Character Advent Calendar

One of the game characters with the most devoted fanbases is Link, the young hero of the Legend of Zelda games, the first of which appeared way back in 1987 on the NES. Link is a young elf-like boy with pointy ears dressed in green, who gets more powerful as the game progresses and he collects new swords, shields and other objects. The Zelda of the games title is of course the Princess Zelda, who more often than not has to be rescued by Link as part of his quest.

The first game, simply called The Legend of Zelda, appeared on the NES in 1987 and was an above view flick screen adventure game. Link had to traverse various dungeons to recover the shards of the ancient Triforce of Wisdom in order to defeat the evil sorceror (are there any other kind?) Ganon. This was followed by The Adventure of Link a year later, which was a side on platform adventure game.
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Fox McCloud first appeared on our screens in the SNES game Starwing (Starfox in Europe), which was the first game to use the SuperFX chip which allowed the SNES to produce full 3D graphics. Both the game and the SuperFX chip were designed by the sadly now defunct UK developer Argonaut, in conjunction with Nintendo. At the time Argonaut were best known for the Starglider games on Amiga and Atari ST, which were some of the first proper 3D games of the time.

Starwing put you in control of Fox McClouds Arwing, a sleek space fighter craft. You were also accompanied by your wingmen Slippy Toad, Falco Lombardi and Peppy Hare, who were also piloting their own Arwings and would help (and hinder) during the battles to come.
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Opinions may be divided over Katamari Damacy (personally I rather like it, but then as Al has said, I’m a bit weird like that ;-b) and the capsule headed Prince is an odd piece of design it has to be said, but it has to be said that the King Of All Cosmos is a nutty as they come.

The stuff that the King comes out with is completely bonkers, though whether this is completely intentional or just some odd Japanese translation I’m not sure. Either way, he’s hilarious. The story of the game goes that the King was “at one” with the cosmos when he accidentally destroyed all the stars in the sky. For “at one” I think you need to assume that some kind of intoxicating substance must have been involved somewhere along the line…
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Luigi is, of course, Mario’s thinner taller brother. He first appeared back in 1983 in Mario Bros. in order to provide a two player mode for that game. He returned for Super Mario Bros. as well, but again was relegated to being the second player only, and in both games he was simply the same sprite as Mario but drawn in green instead of red.

It wasn’t until Super Mario Bros. 2 on the NES that Luigi finally got his own sprite. In fact, many people found in this game that Luigi was a more useful character to play than Mario, since Luigi could hover in the air for a while when he jumped.

Luigi had to wait until 1992 to get his own game, which was bizarre in that it was for the PC and was an educational title! It was called Mario Is Missing (so Luigi didn’t even get his name in the title) and the plot was that Mario had fallen into a hole and it was Luigi’s job to find him by travelling around the world and various famous landmarks. There were also NES and SNES versions, but don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of this game!
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Way back in the early 1980’s the 8-bit home computers such as the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64 ruled the roost. The other thing that was common back then, as mentioned on our advent calendars Pacman entry, was the arcade game clone. Hungry Horace was a good example of, funnily enough, a Pacman clone!

Horace was a, er, blue thing with legs and two huge eyes, who ran about a maze eating dots (since he had no obvious mouth, I’m not sure how he did this) whilst avoiding guards (giant purple heads). The game first appeared on the Spectrum, with a C64 version following soon after.
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If you’re looking for the archetype of gaming race cars then look no further than OutRun’s Ferrari Testarossa. It’s a big red convertible sportscar, enough said!

OK, maybe I should go into a bit more detail. Sega’s OutRun first appeared in the arcades in 1986, and was an instant hit due to the revolutionary way in which it displayed the race track. Prior to OutRun racing games were limited in what they could do, with a few other vehicles which were normally your car in a different colour and with generally just bends in the track and the odd roadside sign being possible. OutRun had a huge amount of graphical variety both in terms of other road users and trackside objects, with the classic example being palm trees. The tracks not only had bends but also hills and forks in the road, which allowed you to choose your route through the game world.
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Crash Bandicoot first appeared on the PlayStation back in 1996, and was quickly given the mantle of mascot character for that system. This was never really an official designation though, since Crash wasn’t a Sony internally developed character in the same way that Sonic and Mario were for Sega and Nintendo. It was developed by Naughty Dog, who have since left Crash Bandicoot behind and moved on to the Jak and Daxter series.

Gameplay wise, the original Crash game was a fairly standard platformer. You could jump and spin wildly, Tazmanian Devil style, which were both methods of killing the enemies and smashing the copious number of crates dotted round the levels. Most of these crates contained apples, and collecting 100 gave you an extra life. Each of the levels could also be revisited to try and collect all the apples on the level and to find hidden gemstones. Whilst the game may not have been very original, it did play extremely well and plugged the hole for a decent platform game which the PlayStation was currently lacking at the time. Probably the standout levels were those where you were running towards the camera whilst being followed by an Indianna Jones style ball of rock.
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Space Invaders is another of those classic games that pretty much everybody must have played at some point, and for todays advent calendar entry we’ve chosen the rarest of all the invaders. It is of course, the Mothership!

The Mothership always freaked you out when it appeared. The distinctive woo-woo-woo-woo alarm contrasting against the standard invaders grunting sound. This sound always kicked in slightly before the Mothership would appear, and it would then be a split second decision on the part of the player. Keep picking off the standard aliens, or go for the bonus points with a shot at the Mothership.
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Hands up everyone who knows who Vibri is? Not many of you I’d guess. Vibri is a stick line rabbit who was the star of the PlayStation game Vib Ribbon, which was a rhythm action game created by Masaya Masuura of NaNa-OnSha, who also created Parappa the Rapper.

To call Vib Ribbon basic looking is a bit of an understatement. The entire game was drawn with white lines on a black screen, with very minimal use of colour. The premise was to get Vibri safely along a path which scrolled past with a series of odd shapes on it. Whenever Vibri reached one of these shapes, the correct button (or buttons) on the joypad had to be pressed to allow Vibri to pass them safely. The more you passed correctly, the more evolved Vibri would become, gaining a crown. Fail though, and Vibri would de-evolve into a frog!
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Lara Croft, star of the Tomb Raider games, is a very important game character for many reasons. Along with the WipeOut series, Tomb Raider and Lara Croft have probably done more to make gaming cool than any other games.

Originally appearing on both the PlayStation and the Sega Saturn, Tomb Raider featuring Lara Croft took gamers by storm back in 1996 when it was released. At the time there was nothing quite like it, and many’s the hour that was spent shooting and climbing through the levels. The fact that the main character was a woman was a peculiarity, and the animation was simply amazing. When Lara got her twin hand guns out and aimed at the many enemies it really was a sight to behold.
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