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Curated playlist

Video game mascots

  • Solid SnakeHideo Kojima once planned for Solid Snake to die in Metal Gear Solid. Disappointed staff led him to change it.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (character)Sonic the Hedgehog, the blue hero of Sega's video games, was tested on strangers in New York City's Central Park before most of the world had heard of him. The designer Naoto Ohshima carried several of Sega's internal character sketches on…
  • MoogleThe Moogle, a Final Fantasy mascot, began as a schoolchild's doodle. Koichi Ishii drew it in elementary school.
  • Ryu (Street Fighter)A 2019 study found Street Fighter's Ryu would need to move nearly 70 miles per hour to land his spinning kick.
  • Pyramid HeadPyramid Head, the Silent Hill 2 monster, exists to punish one man: James Sunderland. He grows from James's guilt.
  • Lara CroftIn 2009, the English city of Derby let its residents vote on a name for a new ring road, and the winner was Lara Croft Way. More than 27,000 votes were cast, and the name took 89 percent of them. The road opened in July 2010. Lara Croft is…
  • Ken MastersDaigo Umehara's Street Fighter Ken blocked and countered fourteen straight hits with 26 seconds left.
  • Mega Man (character)Mega Man was almost not called Mega Man. A Capcom USA executive called the Japanese name Rockman "horrible".
  • Kratos (God of War)Kratos, the scarred, ash-white Spartan at the center of Santa Monica Studio's God of War series, began as a set of rough drawings on restaurant napkins. Charlie Wen had forgotten his sketchbook, so he drew on whatever the table offered.…
  • ChocoboThe Final Fantasy Chocobo was first drawn in ten minutes during a lunch break.
  • CammyCammy, the blonde British commando from Capcom's Street Fighter series, once won a fan vote by a margin that startled the company. In 2008, Capcom asked which character fans most wanted in Street Fighter IV. Cammy collected almost as many…
  • Chun-LiChun-Li's backflip attack was cut because testers loved it too much. Capcom ran out of time to rebalance it.
  • MarioShigeru Miyamoto once reflected on a name he had considered for Mario and concluded that the character likely would have "disappeared off the face of the Earth." Mario is the mustached Italian plumber who stars in the Mario franchise and…
  • Hatsune MikuHatsune Miku is a sixteen-year-old with long turquoise twintails, and she is also a piece of singing software. Crypton Future Media sells her as the mascot of a voicebank. A musician types in lyrics and a melody, and hears her voice sing…
  • CactuarFinal Fantasy's Cactuar began as a doodle in a high school notebook. Tetsuya Nomura sketched it as a teenager.

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