During last night’s The Game Awards show, we saw Astro Bot walk away with four wins, including Game of the Year. While I was very happy to see a mascot-themed game catch the attention of thousands of players, watching the show’s live chat made it clear that many people were disappointed. But why? This isn’t the first time PlayStation has released a mascot-themed game that genuinely captured the hearts of the gaming world. What about Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet? What about Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Parappa? I understand that gaming has evolved significantly since these games were at the peak of their existence, but does that really mean that Astro Bot didn’t deserve to win? I mean, Astro Bot was excellent, and Astro is essentially now the face of the PlayStation.
A Brief History of PlayStation Mascots
There have been a TON of PlayStation mascots. Seriously. Did you ever play PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale? Remember Polygon Man? Well, thank Ken Kutaragi back in the early 90s for his creation; it was the platform’s very first mascot. After that, mascots seemed to take the form of characters from games that were exclusive to PlayStation consoles. It became incredibly common to turn on your television and catch some weird live-action commercial starring people in Crash Bandicoot and Parappa the Rapper costumes doing completely unrelated things. Here’s one of the two of them dressed as Santa Claus, escorting a woman back home from a restaurant on a snowy evening while promoting the original PlayStation.
At the time, these characters were embedded into what owning a PlayStation genuinely meant for players. Without a PlayStation, how were you supposed to go on living and playing other consoles that don’t have these games and mascots? The same thing happened in the era of PlayStation 2. How would you go on playing an Xbox without getting the chance to play God of War, Jak and Daxter, and Sly Cooper? However, the difference was that PlayStation didn’t need to use these characters to show off their console. They weren’t even considered actual mascots besides the fact that they are exclusive to the PlayStation family.
Then, when the PS3 rolled around, it seemed that established mascots were necessary again. But it didn’t happen because PlayStation had set it that way; Media Molecule just happened to get really lucky.
Sackboy Walked So Astro Could Run
Image Source: Media Molecule
Despite what you might think, Sackboy is NOT an official mascot. In fact, the popularity of all of the games he’s been involved in is why official Sony staff and journalists recognize him as a mascot. In an era of gaming that became more focused on being edgy and realistic, Sackboy revived what it meant to have fun playing video games. Some players still use the LittleBigPlanet games to bring their creations and visions to life. One person just recently remade the entirety of Final Fantasy 7 using the sack people! (Maybe Best In-game Creator Content should have been a category during The Game Awards).
Now, it seems as though the LittleBigPlanet games have been all but forgotten. The game’s servers have been shut down, and you can’t even purchase LittleBigPlanet 3 from the PlayStation store anymore. By all means, the PlayStation had officially lost its mascot. But, since 2013, Team Asobi has been working hard to cultivate the next one. Yup, you read that correctly. Since before The Game Awards were even a thing. To showcase the incredibility of the Dualshock 4 and the PS4’s camera, The Playroom, a tech demo, came available with all PS4s and could be downloaded from the PlayStation store. It included several games to demonstrate the abilities of the hardware. However, as time passed, we saw The Playroom become more than just an experience; it became an entire franchise.
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I don’t want to forget the first two in the franchise, but Astro Bot is the one that brought the idea of PlayStation mascots back to the main stage. I mean, the AIBO is even there. I remember playing with the Poo-Chi back in the late 90’s because there was no way my mom would get me a $2,500 AIBO. It wasn’t until this game came out that I realized just how much players resonate with the idea of a mascot. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that despite there having been so many remakes and remasters of those classic games I had mentioned before (i.e. The Spyro Reignited Trilogy and the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy), it wasn’t until Astro Bot came around where people began to appreciate them again.
For what felt like the first time in a long time, a game came out that established itself as something new while reintroducing players to the reason they started playing games in the first place. Because of that, Astro Bot absolutely deserved to have won Game of the Year alongside the many other incredible nominees at The Game Awards. You can fight me on that.
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