10 Iconic Video Game Characters Created By Fans

Creating a video game character who truly stands out from the pack and captures fans' imaginations is far tougher than it looks, and so it's little surprise that so many characters end up feeling pretty samey, even uninspired.

Sometimes the best work doesn't come directly from the developers themselves, but fans who channelled their own creative juices to come up with a character concept or design which actually merited inclusion in the game proper.

And so, these iconic video game characters were all the brainchildren of people outside the development process itself - whether mere consumers or members of the press - who did so out of a pure love for the game itself.

The results are fascinatingly diverse, from modders whose creations were plugged into the actual game, to fans who sprouted the seed for a character brought to life by the developers, and everything in-between.

No matter how it all worked out, these 10 video game characters are all iconic and statuesque in their own way, and only came to be because fans effectively willed them into existence...

As much as Ms. Pac-Man might seem like a natural expansion of the Pac-Man brand, her game arriving just two years after the original, that actually isn't the case at all.

What would become Ms. Pac-Man started out life as an unofficial mod for Pac-Man called Crazy Otto, which was developed by General Computer Corporation, a small company of hobbyists who specialised in creating unlicensed custom mod kits for arcade games.

Crazy Otto featured cutscenes with Crazy Otto's female counterpart, and though Atari initially sued GCC for violating their copyrights, they ultimately ended up hiring the company to develop games for them.

This led to GCC repurposing Crazy Otto into a Pac-Man sequel initially entitled Super Pac-Man, but the prospect of Pac-Man having his own female equivalent stuck, and so Ms. Pac-Man was born, hair bow and all.