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Think of furry mascots that didn’t make it, and the first one to come to mind is usually Bubsy the Bobcat. Accolade’s famous feline gave it the ol’ college try, but he too was left in Sonic’s dust. Never achieving the success of his blue rival, Bubsy still managed to muster enough energy for two sequels, each less successful than the original game.
The Genesis debuted in 1989 with a wide variety of games from all genres, sports included. Alongside the great Tommy Lasorda Baseball and the simple, yet fun Arnold Palmer Golf was a soccer game that well, sucked. To be honest, World Championship Soccer wasn’t even fun when it came out, and with the plethora of incredible soccer games to be had on the system, there’s no reason on Earth to play it today.
When it was first released in 1994, Virtua Racing wowed gamers with its incredible use of polygons and its $100 price tag. The exorbitant cost (the highest for the time) was due to it being the one and only game to ever make use of the powerful Sega Virtual Processor, or SVP chip. Until the 32X got a port a year later, this was the only way to play the arcade hit at home, and it was darn close to having a real Model 1 arcade board. It may be outdated now, but Virtua Racing’s place in Genesis history is assured.
1993 saw the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s version of the horror classic Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The film tried to remain faithful to the novel while injecting a more modernized interpretation of everyone’s favorite vampire. Such a concept sounds like it would make for a great video game, right? Well, it did, and that’s why we have the Castlevania series. Unfortunately, Sony Imagesoft decided to license the film for a game released for several platforms, including the Sega CD. The latter included FMV cut scenes and cool-looking rendered backgrounds but not much else of note.
Oh my dear Sonic, what have you started? It seems that your breakout success sparked a deluge of would-be mascots that felt they had the same spark you did, but when the dust finally settled, those that weren’t buried under the piles of unsold cartridges wallowed in misery at the unemployment office. Some were thankfully lost to time, and others like Mr. Nutz got another fifteen minutes of fame with a attempted comeback in the modern era, which is about fourteen more then he deserved.