Memo 7: Animal Video Game Characters That Aren’t Animals
To take a break from the serious vibes of the last couple posts, this week’s memo is silly. Let’s dive into critically unacclaimed, bizarre and illogical video game character designs. There’s nothing to lift the spirits like knowing a 3-dimensional character is doing worse off than you for no reason other than the pettiness of humans!
Two characters are on the docket today: Crash Bandicoot and Klonoa. For the following reasons, these poor guys got more mangled via human intervention than what natural selection ever did to them out in the wild. Crash Bandicoot is this little guy here. He’s relatively well-known, or at least for those with a Playstation 2 in their youth (I’m raising my hand). Using your best-educated guess, what would animal would you say Crash is supposed to be?
No clue? That’s because he’s supposed to be a literal bandicoot!
The wonky history of Crash Bandicoot’s ungodly design goes as follows: the game started with Naughty Dog in the mid-90s, jokingly coded “Sonic’s Ass Game” because of how the character would be moving to the front instead of the side. To match the Australian decorum, a wombat was the ideal main character at first; the name “Willy the Wombat” tried to become “Wez”, “Wuzzles” or “Wizzy the Wombat” by the marketing director of Universal Interactive. Crash was supposed to be a mascot for Sony to use against Nintendo’s Mario and Sega’s Sonic, so he had a lot going for him.
However, the wombat inspiration was a thin one because they never intended for it to be final. Early on, the team decided that there would be no connection between the real animal and Willie’s design. They made up this animal, selecting his color and physical attributes because of how it looked good for the game mode, then saw a bandicoot and how the character had to smash boxes. They went… Crash Bandicoot? That’s the name. That same pesky marketing director of Universal Interactive insisted that the game and character be named “Wez/Wezzy/Wuzzle the Wombat” or “Ozzie the Otzel,” but Crash’s name prevailed after Naughty Dog straight-up threatened to leave the production. When Naughty Dog presented Crash to Sony’s Japanese division, the executives there immediately hated it and designers had to change everything in 15 minutes to have them buy it after all. Crash was inconsistent for the first 7 years of his existence and now lives happily in a high-pixel, consistent world.
Klonoa is much less known than Crash but equally as Frankstein’s monster-y. The game itself is essentially one of Japan’s early versions of the Legend of Zelda, which I cannot guarantee because I have never played Legend of Zelda, but it is cute and whimsical and feels like a warm blanket when playing it. Klonoa himself, on the other hand, is Sonic-esque mess of an animal with oversized fashion accessories. Look at him in action; can you guess what he’s supposed to be?
He is a mixture of a dog, cat and rabbit. Much more straightforward than Crash, but still a weird cop-out by the designers to just pick one small domesticated animal. Similar to Crash, Klonoa’s earlier design was different than what you see above. Designer Yoshihiko Arai’s first design, “Shady,” had a shadow-like appearance (because Klonoa is a dream-traveler who helps dreams when they are in danger). However, he felt that the lack of color did not seem tasteful, and then added some characteristically animal eyes and long ears to grab y’alls attention. And considering that the eyes and eyes of Klonoa are huge, they sure did.
These are small, insignificant characters in the bigger scheme of things i.e. life, but also very fascinating examples of how having a God Complex results in weird things. Humans are literally overwhelmed and surrounded by the innumerable beauty of nature and we will wanna be like, naw, lemme MAKE UP an animal. The terrifying beauty and power of video game creation!
And because there is always more to consume, here are some LINKS from this past week:
A Plague on Ibiza. Snakes on a plane? No, snake plagues in Ibiza!
The 2020 National Book Awards Longlist: Poetry. I don’t know about y’all, but I need to have more poetry in my life. The guilt of this is usually a bearable amount, so I’m hoping that this article makes me guilt intolerable to the point of snagging one of these.
The Human Story of How Ventilators Came to Breathe For Us. I lowkey get bent out of shape when I think about my own breathing, but I love reading about human need reflected in machines. The dilemma!
The Emrata essay, which goes from bad to worse to nightmare-inducing. I will admit, my pity for her dropped a little when she was like “oh no I can only afford to pay off half of my deposit on an apartment in my early 20s but $80,000 on a Richard Price was too much uwu,” but it quickly rebounded from that.