The remainder of the program is dedicated to animated stories of Super Mario Bros., starring the voices of Albano and Wells in their respective roles, which were exhibited Monday through Thursday.

The live-action segments, a parody of contemporary sitcoms, are set in Brooklyn and deal with the peculiarities of running a plumbing business in the late 1980s.

Each episode begins with Mario reciting an entry into his "Plumber's Log", then teaming up with Luigi to assist Princess Toadstool and Toad in preventing King Koopa from taking over the Kingdom with a sinister plot, generally one parodying a book, film, or historical event.

Throughout the series, Link is a moaning, self-centred teenager who repeatedly fails to convince Zelda that he deserves a kiss for his heroic deeds.

Link frequently meets Zelda's angry remarks with his sarcastic catchphrase, "Well, excuse me, Princess!

[8] Before the series was conceived, Andy Heyward, the then-CEO of DIC Enterprises, spent about a year trying to convince Nintendo to license the characters.

Concept art was produced for adaptations of Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Double Dragon, and California Games.

[11] Double Dragon would receive a later adaptation from DIC which aired from 1993 to 1994, but this did not make use of the 1980s concepts and was instead based on the SNES titles released in the interim.

[13] To promote the series, Lou Albano appeared on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee in May 1989 with his beard shaven.

In David Sheff's book Game Over, Bill White, the then-director of advertising and public relations for Nintendo,[18] said that the purpose of the television series was to boost awareness of the characters.

[20] Each episode of the program consisted of two live action segments, one at the start and the other towards the end, dubbed Mario Bros.

Plumbing, in which Lou Albano and Danny Wells portrayed the roles of Mario and Luigi respectively in comedic story accompanied by a laugh track.

Alongside guest stars, both Albano and Wells portrayed additional characters in a number of episodes related to Mario and Luigi.

Factory's first DVD release of the show in 2006 – which exclude some episodes that involved Cassandra Peterson as Elvira, alongside Gadget's second appearance and a few other episodes – Albano stated that filming of the live-action segments involved mainly himself and Wells receiving a central plot and mostly improvising the dialogue as they went along.

According to screenwriter Bob Forward, the writing team on the Legend of Zelda segments was given significant freedom to develop the series as they wished, particularly with regards to the script and character design.

Nintendo offered little advice or guidance to the writers except for providing a franchise "bible", character designs, and the first two video games in the series.

Forward also explained that Link's catchphrase "Excuse me, Princess" was based on a popular Steve Martin comedy routine.

He decided to include it in every episode of the series as a way to poke fun at DIC's VP of Creative Affairs, Robbie London, who had forced him to use the phrase.

[27] Forward also stated that the relationship between Link and Zelda was influenced by the dynamic between the characters of David Addison and Maddie Hayes from the American television series Moonlighting, which were portrayed by Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd respectively.

[28] The writers revealed that, in addition to having a "show bible" as a reference for the main characters, they were influenced by their own interests when creating episodes in the series.

[37] The two were regularly visited by Tommy's annoying sister Tammy (Victoria Delaney), the aptly named Dr. Know-It-All (Kurt Weldon), Co-MC's evil twin Eric (also Rawlins), and a guest star.

The segment featured a one-to-two-minute viewing of Space Scout Theater/Spaced Out Theater hosted by Princess Centauri (Shanti Kahn), which was sourced and edited from the children's science fiction television series Photon.

Beyond Home Entertainment released a six-disc box set in the 2000s, with two segments "Rolling Down the River" and "The Unzappables" omitted.

NCircle Entertainment eventually re-released Sterling's DVDs, and released another one titled "The Power of the Triforce" on 22 July 2008, which contained five episodes.

IGN rated the DVD release of The Legend of Zelda a 3.0 out of 10, or "Bad", citing poor writing, repeated plots, and over the top acting.

is an internet meme and commonly used in-joke used by video game players, especially Zelda fans, and is spoken by Link on 29 occasions throughout the 13 episodes.

[49] Michael Mammano for Den of Geek commented that the series "falls squarely into the category of guilty pleasure" and continued that "it's not very good, but that doesn't stop it from being eminently enjoyable.

[50] Nathan Simmons of SVG considered the animation to be "pretty stiff" but also opined that "the greatest sin of this cartoon series might be it's[sic] characterization of Link" who is portrayed as a "creep" and felt that "it was simply painful to watch".

[51] Luke Plunkett of Kotaku noted "shoddy animation, poor voice work, execrable humour and terrible writing make it one of the decade's worst cartoons" but also commented that "for all its flaws, there's something about it that defies genuine ridicule.

[53] Writing for Destructoid, Chris Moyse commented that the series "was merely one more harmless entity in a thousand mediocre cartoons", but opined that it harmed the future potential of the franchise and wished for a new Legend of Zelda adaptation that was more faithful to the original games.