The Sonic Knockoff Extravaganza!
3/2/20261 hr 32 min
To paraphrase Tony Montana: First you come up with a mascot, then you make the platformer game, then you make the money. Yes, with the advent that little blue meth/ring imbued hedgehog had dozens of game publishers thought to themselves: Hey, that looks easy, I could also do that. And so we had a swarm of Bubsys, Gexs, and acrobatic bats flood the shelves in the hopes your grandma couldn't tell the difference between the game you wanted and Awesome Possum. Many companies tried to get their own platforming mascot star, most failed, and now Holden guides Jake and Mike through the virtual pet cemetery of crappy characters that didn't even last long enough to get a catchy rap April could hit.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
[upbeat music] Go from this to this in no time. Find last minute deals on thousands of stays in Canada with Vrbo.
Gex· Soundbite0:14
[upbeat music] Word to mouth.
Jake Young· Host0:16
[upbeat rock music] So then I says, "She gives me dynamite heady till I, uh, zoo-lee on my wild woody."
Holden McNeely· Host0:40
Whoa! [laughs] [laughs] What? That's how we're starting this?
Jake Young· Host0:44
What? I'm just talking about beloved mascot characters in video game history.
Holden McNeely· Host0:48
Yes.
Mike Lawrence· Host0:48
Why isn't Awesome Possum working? [laughs] Yuji Naka made Sonic the Hedgehog with a pile of scraps.
Holden McNeely· Host0:55
[laughs] Jazz Jackrabbit deserved more. [laughs] That's all I'm saying.
Mike Lawrence· Host1:01
Oh.
Holden McNeely· Host1:01
That's all I'm saying. Um- [laughs] It's, uh, we're here today to talk about, we're t- here to talk about the failures. Not the Marios- Yeah ... not the Sonics, not the Spyros. They get all the love. They get all the nostalgia.
Jake Young· Host1:15
We're talking not even Croc. [laughs] Like, this is, have the, the bottom of the barrel we're dealing with right now.
Holden McNeely· Host1:19
I mean, I do have Croc mentioned on my list. [laughs] Did you know that Croc was actually a, uh, initially a failed 3D Yoshi game pitch?
Jake Young· Host1:29
I do know that,