{"id":505746,"date":"2026-03-31T19:37:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T19:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/505746\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T19:37:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T19:37:14","slug":"they-brought-back-the-super-mario-bros-cartoon-and-sloppified-it-with-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/505746\/","title":{"rendered":"They Brought Back The Super Mario Bros. Cartoon And Sloppified It With AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this month, <a href=\"https:\/\/metvtoons.com\/stories\/the-super-mario-bros-super-show-is-coming-to-metv-toons\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MeTV announced<\/a> that it would start airing the classic Super Mario Bros. Super Show on its TV and streaming channels. And yesterday, the station began airing the beloved Mario series, but fans quickly noticed that the show has been slopped up and \u201cimproved\u201d using AI upscaling.<\/p>\n<p>On March 30, MeTV Toons aired its first episodes of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. The timing is obvious: There\u2019s a new Mario movie coming out, so why not get people watching MeTV by spending money to license and rebroadcast the classic Mario cartoon-and-live-action hybrid show from the \u201980s? Seems reasonable! However, MeTV seems to have decided to run the classic series through some AI upscaler, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SMWikiOfficial\/status\/2038953129513725983\" rel=\"nofollow\">end results have been spread online via some awful-looking screenshots<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Super Mario Super Show has started airing on MEtv using some kind of AI upscaling ,and the results are as good as you&#8217;d expect <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/WrdFbOe2iW\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/WrdFbOe2iW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Super Mario Wiki (@SMWikiOfficial) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SMWikiOfficial\/status\/2038953129513725983?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">March 31, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s be clear, the original series wasn\u2019t some incredible production. It featured cheap animation, off-model drawings, and other issues. Still, comparing the original show on YouTube with the AI-upscaled version on MeTV shows that the AI has straight-up changed details and smoothed everything over in a weird, ugly way. It even changed the show\u2019s name in the intro sequence from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/MeTVToons\/comments\/1s7oukl\/comment\/odc6cjx\/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Super Mario Bros. Super Show to The Suele Mario Bros. Super Show.<\/a> Yikes!<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/the-super-mario-bros-super-show-on-right-now-you-all-enjoy-v0-10kskikil7sg1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1023\" height=\"763\"\/>\u00a9 Nintendo \/ Reddit \/ MeTV \/ Kotaku <\/p>\n<p>You can find more examples online of people sharing screenshots of how bad it all looks, like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/161346744015168\/posts\/3636046446545163\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">these screenshots shared by a user in the \u201cCartoon Research\u201d Facebook group<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is why you should never use AI to \u2018restore\u2019 a cartoon,\u201d said cartoon fan Matt Hunter. And I have to agree with Matt, because this shit looks bad. It almost looks like MeTV wasn\u2019t given any original tapes or anything like that and just had to AI upscale some YouTube videos instead. Rough stuff.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/657906458_10100408436488682_4954478365592220747_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1005\" height=\"763\"\/>\u00a9 Nintendo \/ MeTV \/ Matt Hunter \/ Kotaku <\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>                          <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this month, MeTV announced that it would start airing the classic Super Mario Bros. Super Show on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,4327,733,4308,10008,769,136,86,177417,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-505746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-slop","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-cartoon","tag-mario","tag-nintendo","tag-technology","tag-the-super-mario-bros-super-show","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}