As we've seen, it can be hard for a mascot for a company that only wanted a mascot because all the cool kids have mascots, Mom, c'mooooon! The cycle of overexposure, shovelware, and neglect can be a cruel one. But let us not forget the others: the Mascots Of Companies That Already Have Mascots. Weep for these poor lost, fair reader, weep for them, and despair.

Or you could do a barrel roll. That works too.

See, Nintendo has been around for a long time, as video games go. They've got the problem opposite that of the new studio that wants mascot power and so puts the character's face on sub-par games. They've got characters coming out of games that could be mascots on their own, if it wasn't for that pesky Mario.

No not him.

I meant this guy.

Though the understandable confusion clearly means the problem is epidemic.

Fox McCloud was born because Nintendo had some new tech, and needed a game to put it in: Starfox, for the SNES, was one of the first games, on a console at least, to have objects built out of polygons rather than being two-dimensional sprites. Shigeru Miyamoto, who we've mentioned before, happened to go to a shrine of the Shinto god Inari, who takes the form of a fox, and which is famous for it's long walks covered with lots of arches. This, reportedly, gave him an idea for a game about a fox that flew through arches, and also inspired Fox's red scarf.

You can see the family resemblance.

The story is so simple as to be archetypal: a renowned warrior is killed by an evil overlord, and the warrior's son goes out to avenge his father. In this case the warlord is Andross, from the Greek word meaning 'human,' a power-mad monkey who believes himself the evolutionary superior of all the other spacefaring woodland creatures. So it's a bit like Gundam, if they'd reused the cast of Bambi.

The gameplay was impressive for it's time, the music was good, and the characters were memorable: Peppy Hare, the surrogate father figure, has become a long-running joke on the internet for his line 'Do a Barrel Roll,' and Wolf O'Donnel, Fox's rival, has his own memetic line.

All the more tragic is that Wolf is far sexier.

So what went wrong? Well, maybe you've heard of a game called Smash Brothers. Nintendo's got so many iconic characters, any one of which has enough mascot power to themselves be the face of the company, that they were able to make a game solely about all those characters hitting eachother with baseball bats and paper fans and exploding potatoes. A game that's had two sequels. With a triumphant choral theme. In Latin. That's a lot of star power for one poor spacefox to compete with.

You can barely even see him way at the back there.

And so Starfox has been passed from in-house studio to third part developer to third party developer. The results have been... mixed, at best. Still, Fox McCloud has his fans, to this day, and they're very enthusiastic. Perhaps a little too much. Seriously, don't do an image search, you will not be able to unsee what you see.

And back down under

As I mentioned in my Crash Bandicoot post, there seemed to be a similarity between Crash and Sonic in that they were animals that relatively few in the target audience had heard of before. Now Crash seems to have another similarity to today's mascot. The Outback.

Uh...that's what she said?

Around the time of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger's release, I remember seeing a number of magazine ads. Variations depicted Sonic, Crash, and even Spyro the Dragon, all in situations that implied they had just been beaten near to death by the new kid on the block.

Bitch knew not to fuck with Mario.

I've been thusfar unable to find evidence of these ads, but their message was clear- the new video game mascot Ty the Tasmanian Tiger was going to blow everything that existed out of the water. Awesome!

...Did...did someone punch him in the nose?

The concept, at least, was fairly sound. A definitively down under hero, a member of the extinct race of the Thylacine. The dreaded Boss Kass, determined to eradicate Ty's race, seeks out the 5 mystic talismans to destroy them and take over the world. But things go wrong, and the remainder of Ty's race become trapped in the Dreamtime in order to scatter the medallions and prevent Kass from obtaining them.


Years later, Ty has grown, and a...something, I forget what, tells him it is time for him to save his family and stop Kass once more, armed with weaponized boomerangs.


...Ok, even if you didn't notice, that is where the story starts to fall apart a bit. (BUNYIP, that's what it was!) For starters, we don't get even a bit of exposition as to what has become of Ty in these past years. We see him running around with another...thing, erm, animal and assume he's been living with them, but get no real indication as to such.


The other half of the problem is simply localization. The game was made by an actual Australian studio, who seemed utterly determined to make a penultimately Australian action hero, with slang, culture, environment, the whole shebang. But the fact is that not a lot of people outside of Australia know that a Thunder Egg is another term for a geode, which is integral to Australia's history and economy, leaving newer players expecting them to be actual eggs that make thunder or some such thing. It wouldn't have taken much clarification to make it clear that they are simply geodes, and not something bent on hatching into some eldritch stormcalling beast.

Where else would she have gotten that haircut?

This does also extend to the species of the various characters. Ty's two main support characters are a cockatoo and a koala, animals easy enough to recognize, but two others are a Dingo and a Tasmanian Devil, respectively, and neither with inherent clarity. (A third is a tree frog, but again, he's "Dennis the Tree Frog"). Ty's own species is in the damn title, the big bad's is his very name, could we get the least bit of clarification on the recurring support characters? The key to a good mascot, or just a good character, is memorability. If a kid doesn't even know WHAT a character is, chances are they'll forget other things soon enough.

Oh, wait, there was a third one, wasn't there...SEE?!

But even with the concept and the characters aside, there is really only one way I could describe the game...


...Aggressively mediocre.


There are no deal breakers in the game. There is nothing that makes me want to stop playing. The pacing is fast enough that the story progresses smoothly, but there are enough hidden collectibles to motivate me to explore each level. But there are so many things, particularly in the cinematics of the game, that are just distinctly phoned in. Moments of heightened tension are shown in slow motion, such as when Ty rescues the ambiguous villain henchman from death, but no one's expressions change, the music remains the same as the rest of the world. It's not bad. It's just...there.


Even in the end of the first game, there is no drama. Ty reclaims the medallions, he opens the Dreamtime, and his very own parents appear before his eyes... there is no fanfare. Just overworld music. There is no dialogue. Just an awkward polygonal half hug...and then he turns and, stonefaced, jumps toward the camera with his hands in the air, until it very slowly freezes...and then the credits roll.


And this game got two sequels.


Released within a year of each other.


With accompanying Game Boy Advance games.


There were even talks about an animated series for a while.


It didn't happen.

That was the point Mario decided to get involved.

The Tragedy of Trilogies

The mascots I've discussed thusfar have been meant to be mascots for gaming companies as well as their platforms- Nintendo and the NES/Beyond, Sega and the Genesis, Sony and the Playstation. I'm going to be breaking away from that a bit to discuss a different classification.

You see, Mario still remains a mascot for his original company and its platforms. Sonic remains a mascot for Sega/Sonic team, but not the platform. Crash is a mascot for neither. In this regard, Mario can be said to the most successful. The character I'm going into this time has started and remained on a lower tier-mascot for a particular developer.

And thusfar the only one with any discernible sex appeal.

Sucker Punch Productions has a short, but successful, resume. Their first endeavor, released exclusively on the PS2, was the story of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus.

The idea of the honorable thief is not a new one, but in terms of zoomorphic characters, a raccoon was not the prevalent species in the public's minds at the time.

But then, there are no raccoons in Britain. ...Or lions, for that matter, but whatever.

Sly Cooper's backstory has both depth and length, as it made clear as his first game begins. Born into a long line of honorable master thieves who make their living stealing from the worst criminals in the world. They compiled their knowledge into a how-to thievery book called the Thievius Racoonus. Unwieldy title aside, Sly's home gets broken into by a gang of criminals who unspecifically slaughter his father, and the book is stolen and split among the murderers. Gee, would have thought some more security would be in place...

Anyway, Sly makes a pair of friends in the orphanage who he manages to induct into his family business as lifelong friends and cohorts. In the games, Murray and Bentley establish themselves quickly as distinct and fairly likeable characters, if not as awesomely cool as the suave protagonist.

The combination of the above three expressions has dire implications.

We're also introduced to the woman playing Batman to his Catwoman...which is a simile that went to a bit of a weird place. But it does lay a clue for the reference that none of you will get.

Inspector Carmelita Fox.

Her middle name is Montoya.

While mostly serving through the first game as a miniboss and essential cleavage in distress, she and Sly do manage to have some believable and enjoyable interaction that helps to deepen Sly himself as the main character. They're quite obviously obsessed with one another, giving the story necessary tension beyond the focal plot.

It is necessary to explain how the first game ends in order to portray certain aspects of the second game. Sly defeats those who murdered his father, leaving them to be arrested in short order by Ms. Fox. One discrepancy through the gameplay is the cinematics inbetween levels, which depict Sly stealing things that are obviously not that of criminals, like that stars off the walk of fame. Kind of clashes with the established canon, but meh. He continues around the globe until he confronts the mastermind behind it all- the cyborganic horror known as Clockwerk.

No.

Clockwerk is actually an ancient rival of the Cooper Clan, jealous of their success and skill, to the point where he used technology to increase his lifespan indefinitely. He struck at Sly's family, leaving him homeless and without the Thievius Racoonus in an attempt to prove that he was the superior criminal without their precious book.

Of course, Sly hands his metallic ass to him and leaves him melting in a volcano. The first game ends on a cutesy note with Sly kissing Carmelita and leaving her handcuffed on that same volcano, but it still has a sense of completion. Sly recovered his birthright, avenged his father, and even got a little sum'sum out of the deal.

But the second game is where this story truly begins to shine. Some time later, Clockwerk's parts have been recovered from the volcano wreckage by Interpol, and Sly, Bentley and Murray all set out to steal them. This is Bentley's first time "in the field," and his constant dodgy, twitch attitude keeps a constant sense of nervousness for his character even outside his dialogue.

As it turns out, the Clockwerk parts have already been stolen, and the culprits are hinted at to Sly by Constable Neyla.

Boobs the second

Early on though, the first of far between flaws pops up- Carmelita's voice actress has changed. The new voice has no spanish accent, and the barest hints of emotion at the best of times.

All cops are from the US, right?

What makes this game so much different than the first game is mostly its approach to what is being accomplished- while the first game was classic linear platforming in different settings, this game takes a distinct "heist" approach. All three characters of the gang must be used to scout the area where one of the Clockwerk parts are stashed, performing various jobs to get ready for the great job at the end to pull off the theft, requiring switching between characters at a moment's notice to make sure everything goes off correctly. This style of gameplay has been referred to as "ADD gaming", where a series of minigames is involved more than one distinct gameplay model.

What's more, on just the second level, something unprecedented happens. When the heist is pulled off, the head honcho thief of the area isn't arrested! He gets away! He's still the boss of the third level! And this happens not once, but twice again! Sure, they could have made extra characters to fill in the gaps, but something about three bosses spanning two worlds each just makes the game seem all that much more long and intricate.

For that matter, this game pulls the "good cop turns out to be criminal" song and dance twice as well! The first time is predictable, and the second less so, but neither comes off as unnecessary and add to the overall feel of the game.

And when the final level comes into view, s#@!t has truly hit the fan. Not with an epic bang...but with a quiet, lingering whimper that builds until an even LARGER pile smacks against the blades with greater force and speed than before. And as the player tries not to panic and bring things to a happy ending like the first game...

...Bentley gets crippled for life.

An ersatz Clockwerk chomps down on his spine, and just like that, Murray is limping off with him while Sly turns himself in to buy their escape from Carmelita in the aftermath. But the game doesn't end there. On the helicopter to Sly's supposed incarceration, he and Carmelita get a soft sort of scene where they again establish their attraction for one another, only to be interrupted when it turns out that Bentley had rigged the helicopter before departing so that Sly could play patty cake with Carmelita before making a quick getaway.

Now, the game did have flaws, as mentioned, mostly involving the ADD gameplay style. A few of the missions were more than a bit contrived, and the ones that could have been simple were made the opposite with the worst of pseudo science babble. (Usually on Bentley's end.)

But the third game... oh, where to begin...

The third game is where this franchise begins to well and truly lose its shit.

It's subtle, most of the time. But after being able to pick them out, you feel like there's a tornado of insanity enveloping you and you're just sitting in the eye of it trying to play through the damn game.

If the second game took a Heist approach to the story, this one is distinctly Ocean's 11. Sly has to assemble a team of thieves to get past a mad scientist into his ancestral family vault. Their method of explaining why Sly didn't know of such a vault and why it wasn't mentioned is simple and believable enough, but just wait.

I was going to make some crack about how he should have taken care of Sly instead of letting him go to an orphanage, but...

First off, Carmelita's voice actress has changed AGAIN. She's got her accent back, only this time it's a bit hokey and slips from time to time into something resembling Manhattan. She seems to suddenly remember to inflect her vowels at random points, such as when she reveals her middle name at the end of the game. But that's minor, and somewhat expected after the second game.

Death has always been a just barely touched on thing in the Sly universe. Sly's dad is never said to have been killed/murdered or even have died most of the time. But right away in the prologue level, our big bad for the game murders one of his henchman with poison after discussing said henchman's wife and son. Said conversation is a device to convey the combination of a safe to the player, but nonetheless slightly horrifying.

The next major divergence is noticeable in the first level, after the prologue. The big boss of the area is not a thief, but a mob lord. We've seen this type before, really- the first game had criminals who sunk ships to loot them without regard for the crew, mobsters who take over entire cities, voodoo priestesses with undead hordes, and demolitionists that bury villages in snow and ice for not paying their protection. But back to our current foe-

YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS CAPTAIN PLANET

At one point he threatens to scoop Bentley's brains out and use them to fertilize his tomatoes. But that is not his greatest sin- oh now. His crime is that of HARMING THE ENVIRONMENT. His murder and extortions pale in comparison to his evil acts of dumping tar into the rivers of the city! Nevermind that he's doing so in order to make a show of power by sinking buildings after weakening their bases, he's KILLING FISH!

The second game had a bit of an environmentalist vibe in one of its villains- Jean Bison. A time displaced mountaineer determined to tame the wilds of Canada by cutting back the forest until there's nothing left. It was only really dwelt on as an aspect of his unhinged personality, rather than he essence of his villainy.

No.

This could have been let go, I think, if not for what followed in the very next level.

The greatest gripe I still have is that this level has no boss. Well, it does in a video game sense, but not in a story sense. The villains here are simply "Miners" who are tearing up the Australian outback looking for geodes. Nevermind that the geode trade in Australia for the longest time has been basically the only way for the country to truly generate wealth and get out of poverty, they're HARMING THE ENVIRONMENT!

And, what's more, apparently their punishment for this should be death at every turn. ._.

One ADD minigame mission involves finding a gigantic crocodile...and having Murray feed guards to it until it "gets a taste" for them. He is even encouraged to make sure he gets different 'kinds' of guards, consisting of dingoes and kangaroos.

...and that's when I saw it.

It was hard to see, since you don't pay much attention to minions in video games, usually.

But the kangaroos...the one's you're running around sucker punching to death and kicking off cliffs and feeding to crocodiles...

...are carrying BABIES.

THEY HAVE BABIES IN CARRIERS ON THEIR FRONTS.

IN THIS GAME

YOU

KILL

BABIES

Because remember, kids! If your parents do evil things, YOU'RE evil too and deserve death!

Gah, I can't dwell on this anymore or I'm going to burst a blood vessel somewhere.

The third game ends with a fair bit of closure, as it should, since Sucker Punch seems to have intended it to be the last in the series. Sly fakes amnesia to be with Carmelita, and the rest of the gang go on to successful, happy and fulfilling lives, with just the barest hint that there could be more after that.

FX: Bow Chicka Bow Wow

Sucker Punch is still alive and kicking, and doing quite well for themselves. They've made another game franchise that is being fairly well received and is ensuring the studio will keep its doors open. However, to one who has played Sly Cooper's games, their new Infamous title has a distinct...familiarity.

It's like Sly Cooper and Pikachu had a baby. And that baby was a complete douche.

Sure, it's definitely a new flavor, but the tropes are still there, with rooftop leapings and the like. But hey, if it works, it works.

Though I honestly can't decide if it's upsetting that their grim, gritty series has yet to go as far as killing babies while Sly Cooper cavalierly made it necessary to gameplay progress.

Still, whatever immaculate wallbangers the third in the series may have had, Sly Cooper retains a distinct quality, especially when considering the second game and disregarding the third.