Post Script
The little robot that could
You enter something of a time warp with Astro Bot, and not only because of all the cameos from game characters whose legacies stretch back to the PS1 era. No, the past also returns because Astro himself exhumes a discussion that last felt truly relevant in the 1990s. Back then, the notion of a game character as a brand mascot felt important for good reason. After all, what publisher didn’t want its Mario, a globally recognisable silhouette, trusted as a stamp of brilliance wherever he appeared? And since the platform game was all-conquering on consoles, and one of few genres where characters could express some personality, it was always the obvious choice. Sega’s Sonic The Hedgehog experiment remains the most-heralded example, of course, and to his credit he’s clung to fame all these years despite an uneven back catalogue.