If you ever want to trace the evolution of games and who they're marketed to, you needn't look further than the concept of mascots--characters that often serve as unofficial ambassadors for a video game company. In a relatively short time, companies went from pushing anthropomorphized animals with attitudes to pushing space marines...with attitudes. Of course, how these characters attained that status is often quite different. For some, it was a natural fit due to the quality and popularity (or sheer number) of the games they appeared in. For others, it was a matter of brute-force marketing on the part of the publisher that assured us it would be cool to like a particular mascot. Regardless, there have been some great and not-so-great mascots over the years. This is our tribute to those that have been--in some cases thankfully--forgotten.

For many, Bubsy represented the ultimate form of mascot in the 1990s--we thought he was cool because a marketing department at Accolade said so. After all, he was a bobcat, and he was hip and irreverent, and if a certain blue hedgehog taught us anything, it's that a rad animal with a 'tude was a recipe for massive success. The Bubsy hype reached astronomical levels, with some people even calling him the next Sonic the Hedgehog, but then the game Bubsy in: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind came out, and Bubsy met with a collective "OK" from the audience. Still, his original appearance generated enough enthusiasm to warrant a sequel and an eventual 3D game that was terrible enough to bury Bubsy and push him out of our minds. Do we want him to make a comeback? Probably not.

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