I would say Sega should've used her more often, but that's my pervy mind going places. She looks like some nice rule 34 material.
Wow, that's the first time I see actual artwork of him, and an actual screenshot of Wonder Library... and what could be some scrapped cover art for Dynamite Headdy! Thank you very much for that link.
Is it me or are people naming any well-known character as a mascot? And I don't think Sega used any mascots until they got into the console business, since in arcades nobody really cared about that kind of stuff =/ She's nice (and much better dressed in the MCD version), but honestly, she's pretty... generic. Besides she doesn't really appear anywhere but in the title screen and game select menu (well, and the Sega scream in the MCD case). They probably put her there to make the interface less dull and nothing more. Or was she used in Game Toshokan? (we never saw the damn thing in action so I don't think anybody knows how the interface is meant to look like...)
In this specific case I'm referring to a mascot as defined under "A character that was used in promotional material to sell consoles, hardware and software that may or may not actually tie in to said character in any way whatsoever." As in, a character specifically created for marketing purposes. In my specific examples, Sega Pat (and the blue bird dude) were used to market the Sega Channel without actually being the star of any videogame. Sonic is considered a mascot not for his Sonic games, but for how he's prominently featured in Sega merch and promotional material that he otherwise isn't really related to. In relation to other characters featured; Any one that was only used in a one-shot game is not a mascot by definition, cute character design be damned. Most of the other named examples (Strrets of Rage? Toejam and Earl?) were not used to promote Sega in anywhere -close- to the same degree as Sonic was. You don't just name every main character from every Sega 1st party franchise a mascot. (Bug, IIRC, was a unique case of a failed mascot attempt.)
GUNSTAR RED Hm, I wonder: are there specific divisional mascots? Like do anyu of the arcade people ahve a separate mascot?
There are points to be made about Flicky/Pengo - they do cameo in quite a few Sega arcade games (Flicky in Super Monaco GP, Pengo in Up'n Down) BUT... I wouldn't really go so far to say they were "mascots". No more than that Galaxian ship showing up in dozens of Namco games.
I expected that =P Eh, at this point I'm guessing gaming mascots in general have fallen into disuse. I can't readily name a mascot that, say, Capcom or Konami or EA has (or had, for that matter) :/ I know Sony has that cat thing but I don't know how far they're pushing it, though they are bringing him/her outside of Japan... Meanwhile I look at older games and companies all over the place have mascots (who the hell is that Tecmo rabbit?) and at this point I'm just rambling
And don't forget Epsilon-Eagle (Alien Soldier)! Also to answer Andlabs and Or4ng3, I named as many characters as I did because generally when I think of a game company, I don't just think of the mascots they use and have used, rather I think of all the characters they made and that star in a number of games (even just one), this just might be me but all these characters are what I think about when I think of a company like Sega, much like you can say that Ryu is a "mascot" of Capcom.
I can CAPTAIN COMMANDO except they kept changing the way he looked. And this has nothing to do with Sega. Similar to Asobin though - featured in a lot of US NES manuals.
Yeah, Palmtree for AM-2. Had Team Andromeda lasted longer, they'd probably would have used the Heresy Dragon as a mascot.
Captain Commando is kind of an odd case because no one actually remembers him from any point before Marvel Vs. Capcom (hence the joke of his ending.). If anything, Mega Man is was may be considered more a mascot to them. You can kinda tell with titles like Dead Rising and UMvC3 that it's tough for them to make a game -without- a Mega Man cameo or in-joke. Konami probably had difficulty holding a mascot because they had to sell games under different developing labels such as Ultra Games. Course, they had the TMNT License, so they didn't even -need- one. All they had to do was slap the Ninja Turtles on their ads and viola! If we're talking third-parties, though, guess it's time to get Pac-Man by Namco out of the way.
Might help here if we settled on a real definition of 'mascot' and kept it to Sega first-party. On TV in the UK (possibly the rest of Europe) there was this bizarre talking test-card stripe thing that also adorned some of the ads in magazines, and there was also the skull from the 'Pirate TV' ad campaign that even made it to the covers of some games, if I recall. Are these two monstrosities mascots?
The MvsC ending wasn't a jab at no one remembering him, it was just a carbon copy of his original ending. Same as with Strider Hiryuu.
They tried pushing Sparkster from Rocket Knight Adventures as a mascot for a while in the nineties. I remember seeing him in manuals for games (though the only specific release I can think of is the European manual for Snatcher). Both Pentarou from Penguin Adventure and the Easter Island statues from Gradius have more right to the claim, as they've appeared in many more Konami games than Sparkster.
