In the late 80's, a short story appeared in Nintendo Power in which a Nintendo computer mainframe came to life and tried to take over the world. A Nintendo employee was given the power to bring Nintendo game characters to life to help destroy the computer, which had taken the name Mother Brain. The employee took the title of Captain Nintendo in his quest to defeat the evil computer. (By the way, the employee's real name was Max Powers. Why he felt the need to take a superhero name in the first place is anyone's guess. Most people can only dream of having such a cool name.)

The company liked the idea of a Nintendo-branded super hero and decided to turn Captain Nintendo into an animated series. The concept went through many changes before making it to TV screens. Instead of a Nintendo employee bringing video games to life, the show features a normal kid who gets pulled into the video game world itself.

Captain N and the N team was the cartoon version of every little gamer's fantasy. One day a regular kid is playing a rousing game of Punch Out in his filthy room when he and his dog are sucked into the TV and transported into a world where video games are real. The kid receives super powers, meets a princess in distress (who is conveniently just the same age as he is), and becomes the protector of the entire video game kingdom. Many children of the early 90's attempted to replicate this chain of events and escape into the video world themselves. However, creating an Ultimate Warp Zone in one's attic is much more difficult than it sounds.

The popularity of Captain N, which was paired with the Legend of Zelda cartoon series, led to a comic book version. Created by Valiant Comics, the Captain N comic was a bit more serious than it's TV counterpart. Also, non-first party Nintendo characters like Mega Man and Simon Belmont were not included in the comic.

Just who were these valiant defenders of Videoland (or at least the Nintendo part of it)? It's time for an N-Team roll call!

Captain N:The Game Master!

Meet Kevin Keene, a regular high school kid from California. Kevin was your average early 90's teenager. He played some sort of sport in school, earning himself a fancy letterman's jacket with a big N on it (which was very handy for the future Captain N, it would have been very strange if he had been running around with a different letter on his chest). Kevin, like many other kids his age, was also very much into Nintendo.

Instead of hanging out with his friends, or even practicing whatever sport it is that earned him that fancy jacket, Kevin spent most of his days in his room playing video games. In those days, the Nintendo/Sega war was in full swing and Kevin was an unabashed Nintendo partisan. In his mind, Sega was nothing more than a third rate pretender with shoddy games and no future.

Perhaps it was his staunch Nintendo loyalty that made him Videoland's Chosen One. Or maybe it was the fact that he spent 6 hours a day playing Punch Out. Either way, his Saturday morning gaming was interrupted one day by a vortex that formed in his TV and sucked him into the video game world. Once in Videoland, he finds out that his mad gaming skillz and officially licensed NES peripherals have given him super powers.

Cap's tools of the trade included his trusty NES zapper, which instead of firing harmless bursts of light, now shot deadly laser blasts. The Cap'n also had a swank controller belt buckle, which he inexplicably called a Power Pad. (The real Power Pad was the floor mat controller that was a cross between a Twister board and a prehistoric DDR pad.) The Power Pad functioned as a Plot Device controller, letting the Cap'n jump super high, run super fast, or even pause time, but only when the situation expressly called for it. Otherwise, it served only as a stylish belt buckle thar would be copied 15 years later by trendy hipsters at Hot Topic.

Duke the Dog:

Duke was Kevin's trusty dog. He stayed at his best friend's side at all times, depite the fact that Kevin stayed inside playing video games all the time instead of taking the poor dog for a walk or playing fetch. When Kevin was sucked into his TV, Duke followed his master into the strange digital world.

Duke has no powers to speak of, unless you count his turning into a completely different type of dog from the one that jumped into the TV. Real world Duke was a Golden Retriever type, where Videoland duke was a white dog (who wore a stylish bandanna around his neck). Duke played Rush to Kevin's Mega Man, despite the fact that Captian N couldn't fly him like a jet or wear him like a super mecha armor suit.

Duke generally stayed behind at the base to help cheer the Cap'n on. Although every so often, the dog would have a pivital role in saving the day, which said a lot about the incompetence of the bad guys.

Princess Lana:

Princess Lana was the stereotypical head of state/damsel in distress/love interest of the story. At some point in time Lana's father, King Charles, was zapped into an alternate dimension by the evil Mother Brain. Lana took the reigns of the Videoland government (at least the Nintendo part of it) and continued to prosecute her dad's war against Mother Brain.

Lana played the part of Hannibal for the N-Team. Sending them out on crazy adventures to save innocent civillains from evil. (Unfortunately, the N-Team did not have a sweet metallic van to tool around in, which might explain why the show only lasted for 2 1/2 seasons.) She did what was expected of a princess, getting occasionally kidnapped by inept henchmen, divining mysterious and arbitrary prophecies, and having a crush on the dashing hero of the team. (Princesses are contractually obligated to be romantically involved with the hero of their evil-fighting team. Bonus points if they end up in a bizarre love triangle with another female member of the squad.)

Princess Lana's crime fighting equipment consisted mainly of her scepter which was supposed to have some sort of vague magic powers. The scepter was powered by the same mystical Plot Device energy that powered Kevin's Power Pad, which could plug even the largest of plot holes. (In the future, this Plot Device power would be used in Star Trek in the form of the Deflector Array, which could be used to do just about anything if the situation called for it.)

Bonus Section-A Quick Word About Videoland:

Tron and Reboot taught us that inside of PC's are millions of anthropomorphic programs that lived normal lives until they were cruelly snatched from their world and forced to participate in User controlled games. However, the universe of video games is much different than the harsh and violent computer world.

Videoland is comprised of a group of worlds that are populated by characters in various video games. All of the worlds are connected by an advanced mass transit system that consists of a series of wormholes, known as "warp zones".

The government of Videoland is an autocratic monarchy with nothing resembling representative democracy. We assume that all of the worlds more or less govern themselves but are all subject to the whims of the Videoland Royal Family. There is no Videoland bureaucracy or even a token Videoland Senate, just one solitary dictator who decides the fate of millions. Not exactly the most progressive of societies, it makes you wonder if Mother Brain was really a bad person or if she was some sort of freedom fighter.

Although there was once an army and police force, King Charles sent the entire military on a crusade against the Sega regions of the greater Videoworld. Instead of a quick and easy victory, the war turned into a stalemate, sapping Videoland's military might and treasury. (Videoland forces thought they would be greeted as liberators, with Sega citizens giving them flowers and pulling down the statues of their despotic blue Hedgehog. Clearly this was not the case.) With the army busy in Segaland, a group of villains led by Mother Brain engineered an attempted takeover of Videoland. Only a ragtag group of heroes led by Princess Lana kept Mother Brain in check.

That's all for this part of our thrilling exposé of the bizarre world of Captain N. Join us next time when we'll take a look at the supporting cast of the N-Team. (Mega Man lovers might want to skip this part, it's not pretty what happens to the beloved Blue Bomber.)