Quote:
Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag
Mario was originally called simply "jump man" but design and marketing departments soon realised that most people don't play video games as a purely intellectual exercise, that games are actually a medium for telling a story, and that emotional investment is important.
Mr Nutz was a bit too close to Sonic for my liking, that's the exact sort of image I wanted to move away from. That "attitude problem" that was so trendy, the way they'd give you accusing looks if you let them alone, as if to say "come on, I haven't got all day". I can see their appeal to their target audience, I suppose. Mr Beanbag has developed some personality of his own, but he's very much the antithesis of these impatient go-getter types. I have decided in fact that his one aim in life is to become a Rabbi. But he can't, because he's a beanbag and beanbags aren't allowed to study Torah.
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It's kinda funny when you compare the motives of such big mascots like Mario, Sonic, Zool, Superfrog, Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit, etc. to each other:
Mario: A mascot designed to give a company and their games an identity that the audience can enjoy and recognize. Donkey Kong on the arcade didn't have much of a story to tell, but Super Mario Bros on the NES did. Especially when you clear one of the small castles in each world only to find out that, "The princess is being held in another castle!" A nice little plot twist to keep the game going, I assume?
Sonic: A mascot designed to make a company stand out by trying to be the exact opposite of Mario, whilst still being a good guy. An anthropomorphic hedgehog who happens to look cute whilst still being tough at the same time. Speed is his game, and he does not enjoy standing around and waiting for you to do something. His idle animations easily prove that to you. Instead of princesses, he's saving cute little animals from being turned into robotic monsters, and stopping an overweight, mad scientist shaped like an egg from trying to rule the world.
Zool: A mascot designed to make an entire platform stand out (Amiga) in order to show console gamers that even computer gamers can have side-scrolling platformers with big recognizable names. The only problem was that Commodore didn't own the rights to Zool, so he ended up being ported to the Amiga's biggest competitors at the time (SNES, Mega Drive, and MS-DOS), thereby destroying any kind of exclusivity or supposed success that the Amiga would have.
And what about Zool? An anthropomorphic ant from another dimension who wants to obtain the rank of a ninja, so he travels to what is supposed to be Earth, and must go through six worlds of random crap to accomplish his goal. And all of this is coming from the game's manual and box covers.
Superfrog: The same motive as Zool by making a big-name platformer to stand out for a certain gaming system (Amiga), but much more colorful and cheery despite the same "damsel-in-distress" theme from Mario. The only difference being that you're playing an anthro-frog who was originally human, until an evil witch casted a spell on him.
Commander Keen: Similar motive to Mario, but designed to stand out for PC's equipped with EGA graphics and no sound-card support. A smart little boy tries to foil the plans of an alien race from trying to take over Earth. So he makes a spaceship and travels to the alien worlds to prevent the bad guys from succeeding, whilst using nothing more than a pogo stick and a ray gun to get the job done. No annoying princesses this time around.
Jazz Jackrabbit: Same motive as Mario and Superfrog, but focuses on speed just like Sonic. An anthro-jackrabbit travels to a planet to save his fair maiden, whilst stopping an evil turtle from taking over the universe, or some crap like that.
....I can't believe I wrote all of that.
