CREATING CHARACTER
THE EIGHTIES SAW AN EXPLOSION IN RECOGNISABLE VIDEOGAME CHARACTERS, INSPIRED BY THE CARTOON CHARACTERS BELOVED BY KIDS WORLDWIDE. WE LOOK BACK AT THE WHY GAMING HEROES BECAME SO IMPORTANT
Then you look at the growth of gaming during the Eighties, so much of it is driven by the popular characters of the era. While abstract games were still capable of becoming huge hits – just look at Tetris – companies that found their star character could rake in tens of thousands of sales, maybe even millions. If that happened, the chances were they would prosper for a long time to come. When Hollywood eventually came knocking in the Nineties, the first projects to make it to the screen featured characters conceived in the Eighties – Mario, Billy and Jimmy Lee of Double Dragon, and Street Fighter’s Ryu.
But why were characters so important, and what was it about the Eighties that allowed them to prosper? “People connect better with personalities than machines or abstract objects. Even though the graphics were basic back in the Eighties, we all had imaginations that filled in the details,” says Philip Oliver, co-creator of the Dizzy games. Until the very end of the Seventies, graphics technology didn’t really offer sufficient levels of detail and animation to convey character. “It was hard to relate, or get excited about the cannon in Space Invaders, or a low resolution, top-down car or tank,” Philip continues. “Then
Pac-man, Jump Man
(later called Mario), Smurfs
(one of the first character games we saw on an Atari 2600 – which amazed us) came along and even though the game itself didn’t show the character in much detail, the box art, and sometimes the loading screen helped fill in the gaps.”
Of course, creating a memorable character is far from a simple task. “For a character to become memorable it needs to be unique and a bit quirky! Dizzy achieved this by being a large happy face on legs… which everyone decided was an egg,” says Philip. “His energetic movement and facial animations (tough to do on characters in low resolution games) gave him a fun personality that captured player imaginations – eggsactly as we hoped for!” Once the character is set, the game designed around them comes with its own considerations. “You think about the game as a world, a place in which your character needs to live and move around. So many decisions now revolve around this, his appearance dictates the art style, the gameplay mechanics revolve around what he looks like he’s capable of doing,” Philip explains. “The story and missions need to put him, or her, central to the events.”
With gaming seen as a hobby for young people at the time, many of the characters back then resembled cartoon characters in their design. “Pac-man was the first videogame character as far as we’re concerned, but other popular characters for us included Frogger, Q*bert, Mr Do (a clown), Chucky Egg, Manic Miner, Frak! and Thing On A Spring.” On the consoles, a different set of stars was emerging from the Japanese scene – Mega Man, Link, Samus Aran, Alex Kidd, Bonk and arguably the most popular gaming character, Mario. “We knew him as Jump Man from Donkey Kong (or
Killer Gorilla on BBC) as we didn’t see Super Mario Bros until late 1989 when we went to America,” says Philip, providing a reminder of how gaming scenes were so much more regionally distinct at the time.
Of course, as we grew up our tastes shifted and big hits today tend to star realistic human characters. “Many games these days are trying to appeal to 15-plus year olds who generally prefer more mature characters and realistic environments,” says Philip, explaining the decline of the Eighties-style cartoon hero.
“But new characters are still being introduced, targeted at kids, take for example the Angry Birds which even lead to two movies. Then there’s Steve and Alex from Minecraft, although since their names are less unique they are less memorable. More recently you have Goose, from the Untitled Goose Game – they really needed to work on their marketing names!”