Long past their hay-day, arcade characters were once beloved mascots of the gaming world. In recent years, there has been a clear decline in their numbers due to various outside factors. However, we do believe that online casinos are one of the last places where classic arcade-style characters are being properly developed.
What is an Arcade-Style Character?
A lot of people will have their definition of what an arcade-style character is. We see arcade-style characters as being video “mascots”, who were mainly popular between the 1970s and 1990s.
Arcade-style characters often have simple designs, but they are incredibly easy to recognise. For example, if somebody looked at Pac-Man, Mario or Donkey Kong, they’d know exactly who they are.
Arcade characters were often designed to fit into many different types of games. This is why you’d find classic arcade characters, such as Sonic, included in pretty much every game genre under the sun (he even has a murder mystery game based on him).
When people fell in love with those characters, they developed an affinity for them. They would buy their games, merchandise and more.
How Traditional Games Have Moved Away from Arcade-Style Characters
While arcade-style characters do exist in video games, you find it’s mostly the long-standing classic characters with very few new introductions. This is because there are a few problems with them that don’t gel with modern gaming:
– The characters are designed to be simple and to fit into multiple genres. Most people no longer enjoy “mascot” characters. Outside of perennials such as Mario and Sonic, the last one to arguably have any real success was Crash Bandicoot, and his sales have fallen off a cliff.
– Gamers want their games to be a bit more serious, and those arcade-style characters don’t fit into that aesthetic.
– Gamers are craving better graphics and, honestly, most of the classic arcade characters were designed at a time when graphics were simple. Designers had to make use of their creativity to squeeze as much life as they could out of a few simple pixels.
Now, we’re not saying that classic arcade characters have completely disappeared from traditional video games. They still exist. Check out indie, mobile and casino games. You’ll find something pretty close to the classic style of these characters — some with completely new designs, some based on the classic characters of our past, such as the one from King Kong Cash games that Betway Insider can reveal in more detail.
While video games are developing new characters, nothing is quite catching on like they would have back in the 1980s to 1990s. This isn’t just because of marketing budgets being more limited. It is down to the fact that people aren’t craving arcade-style characters in their video games. People largely want far more complex games than they wanted back then.
Most of the arcade-style characters that are seeing success in traditional video games are the ones that saw a lot of success back in the day. You know which ones we’re talking about! Nintendo and Sega are probably the only companies developing games like this and seeing major success with the classics. Other than that, if you want your arcade character fix, you need to look elsewhere.
How Slot Machines are Filling the Void
Slot machines are designed to be simple. We are starting to see more complex slots than in the past, but, in comparison to modern video games, they’re still a simple concept and play style. This means that they are prime real estate for the creation of new arcade-style characters. We’re starting to see a lot of developers using the same characters across multiple games, much like the previous arcade-style developers would have done.
A lot of these characters have personality and limited backstories, too. Take the previously mentioned character from King Kong Cash, for instance. He has now appeared in a few different games. His nostalgic similarities to Donkey Kong are a good reason as to his appeal for many players, and Blueprint Gaming is trying to build multiple games based around the character, perhaps in a bid to cash in on the Nintendo character’s success.
Now, we currently doubt that any arcade-style character featured in a slot machine has the same success as the big arcade characters designed decades ago. But popularity and recognisability is growing, especially for the fact that these characters will be recognisable to gamblers and, if gamblers see a character they love, they might check out a new game featuring them. You might even find the occasional bit of merch with the Big Bass Bonanza fish on it, who knows.