These days I have been playing the catalog of the PlayStation 1 and 2 games that marked me when I was young or at the time I couldn’t play: the trilogy of Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Rayman, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, etc… And I realized that nowadays you practically don’t see characters like that in video games anymore.
Just as there was a time when all games were made for children, nowadays it seems that all games are made for teenagers and adults. Even those that don’t seem to be, such as Astrobot, appeal to the nostalgia of the more adult public.
What kind of heroes does my nephew have, for example? There’s Sonic, and it’s something in which we have a connection, but Sonic and other heroes that still remain current, like Mario or Link, are from an era that long predates him and perhaps for him they feel more like a thing of the past, similar to how I feel about Sailor Moon or Mazinger Z, which were heroes of my older siblings and parents respectively.
I don’t know of any heroes that are specifically intended to appeal to young people like my nephew, at least not in a “wholesome” way. Much of what he likes was not made with the child audience in mind, such as Five Nights At Freddy’s or Among Us; and what does, was made for more predatory motives, such as Poppy Playtime or Garten of Banban. The only thing I can think of is Minecraft and… I don’t know, it just doesn’t add up for me.
My nephew doesn’t have a Crash, a Spyro, a Sly to be nostalgic about when he gets to my age.
It’s a little… Bleak…
This world needs a new Leisure Suit Larry.
I’d argue that xennials didn’t really either. I certainly didn’t think of Mario, Sonic, Doom Guy, etc. as heroes. The closest that jumps immediately to mind as a named person is the protagonist of Wolf3d whose name I won’t attempt to spell here, but even then I didn’t give a shit about his story which, if memory serves, amounted to a blurb in a manual.
My heroes were in print in books and I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with that.
The closest that jumps immediately to mind as a named person is the protagonist of Wolf3d whose name I won’t attempt to spell her
BJ Blazkowicz. Grandfather of Billy “Blaze” Blazkowicz.
According to John Romero and Tom Hall, Billy is also the ancestor of B.J. Blazkowicz, AKA Doomguy. It’s Blazkowicz all the way down.
Oh really? That’s an awesome piece of trivia.
It’s really only canon until both Wolfenstein and Doom changed their timelines, but the original Doomguy was B.J. Blazkowicz III
I thought doomguy was me. The silent protagonist is kind of the new hero.
I was angry when Dragon Age 2 released and the main character was voiced because it made me feel like I couldn’t self insert. It’s such a foreign concept to me now.
This sounds more like your experience, than anything over-arching. PC games had less ‘heros’ than console gaming at the time but by 1992 there were tons of characters to latch on to. Dragon quest and Final Fantasy where running on full steam by the early 90s. Mega Man had his 5th game out by then, Mario was getting into karts, multiple Street Fighter games, Sonic in his second outing, and the list goes on. I think the point OP is making is not that every kid had a video game hero, but that they didn’t have to look very far to find one.
I don’t know that FF had a specific hero as it were. DQ I suppose did in that they were at least named and had some story. Megaman is a good callout, though. We did have them in the computer gaming world in the more nebulous sense (like how I see FF). I guess I’m also thinking about how hero is used here; is it an existing character with a backstory (more like DQ or even megaman) or some character you create (FF again but also all the old SSI games on PC and many others).
I was thinking of fighting games but OP said
nowadays it seems that all games are made for teenagers and adults.and I kinda threw the early SF and MK games into that bucket.
I think a lot of it has to do with how we game. Older generation games we tended to play an actual character. Then gaming shifted to be immersive, where you, the player, are the main character.
This.
Maybe that’s why I personally get irritated by games that aren’t hardcore RPGs (like New Vegas) where the character is an empty canvas with no personality of its own. I’m more used to being told “You’re this hero. You need to go to this place and defeat this villain. You like chillidog and freedom. Have fun!”
Sorta like Master Chief?
Halo 1’s release (2001) is closer to the first appearance of Mario (1981) than present day (2025). I would definitely call it a legacy IP.
Why would you do this.
Sorta, yes. Although I see Master Chief more like a teen hero.
Immortals Fenyx Rising?
I think there are still plenty of protagonists aimed at kids. But since the industry has grown so much since we were kids, and because media is so fractured and niche these days, you and I just don’t play those games as adults.
I mean didn’t they just make a Minecraft movie, seems like Steve might count
No no no. You’re thinking of Seaseme Street. The count. He counts.
How many times can I make bad jokes? 1…2…3!!! Ah ah ah!
Minecraft isn’t exactly new though, and he’s barely even a character let alone a hero.
I literally made an indie game to fill in this gap. It’s local coop and was designed for kids and parents to play together.
It’s called:
INK INSIDE (PC now, all consoles soon)
Brain David Gilbert voices the lead: Stick the stick figure. The whole cast are children’s drawings come to life living in a kids notebook that’s getting corrupted by a slow leak dripping water into their world and warping them into “sog” monsters.
It’s a game based on a lost pilot to a Nickelodeon show, and as such is both a cartoon and action RPG with a narrative that follows the first season of what you used to see on Saturday Morning.
It’s pretty much what you’re looking for imo, but since we’re indie, marketing has not been treating us well 😅
Reception from our intended younger audience has been glowing. Just harder to sell to kids as they don’t have money 😑
I thought the name of the game sounded familiar, so I ended up looking at the Steam page and I was right when Stumpt did a video on it, pretty sure. Definitely gonna have to at least check out the demo because it looks interesting enough.
Looked it up and they definitely did a video on it. Sk definitely gonna at least check out the demo. Hope sales pick up.
Thank you so much! 😁
We lucked out and got some love from some great streamers like Stumpt, Atlas Anarchy, Blazekin, and some others. All organically through promoting the game at places like PAX and LA Comicon.
But since a good amount of that attention was before we launched, it mostly translated to wishlists. (Which certainly still helps).
Regardless, BOTH wishlists and reviews do amazing for us - so if you enjoy the “First Page” demo, let us know! 🙂
And thanks again!
This looks awesome!
It checks a lot of boxes for me:
- Indie
- local co-op
- playable demo
- Brian David Gilbert?!
I’ve never heard about this before, so I’m glad you shared. It looks like it’d be great to play with my nephew. Hope you can make the sequels!
For the rest of you’s: https://www.inkinsidegame.com/
Thank you so much! Very proud of what we’ve made, as we made it exactly for people like you! 🙂 Hope you enjoy and thanks for sharing the link!
Sweet! Now i have something to gift my nephew and play together!
Awesome! Thank you so much! We love the support! And I’m sure you’ll both get a kick out of it 😁
My favorite modern video game hero is John Elden Ring.
I’m a bigger fan of Bill Gates’ son, Baldurs Gates the Third.
Du Bois from Disco Elysium?
Damn, you’re right. I forgot about him.
A role model for any child
for the modern child with liver cirrhosis
Why are heroes so important? Role models are one thing, but hero worship is an incredibly problematic concept especially at a young age. The idea of an unquestionably good person is a myth that lends itself to authoritarianism, and that should die a slow agonizing death. It’s a little much to get deep into stuff like that for a kids game, but I’m certainly not sad to see “blindly good” characters go - it’s why Bluey is nice for how imperfect the parents are, even if they’re still an unrealistic ideal with how much time and energy the parents have.
Ok, but my idea of “hero” is more based on the “role model” that you say. I totally agree with what you say that hero worship is one of the points that leads to the proliferation of fascism, it’s just that I get the impression that children now have no role models, at least not as we had back then, models for them, of their time. Not in video games at least, in series maybe there are, like in Bluey as you say.
(I was thinking of mentioning Paw Patrol, but that’s Copaganda and it’s a nono for me).
Sony is trying to make Alloy from Horizon a mainstream titular Sony franchise character…poorly (LEGO horizon was the last straw)
Astrobot
…
I mean, the last Crash game came out in 2020. Ratchet was 2021, Spyro 2018, Rayman all the way back in 2013, but… you know you can still buy it. Sonic was 2023, just like Mario. Zelda starred in a game in 2024.
And of course Astrobot was last year’s GOTY.
Consider the possibility that you aren’t as aware of the characters that will stick with this generation because you’re not playing the games they are.
Although it’s entirely possible you are. Kids in my life are quite obsessed with Minecraft, Animal Crossing and Pokemon in extremely familiar ways. I semi-successfuly introduced Professor Layton to some of them, but I may have jumped the gun on that one, as they found it a bit too hard still.
I am referring to new heroes for this generation, not to the ones that have been around for more than 20 or 30 years…
Yeah but… the only reason you had new heroes then is that videogames didn’t exist before.
We also got games with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny. It wasn’t depressing to my parents that I was watching Road Runner cartoons from the 50s. They were new to me.
There ARE new games, too. I mentioned Astrobot, you mentioned Minecraft. Just for as long as I’ve been alive kids have gotten into Pokemon Ben10, Splatoon, a bunch of Lego games, Animal Crossing, Spongebob…
But why would it be invalid for them to discover Sonic and Mario and Crash and Spyro in the 2020s? It’s new to them. They can be nostalgic about the same stuff you and I are, just like I am nostalgic about Daffy Duck or Star Trek even if they were technically before my time. Spider-Man is as popular with kids now as it was when I found out about it, and the whole thing was 20-30 years old when I got around to it.
OK, but are we all going to be nostalgic for the same three things for the next few decades?
Ben 10 was new to me because it really was, I still remember watching the first episode when it came out, as well as Adventure Time, Regular Show, Clarence, etc. But back to the games… There was also a time when Sly, Rayman, Jak and so on were completely and utterly new, not in perception but in fact, just as Sonic and Mario were decades before them.
Don’t young people deserve to have their own heroes for whom they alone feel nostalgia? Do we have to lend our nostalgia to them?
Yeah, but… they do.
It’s just it’s always going to be a mix of new and old things. Just like you got into Batman from the 1930s and Mario from the 80s they’ll be into Spider-Man from the 60s, Minecraft from the 10s and Astrobot from the 20s.
That’s how culture works. Some things stick around, others phase out, new ones come in.
I guess you got a point there…
Why make the distinction?
Can they not be considered video game heroes for kids just because they have existed for a while?
I’m not saying they can’t be considered video games heroes for kids, but they are more heroes of past generations than of this generation, which I think needs their own heroes to grow up with and have a connection that only they can have.
I think Astrobot is an example of what you’re talking about.
Also really good observation about FNAF. I’ve noticed the same. What’s interesting is that the longer the franchise go the more they push Purple Guy/Afton as the main antagonist and even make Freddy into a hero at times. It’s like this big unexpected success and they need to make it more acceptable but sort of painted themselves into a corner over time lol.
It’s also partially because the gaming market has just gotten a lot more adults with us growing up. But I agree it’d be great to have more games directed to children that’s not from Nintendo.
There’s a character in Clair Obscur that could definitely be classified as a hero. Moreso than most, actually.
Are you saying Steve isn’t a videogame hero?
Steve is a blank canvas, even more devoid of autonomy than, say, Link. Even though Link never speaks or expresses ideas of his own, one can get an idea of what he’s like based on certain clues given in the games, and we know at the very least that he’s a classic hero who sacrifices himself for the common good.
Steve is a pure avatar, if he has his own name just because even objects have one. Steve is everything the player wants him to be, hero, explorer, slaver, exploiter… and there will never be a conflict; contrary to Link, who cannot stop being a hero.
My point is that, in my opinion, a hero must have his own character and autonomy, however minimal it may be, so that one can see in them an ideal to which to point to (Link’s bravery, Sonic’s love of freedom, etc.).
Just to add to this, for a very long time, he wasn’t even called Steve - he was called “Steve?” for the precise reason that they’re not really a character at all.
Link also has a personality via other media. (Which, I suppose Steve now has, too, what with the movie and other story based games that aren’t the main game itself)
“Excuuuuuuuse me, Princess!”
One of my favorite things in TOTK is how several NPCs talk about Link’s activities and life from between BOTW and TOTK and they very much make it seem like the one in the games has the same kind of personality as the one from the TV series.
Steve isnt even the default character of the game
…?
What am I missing here?
Alex, Zuri, Ari, Noor, Makena, Efe, Kai and Sunny
…???
I’m so lost here.
When not choosing or not being able to choose a skin in minecraft, the game chooses a random skin between those characters and Steve
CHICKEN JOCKEY
Flint and steel!
I agree it’s bleak, but it’s just different. They have youtubers to rally behind. They’ll be fine.
Dude, That’s what worries me the most. Some of those guys are weirdos and really awful people.
Fine?! Have you seen those YouTubers?!
Bunch of greedy sociopaths trying to con people into buying drinks with manufactured scarcity. There’s something to look up to there.
Yuck.
