The return of mascot games

[The Laird]

So lately we've seen a big revival of mascot games with the return of characters such as Bubsy The Bobcat, The Great Giana Sisters, a good Sonic game, Crash Bandicoot and also new games such as Lucky's Tail, Cuphead and Shovel Knight.

With that in mind, what the characters you would like to see make a comeback or the ones that you are surprised haven't been exploited yet?

Personally I am really surprised that we haven't seen a platform game featuring Q*Bert, especially after he featured in both Wreck It Ralph and Pixels so prominently.

[LAIS]

Obviously there are rumours of a new Spyro otherwise I’d say that.

I’m not sure who owns the rights to Earthworm Jim but I’m surprised that’s not had some sort of revival. Its cartoonish brand of humour seems perfectly suited to the cell shaded style modern machines are capable of.

[paranoid marvin]

To my mind 'mascot' games are one-platform ponies, when the leading console manufacturers produced their own games solely for their own machines, or paid other companies to make their games exclusives to just their system. As soon as Sonic being released on other platforms he ceased to be a mascot. So other than Nintendo characters, I don't see any genuine mascots.

[The Laird]

Obviously there are rumours of a new Spyro otherwise I’d say that.

I’m not sure who owns the rights to Earthworm Jim but I’m surprised that’s not had some sort of revival. Its cartoonish brand of humour seems perfectly suited to the cell shaded style modern machines are capable of.

Yep, it's a big surprise nobody has resurrected Earthworm Jim yet but Interplay just sold all their I.P. so you never know now!

[paranoid marvin]

Would the Earthworm IP still sell today? Last oroginal EWJ game was over 15 years ago. I could imagine a game being made, but only through Kickstartér or similar.

[The Laird]

Would the Earthworm IP still sell today? Last oroginal EWJ game was over 15 years ago. I could imagine a game being made, but only through Kickstartér or similar.

Well somebody bought all the Interplay I.P. for about $10m I believe

[shiftytigger]

I'd like to see something done with Toejam and Earl - though preferably not the ones that appeared on the Xbox in that cringeworthy terribly stereotype filled reasonably ok game.

[killbot]

As an Amiga owner back in the day I'd like to see a new Zool game. A proper 2D one, not a 3D one like the one that was almost made once before (before the devs hastily reworked it into the wretched Ninjabread Man).

Okay, the games weren't actually as good as all that (the level design of the first game in particular just didn't work with the speed of the character, making for very stop-start play) but I played them both for hours and would like a third game that fixed some of the original's flaws. I don't actually know who owns the character now, since Gremlin went tits up.

[killbot]

To my mind 'mascot' games are one-platform ponies, when the leading console manufacturers produced their own games solely for their own machines, or paid other companies to make their games exclusives to just their system. As soon as Sonic being released on other platforms he ceased to be a mascot. So other than Nintendo characters, I don't see any genuine mascots.

I see 'mascots' as being characters that are associated a particular company rather than specific hardware. So Pac-Man is Namco's mascot though he's appeared on just about every console and computer since the 2600. If you go with the definition of being specifically tied to a particular hardware manufacturer then the only currently successful ones I can think of are Mario (for Nintendo) and Master Chief (for MS). Sony has a few exclusive characters like Sackboy and Kratos but nothing that comes close to those two. Most mascot characters (Sonic, Crash, Zool) eventually expand beyond the systems they're originally associated with. In fact Zool was touted as being a mascot character for Commodore but his game was converted to the MD, SNES, MS and GB within a year of release and the sequel was released on DOS computers and the Jag in fairly short order too.

[Crusty Starfish]

Yeah... Bring that Superfrog back.

And Miner Willy.

And Cool Coyote.

And James Pond.

And Monty Mole.

And Thing from Thing on a spring.

And... yeah, loads more.

[The Laird]

They did a James Pond Kickstarter a few years back and it failed miserably.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ga ... back/posts

[Crusty Starfish]

Yeah, shame that didn't come off.

Still need Miner Willy or Monty Mole back though

[The Laird]

Yeah, shame that didn't come off.

Still need Miner Willy or Monty Mole back though

I'm quite surprised neither of these has been attempted. There have been lots of homebrew games but no official ones.

[thebear]

Bring Back Horace!

[Sel Feena]

I really liked Blinx on XBox, shame he never caught on