In today's game world, hardware manufacturers in the promotion of their consoles in addition to the main rich game lineup, is to follow the current trend of the style. However, the former console market is not so, due to the low age of the user object, it is more appealing than the various trends of the audience for young people, or a cute and popular mascot character. And in fact, mascots like Mario or Sonic are still very well known today. But in the long history of the game, how can the console mascot have only these two?
Mario – the strongest mascot
The first high-speed growth of the home console market was in the late 1970s in the Atari 2600s, when many works could easily sell hundreds of thousands of sets, and the popularity of the console was extremely high. However, in terms of publicity methods, Atari is very hardcore, mostly focusing on the software lineup and function, but not much ink on the image of the host. So, 2600 is really a young man's hipster? Or is it a child's toy? Therefore, the host is quite ambiguous at the market level of targeting.
In contrast, the 1983 Red and White Machine was much clearer in this regard, under the royalty system, Nintendo could control the general direction of the game market, and successfully established a target group for a lower age group (or rather, a suitable for all ages). Here, if you can have a mascot with a simple design that symbolizes the image of the host, it can greatly deepen the children's impression of the host and have a great effect on publicity.
Although everyone knows that the representative mascot of the red and white machine is the well-known Mario, unlike the clown in a fast food restaurant, Mario itself was not specially designed for the red and white machine. Mario appeared in the arcade era before the birth of red and white machine works such as "Donkey Kong", but because "Super Mario Bros." in 1985 caused a global boom, the console manufacturer Nintendo in addition to making a variety of "Mario" series of games, but also naturally sought him to promote for its own console. Even the later Super Ren and N64 were the same.
Today, although Mario has taken a back seat in the promotion of the current console Switch, Mario's influence is no longer limited to the host, but Nintendo as a whole. "Mario = Nintendo" has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and I believe that the pinnacle of the game's mascot is nothing more than this.
Uncle Sanlian - Sega
When it comes to Mario, it's natural for many players to think of his former competitor, Sega Sonic. In fact, Sonic itself is an MD work developed by Sega to compete with Super Mario Bros. The game later became popular in major markets, especially in Europe, with Sonic upgrading from a game character to a console spokesperson, and the development team that produced the game was renamed Sonic Team. Sonic is still one of Sega's most successful mascots, and the sight of him is reminiscent of Sega, a development that seems to be a replica of Mario. However, there is a special point here, that is, every host after Sega will change its mascot, and the image is far from the "mascot" that everyone traditionally knows.
For example, the SS after MD, you may think that if the mascot representing the SS is not Sonic, it should be the dream elf Nights in "Nights", right? Unfortunately, the mascot of the early SS is actually a medieval elf uncle with a rugby head, but maybe because the shape is too scary, right? Uncle Elf soon disappeared. Speaking of which, the NPC dream dwellers in "Nights" seem to have some resemblance to this uncle.
Later, the mascot replaced by SS was Played by the original Kamen Rider protagonist Hiroshi Fujioka, and The Shape Ofshiro (せがた三四郎), a hot-blooded uncle who wears a judo robe and loves Sega games. In the middle and late SS, As the advertising spokesperson for the console and the first-party SS game, Mishiro Seto played its bloody characteristics to the fullest, such as "House of death" is obviously a first-person zombie shooter, but in the advertisement, only Sanshiro is seen to cast a pitch to the zombies that are constantly attacking, making people powerless to complain. Seto-shaped Mishiro runs counter to the traditional mascot, but his nonsensical image is very successful, players and non-players are attracted by The special charm of Mishiro, and finally Sega took the opportunity to launch a small game collection with Mishiro as the protagonist, "せがた三四郎真剣遊戯", which is hilarious but surprisingly difficult.
From SS to DC, although the legend of Sanshiro is over, Sega has also prepared another mascot uncle for everyone, Yukawa Special, who is a bad luck but dedicated management staff who is dedicated to the performance of DC running. Interestingly, this agent was not an overhead figure, but Eiichi Yukawa, the Sega specialty who was actually in charge of the home console business at that time. In an advertisement before the release of DC, the agent saw that a group of children only played PS and snubbed SS, but still did not give up their efforts to promote Sega's successor host DC, and finally used sincere promotion methods to make DC gradually accepted by players. The series of advertisements is very masochistic but also very touching the hearts of the migrant workers, and the initial explosion of DC can not lack the credit of the special campaign.
Unfortunately, DC's production capacity cannot keep up with the huge market demand, so that it misses the most important market expansion period. After this, Yukawa was demoted to executive, and in later commercials and during his cameo in the DC game, he was called Yukawa's "former" director, which made people cry a little.
Other unpopular characters
In addition to Nintendo and Sega, there are actually many console manufacturers that create mascots for the console. While not all characters are as well known as Mario or Sonic, I believe many are still the collective memories of veteran players. For example, NeoGeo's "G-Mantle" (ゲーマント) is a strange thief wearing a black cloak and a mask, using "Take away the powerful game" as the slogan for the console and the game. The appearance is slightly scary, but the age group of NeoGeo's audience is not very low anyway, so it is not a big problem. But G-Mantle is mediocre, not to mention marscots of Mario and Sonic, and even SNK's own Kusanagi Kyoto is more famous than him. But SNK's developers love him, and he's always seen in the background of NeoGeo's work, large and small. The most emblematic one is that G-Mantle in "King of Fighters 2000" can appear in the game as a helper character, but unfortunately the player cannot directly control him.
However, sometimes whether a game with a mascot as the protagonist can be launched may not necessarily be linked to the popularity of the mascot itself, and PC-FX's Rolee is the best example. From the mascot's point of view, Rolfee is more distinctive than G-Mantle, as her image is very close to that of a typical anime girl. Since PC-E has many works such as "Dream Warrior" in the middle and late stages that use anime-style beautiful girls as a selling point, the successor PC-FX also decided to take the anime-style game route, so it is not unreasonable to design a Relationship to attract players. Rolfee's sister's job is not only to promote PC-FX, she also played a navigation role in the PC-FX magazine "Anime Freak FX", and in 1997, she also launched a solo game "Princess Next Door Rolfee!", as well as various boutique peripherals. However, due to the decline of PC-FX, Rolfee's popularity has also been sluggish, and eventually declined with the console.
The machine is in the person, the machine is dead, the host and the mascot, probably this is the relationship.