Forgotten Video Game Mascots that Couldn’t Rival Sonic and Mario
Mascots are very important in the video game industry. Pac-Man’s likes helped Atari promote the game’s brand and make it into toys, magazines, cartoons, and other media. Many video game mascots don’t work, and over the years, the dust covers the merchandise and leaves no trace of the past.
We took a look at nine forgotten game mascots. While they aren’t the most overlooked (that is a term, don’t look up), their creators neglected them.
Roland
Roland is one of the earliest examples of a mascot used in multiple genres to help create a franchise and increase sales of AlaSugar’s Amstrad computers. Roland was featured in eight different games for two years in various game genres during the mid-1980Roland’sd’s lack of consistent character design may have been one reason he was forgotten over the years. Roland in the Caves is a flea who can leap incredible distances through the cave systeHe’se’s an Indiana Jones-style adventurer in Roland on the Ropes. Roland goes Square Bashing, howevehe’se’s a box with arms, legs, and legs.
Didn’t help that very few of the Roland games were original. Roland in the Caves was renamed Bugaboo and Fred; respectivelroland’sd’s other games were simply clones of popular titles like Space Panic (Roland goes Digging), Frogger, and Jet Set Willy. Modern gaming has loRoland’sd’s early attempts at being a mascot on a home-computer games system.
Opa-Opa
Sega tried to find a mascot for their brand from the mid-1980s. They had tried before creating Sonic the Hedgehog. Before they started, Alex Kidd was a character that could have made this list if he hadn’t had a remake of his most famous game, Alex Kidd: Miracle World. Sega did not make Alex Kidd their first attempt. Instead, Sega looked to the Fantasy Zone video game series and Opa-Opa’s protagonist.
Opa-Opa was a sentient flying spaceship that appeared in 2D side-scrolling shooters that were very popular in the late 1980s. There were three major releases to the series, including Fantasy Zone and Fantasy Zone 2 on the Sega Master System and Super Fantasy Zone appearing on the Sega Mega Drive. Additionally, there were some spin-offs.
Sega has never considered bringing back the Fantasy Zone IP, except for the occasional virtual console release. Opa-Opa has made a brief appearance in Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing and Phantasy Star Online. The character is very similar to Twinbee from the Konami series.
