Nintendo missed a Golden Opportunity by Abandoning This

The Pokemon cartoon was instrumental in the success of Pokemon in the late '90s.
If Nintendo had allowed this project to be fully supported by them, it would've helped flesh out the Mario universe at a very early stage and opened the door for a whole slew of Nintendo animated projects.

The animation which ultimately we were left with via the Super Mario Super Show wasn't nearly as high quality as this, it's extremely unfortunate, because now there are no good animation studios left, so the time to create high-quality cartoons is long passed. Nintendo missed its chance to have some real classics.