MeleeMonk
Cartoon Pony Wrangler
Part-time gamer, full-time environmentalist, and member of PAPO (People Against Palm Oil)
Posts: 3,651
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Post by MeleeMonk on Apr 26, 2022 0:04:32 GMT
What character designs by Sega are among your least favorite of all time design-wise?
For me, it's a no-brainer: Ristar and the NiGHTS Jester are my two least favorite character designs that Sega produced by a huge margin. I hate them both.
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Cervantes
Off-Brand Transformable Robot
A former Incompetent Evil Commander (XP: 2423)
Posts: 2,821
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Post by Cervantes on Apr 30, 2022 21:03:44 GMT
Greendog.
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scipioafricanus
Cartoon Pony Wrangler
Sega Does What Nintendon't... except the 32X
Posts: 3,574
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Post by scipioafricanus on May 1, 2022 0:18:30 GMT
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MeleeMonk
Cartoon Pony Wrangler
Part-time gamer, full-time environmentalist, and member of PAPO (People Against Palm Oil)
Posts: 3,651
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Post by MeleeMonk on May 1, 2022 1:47:07 GMT
Huh, I had never even heard of this character or game before. It doesn't even look like something Sega would have made. I should try this game sometime.
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Cervantes
Off-Brand Transformable Robot
A former Incompetent Evil Commander (XP: 2423)
Posts: 2,821
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Post by Cervantes on May 1, 2022 2:00:56 GMT
You know what, scratch that. GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENDAWG is awesome, he is a very chill beach surfer dude.
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billspreston
Cheru Wing
I wrote Max Reebo's first 3 hits
Posts: 336
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Post by billspreston on May 1, 2022 13:58:00 GMT
Vector Man and Comix Zone.
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Cervantes
Off-Brand Transformable Robot
A former Incompetent Evil Commander (XP: 2423)
Posts: 2,821
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Post by Cervantes on May 1, 2022 18:35:44 GMT
Another one: I really hate how Sarah Bryant looked in Virtua Fighter 3, or most VF3 designs in general. While the graphics are technically better than VF2, by making the characters a bit less anime and more realistic makes them fall into the uncanny valley. Sarah became really ugly in that version, luckily VF4 fixed that.
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stratogustav
Supreme Overlord
Warrior with Bandana
Posts: 7,460
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Post by stratogustav on May 12, 2022 14:01:20 GMT
Yeah, I don't like mascot characters in general, Sonic being the exception.
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scipioafricanus
Cartoon Pony Wrangler
Sega Does What Nintendon't... except the 32X
Posts: 3,574
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Post by scipioafricanus on May 12, 2022 22:15:40 GMT
Vector Man and Comix Zone. Why Comix Zone?
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billspreston
Cheru Wing
I wrote Max Reebo's first 3 hits
Posts: 336
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Post by billspreston on May 16, 2022 13:01:37 GMT
Vector Man and Comix Zone. Why Comix Zone? I wasn't a fan of that 90's Image comic style. Then Marvel started getting more edgy, then Joey Maduereira starting having a big influence with his hybrid manga style (which was interesting, but a bit over the top for my taste). Then they changed the paper to this weird glossy stuff. I think DC were using those kind of pages, and I just didnt like it. But I digress. He seems like a character Rob Liefield would come up with.
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centipede
CGR Undertow Groupie
It was just one soy latte, I swear!
Posts: 2,700
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Post by centipede on Jun 14, 2022 3:02:13 GMT
Huh, I had never even heard of this character or game before. It doesn't even look like something Sega would have made. I should try this game sometime.
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MeleeMonk
Cartoon Pony Wrangler
Part-time gamer, full-time environmentalist, and member of PAPO (People Against Palm Oil)
Posts: 3,651
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Post by MeleeMonk on Apr 13, 2023 1:49:41 GMT
I would like to add two more to my list:
-Casey AKA Kid Chameleon. Kid Chameleon is one of the lamest designs Sega ever made. He reminds me of the characters in all of those awful live action edutainment films that I was forced to watch in elementary school. I'm so glad Sega stopped making any more of those westernized/"pseudo realistic" style kids games like Kid Chameleon by the end of the Saturn's life cycle. Bug Too and Mr. Bones were some of the last of these kind of games that I remember Sega making. I enjoy the westernized look of their adult games from that era like Altered Beast, Eternal Champions, and Golden Axe, but for some reason they could never nail the same formula for their kids titles. Rest in piss, kid chameleon. I'm glad no one remembers you.
-Cherry Hunter. I think it should come as no surprise that I find Cherry Hunter to be one of the lamest, most embarrassing character designs Sega has ever allowed. Not only is the streamlined, digital visual design for SoR 4 painfully inferior to 3's, but she looks like a fucking black-face stereotype on top of that, and anybody who says otherwise is in denial. So basically with Cherry Hunter you have a black-face stereotype rendered in some variant of flash. Not a good situation for any mainstream game. Oh, and her name sounds like a sexual innuendo, too.
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Pimpjira
Guardian Force Shooter
Posts: 1,102
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Post by Pimpjira on May 6, 2023 19:17:33 GMT
I never liked Vectorman
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MeleeMonk
Cartoon Pony Wrangler
Part-time gamer, full-time environmentalist, and member of PAPO (People Against Palm Oil)
Posts: 3,651
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Post by MeleeMonk on May 18, 2023 3:12:37 GMT
Oh boy, here's one that I didn't list in my OP but HAS to be at least mentioned on any list of the worst character designs that Sega has made: are you ready for it? Here it comes, hold on to your butts: -the majority of the designs of Naoto Ohshima It had to be said. I'm honestly surprised nobody mentioned him yet. I mean, holy shit, talk about a fall from grace. He is a perfect example of an artist who literally NEVER matured within the field. The man who largely created the look & feel of Sonic also contributed to its disastrous downfall by making some of the most controversial character designs ever, like Big the Cat for example. TBH he was never a very good artist to begin with. His visual work on the original Sonic the Hedgehog felt like a fun, inspired homage to early american cartoons like Felix the Cat, but after that he began churning out some of the most baffling character designs ever seen in Sega games like Vector the Crocodile, Big the Cat, all the human characters from Sonic Adventure (CRINGE), and, eventually, the overhyped flop that was Balan Wonderworld, which once again featured some of the cringeiest looking cartoony humanoids I think I've ever seen in Japanese artwork. Not to mention one of my personal most hated character designs ever in video gaming: the Jester from Nights Into Dreams. Dreams? More like NIGHTMARE. Am I right?? Honestly I'm not surprised that Yuji Naka publicly disowned him for Balan Wonderworld's failure. There were so many better veterans working within the anime industry by that time and Naka definitely should have gotten a better artist to work with on the game. When it comes to the world of anime and video game design he literally isn't even worth talking about by this point, which is crazy when you consider he designed Sonic the Hedgehog. I know I complained about Akira Toriyama's early character designs for Dragon Ball, but at least that was cute and charming, even if it doesn't work for its respective franchise. Naoto Ohshima's modern stuff by comparison looks like some college student hack took Pixar designs and then regurgitated them onto a canvas. And even most of his work at Sega like the character deigns in Sonic Adventure wasn't ANY better. I personally think the guy Naka got to do design work on Billy Hatcher was leagues better of an artist than Naoto Ohshima is. That's a painfully average character design, but at least it isn't all absurdly spindly-looking like so many of Naoto Ohshima's are. Maybe Billy Hatcher wasn't such a bad game after all. I think I should get around to playing my copy one of these days. I know that Balan Wonderworld wasn't a Sega game, but I feel like it's still worth mentioning considering it was made by the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog themselves. EDIT: I'm noticing now that Ohshima also worked on Sega games from the late 90s that are said to be wildly underrated either in terms of their visual design or their overall design like Burning Rangers, a game which heavily featured his own personal art direction, and also a game I have not played, so maybe you can in fact make arguments in favor of his work from that time. I don't know, I haven't played them. Also, DISLAIMER: I don't personally hate the design of Big the Cat. He's often Regarded as being the jar Jar Binx of Sonic a hedgehog, and even his visual design has supposedly been a point of serious contention for Sonic fanboys over the years, but I never personally took issue with this character. I simply mentioned Big out of respect for the Sonic fandom, which has always had an overwhelming hatred of him as a character since day one of Sonic Adventure's release. Even game critics complained about Big at the time, which is rare since usually only the fandoms or its members go after characters like this.
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