CrypticMirror wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2020 11:57 pm
There was also Mysterious Cities of Gold, Pirates of Darkwater, Ulysses 31, Dungeons and Dragons, Jacye and the Wheeled Warriors, Around the World with Willy Fogg, Bobobobs (man, who else remembers Bobobobs?) and I'm sure I am forgetting a few. They all had season arcs and through stories, admittedly Dungeons and Dragons was a bit ropey at times, so it wasn't that uncommon.
Mysterious Cities of Gold and Ulysses 31 were both french/anime imports. Anime had been doing serialized storytelling for ages, even then. It gets more recognized here in things like Macross/Robotech, but also carried through stuff like Maya the Bee or Noozles. So not as huge a deal there.
Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors didn't have continuity, not really. It had the overarching "we need to find Jayce's dad" but the characters didn't really grow or change or remember earlier episodes, the gear didn't evolve, they never got around to an actual ending... it was pretty stand alone from episode to episode outside.
Pirates of Dark Water absolutely had continuity, but it also didn't find any sort of success and ended without getting even close to finishing. The first batch of episodes all string together as a movie, and after that it keeps a tight track on who has what maguffin. You can see some of it a little out of order, but it tracked pretty consistently up till its not-ending.
Surprisingly Thundercats of all things had a lot of continuity. They tracked new characters being introduced, upgrades for the badguys, had constant five parters (especially in the second season) that changed the status quo and especially in the second season and on kept doing that... though still loaded with filler episodes that had no bearing on anything. The entire last 20 episodes were all a mega arc, and that was in 89!
Mighty Max, had lots of ongoing connected episodes along with a lot of stand alones. Probably15 out of its 40 episodes were ongoing story related, and out of the other 25 a lot of those had continuing plotlines too. Standalone but returning villains and setpieces they kept getting back to.
Exo-Squad, whch Chuck has covered some, was insanely continuity heavy. And that was 93-94, so its the same peer group as the marvel shows and Gargoyles.