Ramble: Over analysing iconic video game characters!

And so, having looked at various things online, I have compiled a list of 25 iconic video game characters.  (But that is not the point of this, oh no, please read on!)  These are characters who have spawned franchises, numerous sequels, or films.  These are the characters that people think of when you tell them to name a video game character.  But if we look at these characters, what can we learn?  You probably never thought about it.  You probably don't care.  But I have thought about it.  And made graphs.  Lots of graphs...

My 25 video game characters, arranged into order of their origin year, with some other facts I shall be analysing in too much detail, are below...

I should say at this juncture I looked at a bunch of online lists to compile this, as well as asking the people in this house for their opinions.  Any list of characters is going to be contentious, but I'm basing this on how famous they are (do a lot of people know about them?), how many games have they been in, and whether they've had films made about them.  Finally, most of the characters are player characters, not NPCs.  (I reckon these things are all pretty good indicators of how 'iconic' they are.)

First things first, year of origin.  When we look at the graph, there are two obvious peaks in the data.

These peaks are in 1986/7 and 1996-1998 (oddly there are no characters from 1997!).  Looking at the data, these peaks coincide with the US release of the NES (in 1986), and the release of the PS1 (which was on sale worldwide by late 1995).  Perhaps, then, we can infer that the most iconic video game characters come from these two systems - the NES and the PS1. (Indeed, when you look at the figures, over a quarter of the characters do come from those two systems.)

Looking at the origin formats of the characters, Sony and Nintendo consoles are responsible for 60% of the characters.  And Nintendo are also the creators of two of the characters I've given the origin "arcade".  The Microsoft category here is the Xbox and anything that debuted on Windows, which bugs me a little, it doesn't seem quite right.  Still.  The only Xbox character on here is Master Chief (who I always misread as Master Chef).  Is he really the only iconic Xbox character?  I worry that I have biased the list by being a PS geek and not an Xbox geek.  (Feel free to tell me all the Xbox characters I should have included!)

So then I was thinking, "I wonder how many of these characters are female"?  You tend to think that perhaps female game characters are more common now than they used to be.  I mean, there are a few great characters around now who are female, like Aloy, and Ellie, but what about the 1980s?  Or even the 1990s?  In total, a whopping 81% of the characters are female...

The earliest female character on the list is Samus Aran in 1986.  The "biggest" female characters are probably Jill Valentine and, of course, Lara Croft.  In the end, all of these are pretty cool strong females.  Lara Croft did start out as a bit of an oddly proportioned pinup, but these days she's all dark and, er, more normally proportioned.  There could certainly be more female characters for us to play as, though.  Perhaps if I redo this in a few years some of the newer character (like Aloy) will have made it onto the list!

Some Lara Crofts

Ok, so this is a big one - number of games.  Now there are a few clear winners here.  As you might expect, perhaps, some of the earliest characters have the most games.  But the big winner, with over 200 game appearances, is Mario.  I mean, 200?!  The next highest are Pac-Man and Sonic the Hedgehog with 50 games each.  Mario has won this by A LOT.  Part of me wonders what happens if you take all the games and try and create one consistent piece of Mario lore.  Princess Peach would get rescued A LOT.  It would be one very weird story.  

After those big hitters we have Lara Croft, Link, Pikachu and Ryu, with c.20 games each.  But I'm still reeling from the over 200 games that Mario has been in.  I mean, Nintendo have a Mario machine churning these things out.  Some years (2014 and 2015) 14 games featuring Mario came out.  14!!!  They really are making the most of their intellectual property...

Depending on how you count them, there are nearer 250 games than 200 that feature Mario.  Yikes!

The last thing I have made a graph for is to do with film appearances by characters.  Now I know Pikachu has been in plenty of Pokemon movies, but I'm only counting Detective Pikachu (as his live action debut where he was the star).  I'm sure some of the other characters have been in random things too, but I was going for big screen Hollywood movies.  I did count how many films they'd been in (Jill Valentine won by miles, with 6 films to Lara Croft's 3).  But then I thought it would be more entertaining to see who had the highest audience rating for their films on Rotten Tomatoes..!

Sonic's scary human teeth

And the winner is...  Sonic the Hedgehog, with a score of 93/100!  Considering all the initial stress over his freaky teeth it looks like the alterations made this a big success with the fans.  I'm guessing the nostalgia value of Sonic, that Mega Drive mascot, really drove the film's success.  The same nostalgia thing probably affected Detective Pikachu (79/100).  Though it can go either way, I suppose.  If fans feel betrayed by a terrible movie then the score would be way down low.  Like, well, Super Mario Bros.

Jill Valentine gets 55.3 for her six films, Lara Croft 48.7.  The lowest scorers here are Ryu (20), Max Payne (29) and Mario (29).  What can we take from this?  I wonder if studios are getting better at making movies based on games.  I hope it's not a coincidence that the two newest movies, Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog, are the highest scorers.

Kind of looking forward to various proposed video game movies. Especially Uncharted. Though not so sure about Tom Holland as Nathan Drake...  (I like him but I've always seen Drake as more of a Nathan Fillion.)

Oh, I did include Pixels here for Pac-Man.  I know it's not really about him.  But I kind of liked it...

That's pretty much it.  Those are my thoughts.  I guess if we have to crown a 'winner' here, the most iconic character is clearly Mario, with honourable mentions to Sonic, Pac-Man, Lara Croft and Pikachu.

Happy 35th Mario!

Part of me wants to now work out how many characters are 'human' and how many are 'non-human'.  I think it's about half and half.  Aaargh.  I need to stop this now.  Just press publish and walk away.  Ok, I really am going to stop thinking about this now.  Honest.  ;-)