8 Failed Video Game Mascot Characters
These video game mascots failed to make an impact.

There are few things more important in video game design than creating a character who players can connect with in some fashion.
After all, if players don't like the lead character's design or find their personality unappealing, why would they potentially sink dozens of hours into playing as them?
On the flip side, a brilliant character can help elevate a decent game into something more. It's true across most genres, and certainly the case with platformers.
No genre is better known for producing marketable mascot characters than the platformer, which throughout the decades has served as a fertile vehicle to deliver some of the most iconic video game characters of all time - Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot, and so on.
Yet the pantheon of gaming history is also littered with far more prospective mascots who simply failed to make much of a dent for one reason or another.
No matter each game's overall quality, the central mascot failed to vibe with players at large, ensuring they either died a quick death or were forced to live on as mere nostalgia-spiced curios...
8. Blinx

Remember Blinx? On paper he actually sounded pretty neat - an anthropomorphic cat who could use a special vacuum cleaner to manipulate time, because why the hell not?
Believe it or not, Blinx was positioned by Microsoft as the intended mascot of the Xbox, amid the belief that he could be the brand's answer to Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, and so on.
But Blinx: The Time Sweeper released to middling reviews, with Blinx himself simply failing to strike a chord with players.
This prompted Microsoft to ultimately concede that the public had spoken, and Xbox's de facto mascot would actually be Halo's instantly iconic Master Chief.
Surprisingly, Microsoft did greenlight a much-forgotten Blinx sequel, which seemed to confirm its title character's doomed status by making him not even playable in his own game.
Blinx 2 was received with even greater indifference than its predecessor and basically marked the end of the franchise, as was confirmed when Microsoft let the Blinx trademark lapse at the end of 2014.