What's Iron Man doing there? But yeah, if you ignore the fact that Tony Stark replaced the real Bomberman for some reason, that is a pretty cool design.

I always liked Atomic Bomberman

That guy actually looked like he could handle an explosion, and without pink booties this time.

always already

My brain hurts.

From what I gather, the concept is basically a real-life retcon. It's like saying "The DC universe has always already been Post-Crisis," only it works for non-nerd subjects too.

I was reminded of this guy today:


I especially like the pac-man hat.

Speaking of Wall-E, I swear that Vectorman had the same story. AND Eve's floating arms must have used the same technology...

Worst character I've ever seen was the newfangled vectorman from the never released ps2 vectorman, years ago.

Yeah! I was so happy that didn't get released. I don't want no Master Cheif in my Vectorman.

...and I humbly present Rakugaki Showtime!



A super rare Treasure game for the PS1 that was up to 4 players and ridiculously fun.

I've never heard of that game before, but it looks really cool. The in-game battles look crazy awesome.

I'm so indie, I played Airship 2600 and was marginally impressed.

The Wind Waker style is awesome, there's so many cool characters in those games. Tetra, the Moblins, those little goat guys with the pitchforks, the King of Hyrule, Gannondorf, Link himself... so many good designs.

altair

Yeah, I forgot about Altair. I'd put him up there with Faith and Kratos as one of the few modern character designs from realistic games that still have a good graphic design sense.

True. Also .

I knew this game wasn't good at the time, in fact it was downright frustratingly bad, but I kept on going back to play it again and again for some reason. It was like some sort of horrible drug for me. Maybe it was the nicely-done backgrounds, or the super-chipper music. Those were the only good parts.

[^Good.^]

Yeah I gotta admit those Team Fortress II characters are all kinds of awesome. I think that has to be the best style in game graphics I've seen in ages.

Another design I like is Sly Cooper, mostly him from the first game before they beefed him up and made him blocky.

^Good.^


^Not so much.^

Drake's Fortune

Half-tuck.

Haha, Tim Schafer is awesome.

I was recently surprised to find that I actually like the design of the main character from EA's game Mirror's Edge. She's actually not bland or generic for a change.

The last game character I remember liking this much was Kratos from God of War.

Both him and this character have a great graphic design sense, with nice use of shape and color. They're not over-detailed, but they do have points of interest here or there, like the girl's tattoo below her eye or Kratos's chains wrapped around his arms. Contrast that with a design like Master Chief's, who has no real stand-out details, and yet manages to still be a cluttered mass of them. He's a green storm trooper.

Or the guy from Drake's Fortune. I can't think of a more generic, uninspired Indiana Jones clone who doesn't even have anything to match the iconic hat, whip, or jacket that made Indy famous to begin with.



Seems like most developers equate realism with boring character designs. Though, there's some stylized games out there with horrible designs in them too:


As far as my favorite designs of all time, however, I've gotta give it to Mega Man and Sonic. They're cool, unique concepts and the designs play with shapes well, such as Mega Man's bell-bottom feet and Sonic's iconic spikes.


Another one of my favs is VectorMan. The series never really took off, but his design from the second game is awesome.


So, what are some of your favorite/least favorite character designs to come out of games, mainstream or not?

I'm in the middle of a novel called "The Book of Joby" which was written by an acquaintance of mine. It's his first novel, but extremely well written. As you might have guessed, it's a modern retelling of the book of Job, but with elements of some other classic stories in there as well.

I also just read through the very funny "Diary of a Wimpy Kid."

Just moved to a new place in Seattle.

I've heard of this, but I had no idea the artist worked at PopCap. That's pretty cool.