The summer of ’96 changed everything. I’d been saving up for months—birthday money, lawn mowing cash, the works—to buy a Nintendo 64 and Super Mario 64. That first time I grabbed the analog stick and sent Mario running in actual 3D space? Mind-blowing doesn’t begin to cover it. I spent that entire weekend in a state of pure wonder, barely stopping to eat. My mom kept peeking in to make sure I was still alive. “Your eyes are gonna fall out,” she’d say, but even she stuck around to watch sometimes, equally mesmerized.
But here’s the thing about revolutionary moments in gaming: everyone scrambles to copy them. And man, did they ever copy Mario 64. The floodgates burst open, and suddenly every publisher needed their own animal mascot with attitude, collecting shiny objects across sprawling 3D worlds. It was like watching a weird digital zoo escape—foxes, bandicoots, lizards, and creatures I couldn’t even identify started appearing on game covers everywhere.
I remember walking into Blockbuster (RIP, you beautiful time capsule) on Friday nights and facing entire shelves of these mascot platformers. Some weekends, when the new releases were all rented out, I’d take a chance on whatever knock-off platformer was left. That’s how I ended up playing games like Croc: Legend of the Gobbos—not because I was particularly drawn to a cute crocodile protagonist, but because, well, beggars can’t be choosers when you’re 13 and it’s the last copy of anything remotely interesting on the shelf.
Croc wasn’t terrible, actually. But it had that “we need to be Mario 64 but different enough to avoid a lawsuit” energy that so many games had back then. The little furry Gobbos you had to rescue? Basically Power Stars with fur. The gameplay loop was always the same: enter level, collect stuff, defeat simplistic enemies, unlock more levels to—you guessed it—collect more stuff. It was platforming reduced to a science, or maybe more accurately, to a factory assembly line.
Gex is another one that sticks in my memory, if only because he was so desperately trying to be cool. A gecko that made pop culture references every thirty seconds (that already felt dated even in the 90s), Gex was the embodiment of that “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme before memes were even a thing. I actually enjoyed the TV world-hopping premise, but after hearing Gex make his 50th quip about something from basic cable, even teenage me was rolling my eyes. Still, there was something charming about how hard it was trying.
Then there was Glover. Yes, a sentient glove. Not even an animal! Just… a glove. I rented it because the concept seemed so weird it had to be either brilliant or terrible. Turns out it was a bit of both. The central mechanic—controlling both Glover and a ball across obstacles—was genuinely clever, but the execution often made me want to throw my controller through the TV. The camera seemed to actively hate me, swinging wildly at the worst possible moments. I died so many times because I simply couldn’t see where I was going.
And who remembers Jersey Devil? Probably not many folks. This PlayStation obscurity featured a devil-like creature fighting through halloweenish environments. I picked it up for $9.99 from the bargain bin at Electronics Boutique (before it morphed into GameStop). It wasn’t great—the character controlled like he was perpetually sliding on ice—but there was an undeniable B-movie charm to its rough edges and weird atmosphere.
The thing is, for all their flaws, these games filled an important role in my gaming life. Not every gaming experience can be a masterpiece, and sometimes the also-rans provide a different kind of enjoyment. There’s something uniquely satisfying about finding the diamond in the rough—that game no one else seemed to play but somehow spoke to you.
I had a friend, Kevin, who swore up and down that Chameleon Twist on N64 was better than Mario 64. We nearly came to blows over this ridiculous claim during a sleepover. Looking back, his contrarian stance was probably just to mess with me, but I respect his commitment to the bit. He even speedran the game before speedrunning was really a mainstream thing, finishing it in one sitting every time I came over, just to “prove” how good it was.
The collect-a-thon formula these games established became so ubiquitous that it eventually led to its own downfall. By the early 2000s, platform fatigue had set in hard. Everyone was sick of gathering random shiny objects. The market had become so saturated that even quality platformers struggled to stand out. Consumers and critics grew increasingly cynical about any new game featuring an anthropomorphic creature with attitude. It’s like everyone collectively said, “If I have to collect one more magical widget to save one more fantasy world, I’m going to lose my mind.”
But you know what? I miss that era sometimes. For all the derivative gameplay and cringe-worthy attitude, there was an innocence to it. Developers were still figuring out what worked in 3D space, leading to some genuine innovation buried within the copycatting. Bugs and weird physics weren’t patched out—they became features that gave games personality. I spent one entire afternoon in Bubsy 3D just seeing how far I could make the terrible camera system freak out. Not exactly the intended gameplay, but my friends and I laughed until we cried.
There’s Rocket: Robot on Wheels, a criminally underrated N64 game that actually did physics-based puzzles before it was cool. And Kingsley’s Adventure, a medieval-themed platformer starring a fox that almost nobody played but had this weirdly compelling world. Or how about Punky Skunk? Yeah, that was a real game—a platformer starring a skunk with a mohawk and a skateboard. It was terrible, but in that special way where you can’t look away from the train wreck.
I even have a soft spot for Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt (yes, that’s the full title). It was so blatantly trying to copy Sonic while adding an environmental message that it circled back around from annoying to endearing. The game literally paused sometimes to give you recycling facts. Not exactly adrenaline-pumping stuff, but I still remember that aluminum cans take 80-100 years to decompose. So… mission accomplished, Awesome Possum?
The camera systems in these games deserve special mention. They were universally awful. Playing some of these platformers felt like trying to navigate while a drunk cinematographer spun around you. I developed a sixth sense for approximating where platforms were when I couldn’t actually see them. It’s not a skill I ever expected to need, but there I was, making blind jumps and somehow landing them through sheer muscle memory and prayer.
The rental store discovery was half the fun back then. No YouTube reviews, no Metacritic—just box art, maybe a Nintendo Power blurb if you were lucky, and your instincts. I discovered Mischief Makers that way, a weird 2D platformer in the 3D era with a robot maid protagonist who grabbed and shook everything. It was bizarre, Japanese as hell, and completely delightful.
If I’m being honest, part of me wishes for a universe where some of these forgotten mascots had gotten sequels with bigger budgets and lessons learned. What would a modern Gex look like with updated pop culture references? (Probably insufferable, but I’m still curious). Could Rocket: Robot on Wheels’ physics puzzles have evolved into something like Portal years earlier?
Today’s kids will never know the specific joy of taking a chance on some weird animal platformer and discovering it’s actually kind of awesome—or so bad it’s good. Digital distribution means fewer risks taken on mid-tier games, and the ones that do exist usually don’t feature bizarre animal mascots. Modern platformers tend to either be indie darlings with minimalist art styles or big-budget returns to established franchises.
I’ve still got a box of these games in my storage unit. Every few years, I’ll dig them out, blow off the dust (literally—those N64 cartridges collect dust like nobody’s business), and fire up some forgotten mascot adventure. The nostalgia hit is powerful, but it’s more than that. It’s a connection to a specific moment in gaming history, when an entire industry looked at a mustachioed plumber jumping in 3D and collectively said, “Let’s do that, but with every animal in the encyclopedia.”
They weren’t all good. Hell, some were straight-up bad. But they were trying something new in their derivative way, and there’s something kinda beautiful about that chaotic creative explosion, even if it eventually collapsed under its own weight. For every Spyro or Crash that survived, dozens of furry, scaled, and feathered mascots faded into obscurity, remembered only by weirdos like me who can’t stop talking about that summer when everything changed.
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