My brother was recently in town, and I was talking to him about how I planned to make this installment to the series. He told me that the mascot I planned to cover could not have actually failed because he has a game on the Virtual Console. I countered by telling him that, through that logic, Deadly Towers was highly successful. He has yet to submit a rebuttal. Today's Mascot That Failed is none other than...


Ristar

Ristar was a platformer developed by Sonic Team (developers of some game about a hedgehog that isn't Ron Jeremy) and released for Genesis in 1995. The game followed Ristar as he tries to stop the evil Kaiser Greedy, who has kidnapped the Legendary Hero who protects the Valdi System. Ristar was able to attack enemies by grabbing them and then ramming into them with his face. The game achieved great critical success, but only moderate sales, and really, in this world, that's all that matters. Ristar never saw a sequel, but is considered by some people to be the best Genesis game to not have the word "Sonic" in the title. I personally own Ristar on the Virtual Console, and I must say, the game is fantastic. The worlds are gorgeous and the music is superb. It also has one of the best character death animations that I have ever seen in a platformer.

So why did Ristar fail? Maybe it's because he was in a Genesis game that didn't involve Sonic the Hedgehog. Maybe it's because the Saturn was just 3 months away from it's North American release, and people didn't want to purchase a game for a near obsolete console (even though, at the time, the public thought the Saturn was going to be released in September, an extra 4 months past the eventual May release date, the Genesis was still amazingly close to doom). If I had to guess, I'd say it's because Sega is allergic to keeping any mascots other than Sonic the Hedgehog. If Ristar were to make a comeback, I'd buy it faster than Ron Workman could give it a review score of 11/10.

Your thoughts?

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