The Super Mario Bros. cartoon is back, but looks really weird thanks to AI
TL;DR
MeTV Toons has begun airing old episodes of 'The Super Mario Bros. Super Show' (1989), likely timed to the upcoming 'Super Mario Galaxy Movie' theatrical release.
Key Points
- According to Kotaku and the Super Mario Wiki, the episodes appear to have been processed with AI upscaling, resulting in visually bizarre artifacts.
- The original show was already a low-budget 80s cash-grab cartoon – but the AI treatment manages to make it look even worse.
- Screenshots show smeared characters, warped proportions, and muddy image quality – textbook symptoms of poorly applied AI upscaling.
Nauti's Take
It is almost admirable how consistently the industry repeats the same AI mistakes. Anyone who has spent five minutes with upscaling tools knows: retro animation and neural networks do not mix.
Rather than investing in proper restoration, the nearest automation tool gets slapped on top – and the result looks like it was fed through a digital meat grinder. MeTV could have just aired the original; bad 80s quality at least has charm.
AI mush has none.
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