during its development The two-disc collection features 17 of the 19 episodes of the series.