Excuuuuse me, Princess

Polygon has a wonderful (and relatively short) oral history of the short-lived Legend of Zelda cartoon that was embedded inside of the The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

There were elements of the games, like sound effects and visuals, but the show mostly has Zelda and Link posted up in Hyrule castle defending the Triforce of Wisdom from Ganon while trying to acquire the Triforce of Power from the evil wizard himself. (The Triforces talk, by the way.)

Naturally, they address the origin of the famous Link catch phrase…from a character that famously never speaks.

Robby London came up with the idea of the line, “Excuuuuse me, Princess,” which is inspired by the Moonlighting relationship and a snarky line from a Steve Martin routine.

I also love this little bit from Eve Forward:

I’ve no idea what the reception to the show was. This was in the days before internet; you couldn’t just log in and see your work torn apart in real time. My own feeling is that the Super Mario Bros. show wasn’t very good, especially the live-action bits, and that Zelda was the best part of it[…]

She nailed it. I love the Super Mario Bros. Super Show for the nostalgia, but I never loved the show. What I loved was when, seemingly randomly, I would catch one with an embedded Zelda episode.