Worst Videogame Mascot Ever?

Zeta · Post by **Zeta** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 1:04 pm

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I just can't make up my mind!

Let's look at some of the candidates:

Crash Bandicoot
Why? Well, he's not so much a character in himself as he is an amalgamation of a bunch of different things the developers thought were popular. For the most part, he resembles the Tasmanian Devil. His spinning attack reflects this even further, as does his body shape and austrailian heritage. However, they apparently tried to go with a very Sonic-ish direction with this character, considering the supporting cast of the Crash games is almost indenticle to Sonic's. But the game itself plays like a 3-rd rate Mario. I can't make up my mind. He copies styles from so many places, and can't really do anything as well as the original.

Blinx
It's a goddamn time-traveling cat in goggles.

Bubsy
Bubsy was actually a kind of interesting character. Not so much for his games, but for his personality. He was a loser. Everyone knew it. Everyone treated him that way. That WAS his character. He got smashed, drowned, kicked, punched, slapped, spayed, ran-over, and electricuted. And that's why I loved him. He needs another game. Just take out the gameplay aspects and replace it with hours and hours of being able to torture Bubsy.

Aero the Acro*Bat
While the idea of a bat as a main character has lots of appeal, they just didn't do it right. A bat in a fucking circus makes NO SENSE. I've never been to a goddamn circus with a "Bat Performance". Also, his abilities royally sucked. He could hover in the air for like three seconds, and shoot a limited amount of stars. The only good thing he could do was a mid-air dash/screw attack. But using the attack itself was so cumbersome and useless, it made it worthless. Looking back at the game's theme and character design, it truly seems like Aero was the bastard spawn of NiGHTs and Sonic. Which is possible, ya know, because NiGHTs can turn into a girl.

Sparkster
Horrible name. But he's a fucking possum in a suit of armor with the sword and a jetpack strapped to his ass. That fucking ROCKS. And the way the jet packed worked made the Rocket Knight games a blast. And like possums, our protagonist could actually use his tail to HANG onto things! Sparkster, where did you go? We miss you.

Rocky Rodent
While using one's wildhairdo to attack villains is certainly and intersting concept - Rocky is ugly as fuck. And his actual execution of moves sucked too.

Sabreman
It's an old man in a pithelment. What the hell?

Croc
Actually, not that bad. Even if the character himself was a little boring. The franchise overall played and felt like a 3-D crash with better designed levels.

Gex
He was actually quite funny at times, and his levels were certainly interesting to look at. But someone always just felt . . . WRONG about this franchise. I can't quite put my finger on it. It just felt like a gimmic better suited for a shitty show than a mediocre videogame. Also, playing as a lizard got boring pretty fast.

That seal dude from High Seas Havoc.
If you're going to rip off a Sonic Game, don't do it with a fucking pirate seal. That's all I'm saying.

Rayman
The idea of playing as a living molecule is awesome. And most of the Rayman games have been fairly polished and beautiful. But They're not really using this idea to the fullest extent. It would be cool if you could launch out your hands, grip the enemy, and pummel him into tears - all from long distance.

Glover
It's a damn glove that plays with balls. There's nothing more to say.

Sprocket
Awesome game. Somewhat intersting character, with a pretty cool design, and a pretty cool set of moves. Robot on Wheels was, in my opinion, one of the best platformers on the N64. And considering that 90% of the games for the N64, that might be saying something if they weren't mostly shit. But Sprocket's beautiful and lovingly crafted worlds full of tons of interesting vehicles and objectives made it feel far beyond the capabilities of an average 64-bit game. The setting of the game in a futuristic themepark added lots of character and fun to the game. Spy Cooper's OK, but I would love for Sucker Punch to revisit their first son. Fat chance of that, though.

Billy Hatcher
It's a little boy in a chicken suit.

That's all for now, I can problably think of more in a little while, but I'd like to hear your opinions/experiences with platforming characters besides Sonic.

chriscaffee · Post by **chriscaffee** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 1:14 pm

A lot of those aren't so much mascots as they are just platformers. But I would have to anti-vote Blinx, because, even though his game wasn't stellar (wasn't shit either) the character design itself is pretty cool.

The Doc · Post by **The Doc** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 1:16 pm

Sparkster
Horrible name. But he's a fucking possum in a suit of armor with the sword and a jetpack strapped to his ass. That fucking ROCKS. And the way the jet packed worked made the Rocket Knight games a blast. And like possums, our protagonist could actually use his tail to HANG onto things! Sparkster, where did you go? We miss you.

Zeta is my new hero.

Post by **Segaholic2** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 1:36 pm

Sparkster and Rayman were cool.

Neo Yi · Post by **Neo Yi** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 1:52 pm

Crash Bandicoot
Why? Well, he's not so much a character in himself as he is an amalgamation of a bunch of different things the developers thought were popular. For the most part, he resembles the Tasmanian Devil. His spinning attack reflects this even further, as does his body shape and austrailian heritage. However, they apparently tried to go with a very Sonic-ish direction with this character, considering the supporting cast of the Crash games is almost indenticle to Sonic's. But the game itself plays like a 3-rd rate Mario. I can't make up my mind. He copies styles from so many places, and can't really do anything as well as the original.

I disagree, considering back then and even nowadays, anything that involves random furry mascot was copying either Sonic or Mario (among others) It just depends on who was the more successful or not.
And the ONLY time I even see characters similiar to Sonic is Crash=Sonic and Cortex=Eggman. I seriously don't see any other characters that match the other Sonic character. Coco certainly doesn't fit the Amy Rose bill, neither does Crash's girlfriend who only appeared in one game. Crunch could have been a Knuckles, but he ended up being friends then rivals. Sonic doesn't exactly have a whole platoon of mini-bossses that occur storywise like Crash does, among others.

WORST mascot is Ty, the Crash rip-off. His game sucked, his character design was poor, he was given an attitude, but it didn't work for me, and I don't even think it sold well, yet the people behind it are planning on making a cartoon out of this. What the fudge?
~Neo

Grant · Post by **Grant** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 6:59 pm

Zeta wrote:Bubsy
Bubsy was actually a kind of interesting character. Not so much for his games, but for his personality. He was a loser. Everyone knew it. Everyone treated him that way. That WAS his character. He got smashed, drowned, kicked, punched, slapped, spayed, ran-over, and electricuted. And that's why I loved him. He needs another game. Just take out the gameplay aspects and replace it with hours and hours of being able to torture Bubsy.

I completely agree, I loved Bubsy when I was younger. Even then, I knew the games weren't good (we're excluding that Bubsy 3D train wreck), but the character had appeal for the same reasons you mention. The game and the character had a charming sense of self deprecating humor.

You need to throw in Earthworm Jim with that list, too. Like Bubsy, the sense of humor made the charcter for me (of course, the EWJ games were much more enjoyable [again, excluding that Earthworm Jim 3D blasphemy], but that's not the point). The Saturday morning Earthworm Jim cartoon was actually really good, too.

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 7:03 pm

I loved Rayman.
Plus, in theory, those hands are infinitely extendable... *Ponders the possibilities*

Post by **Segaholic2** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 7:06 pm

Earthworm Jim is awesome. He was created by Doug TenNapel, who does comics and other weird projects. You should all check out <A HREF="http://www.sockbaby.com/">SockBaby</A>, because it is hilarious.

Zeta · Post by **Zeta** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 8:25 pm

Doug actually appeared in the Earthworm Jim cartoon as God. He had to restart the universe after Hyper Psycrow and UltraMellow Earthworm Jim tore the universe apart. See, Psycrow chugged tons of coffe to give him super-speed. To counter this, Jim inhaled tons of "incense" to give him super-slowness. When the two colided, everyone and everything in the universe was destroyed. But Doug was able to restore everything to normal.

The only side-affect was that the play "Death of a Salesman" was slightly altered for reasons TenNaple did not comprehend.

Post by **Esrever** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 3:28 am

I loved that TV show. I guess there aren't any plans to collect it on DVD...

WhoopA · Post by **WhoopA** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 10:30 am

Earthworm! Earthworm! Earthworm! Earthworm Jim!
Ho0-ray-for-HIM!

Groovy.

But what the hell is Sparkster doing on a list of WORST videogame mascots?!

Kishi · Post by **Kishi** » Tue Oct 12, 2004 8:06 am

I, too, really liked Blinx's character design. Too bad every other aspect of the game was a failure, apparently.

And yeah, Ty is the very worst, and Jim is the very best.

Nova · Post by **Nova** » Tue Oct 12, 2004 7:42 pm

WellÃ¢â‚¬Â¦lets seeÃ¢â‚¬Â¦Croc? I kinda hate him and his games.

Protodude · Post by **Protodude** » Tue Oct 12, 2004 7:58 pm

Tak and Ty are pretty bad, god knows why they're making sequels to both games. Just out of curiosity, how many Rocket Knight games were there?

Post by **Segaholic2** » Tue Oct 12, 2004 8:00 pm

Post by **Crazy Penguin** » Tue Oct 12, 2004 8:11 pm

I thought there were two on Mega Drive and one on Super Nintendo?

Zeta · Post by **Zeta** » Tue Oct 12, 2004 9:20 pm

Are. There were three. 2 on Genesis, and one on the SNES. And the SNES game wasn't a port. It was an original game. Pretty sweet.

Post by **Segaholic2** » Tue Oct 12, 2004 9:31 pm

I thought it was a port. O_o

Dark Dolphin · Post by **Dark Dolphin** » Tue Oct 12, 2004 10:07 pm

It wasn't a port, but it was called Sparkster just like the Genesis one. I guess they were too busy to think of a new name. It would've taken up too much of the budget, also.

aso · Post by **aso** » Wed Oct 13, 2004 10:21 am

Jazz Jackrabbit.

Also, agreeal to everything said above concerning EWJ and Sparkster. Konami needs to release a classics collection and toss in RKA/Sparkster.

Zeta · Post by **Zeta** » Wed Oct 13, 2004 2:39 pm

Jazz Jackrabbit sucked. And it seemed like a such a good idea - "Sonic, but with a fucking huge gun".

Unfortunately, it's silly for a character to run many times faster than his own bullets. Thus, JJ was pretty stupid and poorly executed.

Post by **Segaholic2** » Wed Oct 13, 2004 3:13 pm

Jazz Jackrabbit wasn't that bad compared to the sequel.

Protodude · Post by **Protodude** » Wed Oct 13, 2004 3:22 pm

I got the impression he was talking about the series in general. Probably wrong though

Nova · Post by **Nova** » Wed Oct 13, 2004 6:41 pm

Jazz Jackrabbit 1 rocked, 2 sucked.

Jazz Jackrabbit 1 was made in 1993. Too bay you cant play it in modern computers, I got my old one back just to play the game.

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