Sure, you might get a bunch of gift cards, clothes, and games on Christmas, but unless you live in Japan you won't be able to access the best gift of all this year: the reprisal of a Mario-themed 1990s Japanese variety show to celebrate the plumber's 25th birthday.
From 1990 to 2001, audiences regularly tuned into TV Tokyo to watch Super Mario Club, or any of the various renamed iterations which occurred during its run.
We can barely find any information about this show, but it sounds awesome. Here's a YouTube clip from an episode in which the show played host to a Nintendo Championship competition:
The original hosts, Noriko Kato and Tooru Watanabe, will be coming back for the special presentation. The show will air December 25th on TV Tokyo at 4:00 PM local time, and run for an hour and 15 minutes.
Though we already knew it, we're still surprised every time we realize that "variety shows" still exist in Japan. But then again, maybe if we actually had cool game-related programming on major networks here, no one would have had to suffer through The Nick & Jessica Variety Hour.
We hope some generous Japanese users out there will post clips of the special for the rest of us. And while they're at it, we want to see more of the original series too. 11 years and there's hardly anything on YouTube. That's unheard of!
[Source: Adriasang]
Dec 3, 2010
