- Sonic 1
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsxBa6-tTMc (Japanese Sonic vs. American Sonic)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP9L-nfPU5I (Sonic the Hedgehog: Birth of an Icon)
- Yooka-Laylee
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw5pEZz19cc (Beta64 - Yooka-Laylee)
- The Art of Yooka-Laylee
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKUwOWtqxww (Beta64 Interview - Playtonic Games)
- Wreck-it Ralph
- Mickey Mouse cartoons
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NdKQNpeIAo (Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Living Colour Volume 2)
- https://soundcloud.com/thecreatorspodcast/creators-2-josh-mancell-crash-bandicoot-music (Interview with Crash Bandicoot composer)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqjkAXCgx7M (E3 Coliseum: Crash Bandicoot Reunion
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds22dv3KrPY (Making of Banjo-Kazooie)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt7tIDulslI (Beta64 Interview - Jonas Kaerlev (Creator of A Hat In Time))
- http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=sonic+the+hedgehog+2
- http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=yooka-laylee
--
My contextual essay will look at Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and Yooka-Laylee, a mascot platformer from the prime time of the genre and a modern take on the same genre. Below are quotes and notes that I've found discussing mascots, particularly in gaming, from people within their relevant industries. In bold are the sources I'm going to focus on in my essay.
--
Sonic the Hedgehog: Birth of an Icon
- (6:38) Naoto Ohshima (Sonic concept artist): "When I showed the design of Sonic to everyone, they thought that he was a child and was a cute character, but in my mind Sonic is actually a little older and mature."
- (16:57) Madeline Schroeder (Former product manager of SEGA America): "Sonic was appealing for a number of different reasons... a gorgeous set of colours... But secondly he really communicated the power of the game, just by looking at him. When you see those red tennis shoes you just assume he can run fast, and he did. And his spin attack made it appear as though nothing could defeat Sonic the Hedgehog. And then the attitude at the end was just kind of the perfect topping."
- (18:08) Tom Kalinske (Former CEO of SEGA America): "He had an edge to him, he wasn't your laid back, soft, nice guy. He had a little bit of edginess to him, a little bit of smartass-ness to him, if you will. And I think that made him very appealing to kids and teens."
- (18:33) Takeshi Iizuka (Current head of Sonic Team): "My first impression was that it was cool. Even though it was a tiny blue character, once I saw how it could move, I thought it was amazing and even more surprised to hear it was a home video game."
- (21:00) Peter Moore (Former COO of SEGA America): "What Tom Kalinske did in 1991 with the Genesis, and by putting Sonic in there, a AAA piece of software, kind of broke the mould if you will."
- (23:10) Madeline Schroeder: "'Sonic 2's Day' was an industry first and we're proud of it. It was one of the first worldwide launches, if not the first worldwide launch."
- (25:45) "It is a cartoon mascot, this is definitely geared towards kids."
- (26:40) "[The music in Super Mario 64] is kinda like the bubbly round thing that kinda goes with the character design. Crash stuff is kind of angular... it has this kinda like, sharp look to it. And when I listen to the Crash music I'm like, 'Oh yeah, this busy body percussion stuff has this kinda like pointillist vibe about it which kinda goes with the pointy nose'."
Beta64 - Yooka-Laylee
- (17:59) "In past games that Steve [Mayles] (Yooka-Laylee concept artist) worked on, his heroes didn't look like heroes. They were underdogs and he wanted to capture the same thing in Yooka-Laylee."
Beta64 Interview - Playtonic Games
- (14:13) Mark Stevenson (head artist of DK64): "I think, like all game genres, [platformers] go through cycles: they're successful, everybody starts making them, and the kind of market gets saturated as well and everybody's trying to out-do each other... And then you get new generations of hardware, so it becomes like a time to bring genres back to life. And you see loads of genres really that have suffered with that over the time... I think the problem is that 3D platformers have just been away for a bit too long."
- (18:12) Gavin Price (co-founder of Playtonic Games): (on choosing these animals) "It was all about the abilities and the gameplay opportunities that they'd create. We know we wanted to put more thought into it this time around, as much as we love Banjo... He didn't do anything which demonstrated typical bear traits... So, this time around we thought 'No, we are going to think about the different types of gameplay we want to achieve, more open-ended gameplay, less linear.'"
- (21:00) Gavin discusses streamlining the Banjo formula, erasing the need for different types of collectables for each ability. Also discusses the more open-ended nature with expanding worlds and returning with new abilities, "unlike Banjo or even Zelda" where new abilities aren't really useful in previous areas.
- (31:00) "The character was just something I drew back in the day... Later on, when I got an artist on board, I was like 'Can you make it into a proper character? ... Make it like a small kid that's ready to go on adventure.'"
E3 Coliseum: Crash Bandicoot Reunion
- (15:40) Jason Rubin (Naughty Dog co-founder, director of original Crash trilogy): "I mean, for your first ad for this character that's completely unknown, to have the character standing at what was supposed to be Nintendo's parking lot, yelling up, "Hey moustache man, I'm Crash Bandicoot, I'm here!", effectively... That was a big risk... That was a huge part of his success, as was the marketing effort in Japan, which changed Crash for Japan."
- (33:15) Jason Rubin: "Crash was made for the PlayStation. We did everything we could to make Crash work on the PlayStation; the reason he has black gloves is the lighting was so bad on so few polygons that he just was an orange mess, you couldn't track his hand crossing the rest of his body when he was running, so having black gloves gave you that visual cue. Like, the way he had only a few spots on his back was because those were the polys we chose to have texture on; we couldn't texture all of them and we knew it was "Sonic's Ass" game, we're looking at his back, so we put the polys on his back, that's-that's where the textures are. Everything about Crash was made to work on the PlayStation 1."
Japanese Sonic vs. American Sonic
- (00:32) Discussing the American redesign of Sonic (just for promo material, in-game sprites are the same) "It was a seemingly unnecessary change, especially considering Sonic was already designed with Western audiences in mind, but SEGA of America decided he needed to be slightly tweaked and artist Greg Martin was given the job of drawing the version of Sonic that would be used in American advertisements."
- (9:29) "The Classic Sonic from Sonic Generations actually takes some design cues from Greg Martin's American Sonic design. It's very apparent when you compare the eyes, he's got much more pronounced eyebrows like the American version and this little brow furrow between his eyes is only featured on the American version... His ears are also slightly bent forward at the top, unlike the Japanese version which has straight ears."
Rare Replay - The Making of Banjo-Kazooie
- (4:17) Gregg Mayles (Designer): "These wings and these legs could belong to another character and this character lives inside Banjo's backpack and comes out on occasions to help him along... And then all the dialogue, the interjection between them, and Kazooie being sarcastic and adventurous and Banjo being like, a bit dim-witted and slow, all of that came afterwards and was all literally just built on wanting a double-jump."
- (8:14) Gregg Mayles: "I think it was just the whole immersive nature of the world, the fantastic music, just the charm of it was what elevated it from just another 3D platformer into something that people remember."
The Voice Behind the Mouse
- (2:40) Wayne Allwine (former voice of Mickey Mouse): "Walt's early Mickey has a lot of energy and a lot of feistiness, and as [Walt] gets older [Mickey] sort of becomes the guy next door, he becomes an every-man really."
- (5:13) Russi Taylor (voice of Minnie Mouse): "There's an approval factor, from the characters to the public. The characters aren't judging you and they never will, they're just gonna love you."
- (20:30) Russi Taylor: (in reference to the words 'sweet' and 'optimistic' being used to describe Minnie and Mickey respectively) "In a way it's kind of what makes them endearing and enduring, they go on because people enjoy something nice and something optimistic."
I won't be quoting everything I've picked out here, but it's all stuff that I found interesting and would like to keep a record of.
No comments:
Post a Comment