The Wonder Years 3.27.08: Week 48 - Cool Spot

Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 03.27.2008

Catching up with the least-cool videogame protagonist of all time.

Welcome to the column where all gamers of a certain age come to wallow in 16-bit nostalgia. I'm your host, Owain J. Brimfield, and I'll be discussing some of the hidden gems and instant classics of gaming's golden era. Some of these games may crop up on the Wii's Virtual Console at some point, some may be consigned to the annals of history. Either way, they're worth tracking down if you missed them first time round, or replaying if you were lucky enough to catch them. Let's take a trip to:

COOL SPOT

(Virgin, Genesis & Super NES, 1993)

You know, I thought everyone had forgotten about Cool Spot, and rightly so. Created by some marketing genius back at the start of the 1990s to promote 7-Up (everyone's favorite fizzy lemon drink. You know, apart from lemonade.) Spot was, arguably, the laziest piece of character design in the history of the universe, comprising of, yes, a red spot, with arms, legs and some "cool" sunglasses. I wonder how much 7-Up paid the guy who came up with that, because if they're interested I have a whole host of potential mascots for companies to consider. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, but before long you may well be seeing a certain Radical Piece Of Lint adorning the box of your breakfast cereal. So anyways, back to Spot himself - a relic of the 90s, you'd think, but when I invoked his name in 411 Fact or Fiction a few weeks back (in the context of mentioning a gaming character who could never, ever be relevant again in this day and age), a number of people seemed to respond favorably, so I figured why not take a look at the game that made the guy famous.

Inspired, undoubtedly, by Sonic the Hedgehog and the rampant trend for "cool" mascots that prevailed in the early to mid 90s, 7-Up decided to shoehorn Spot into a videogame. Developed by Virgin Interactive and coded by Dave Perry (yes, the guy who went on to create Earthworm Jim was indeed responsible for the gaming anthropomorphization of Cool Spot), Cool Spot went the way of 95% of gaming tie-ins and presented us with yet another platform game. The premise, such as it is, is almost laughably flimsy - basically, our protagonist Spot has to venture through a series of levels set in a seaside locale and rescue his friends who have been, for some reason that escapes me at the moment (if there ever was one to begin with), imprisoned around the gameworld. Of course, Spot's friends all look exactly the same as he does, presumably because the production team had exhausted themselves when they finished animating one little red blob. And that's yer lot, folks. Mind you, I guess your game doesn't need a worthy plot when it has a protagonist this bodacious.

Controlling Spot is pretty much identical to most other 16-bit platform games. Spot wanders and jumps around exactly as you might expect, with his only notable character abilities being that he can climb up a variety of surfaces, and shoot soda bubbles in eight directions as an offensive weapon (pretty weak, surely?). In order to progress through the game's levels, Spot is required to dispatch a number of random baddies ranging from hermit crabs to robots, on his way to collecting a hundred red spots dotted around the various platforms. Yes, I'm sure it's at this point too that you'll begin to question how much effort Virgin really put into designing this game. A red spot has to rescue some red spots by collecting some red spots? Seriously guys, I could give you a better premise than that in the time it takes me to look in my sock drawer to locate a compelling protagonist. There's not even a boss battle to break up proceedings, although there are a few bonus stages that can be unlocked by picking up sufficient collectibles. Thankfully, the technical side of things shows that Virgin did at least spend some time actually developing the game - the graphics are all pleasingly smooth and nicely detailed, even with a fair number of baddies on screen at once, and the soundtrack is very decent. Spot's life meter is also a nice touch, taking the form of a red spot glued to the top of the screen that slowly peels and eventually falls off when Spot dies.

Now, I'll be honest, Cool Spot is a fine, if limited, game. It's short and the dozen or so levels aren't too varied, but it's reasonably challenging and it's got some excellent tunes. No, my gripe is with Spot himself. Never has a character been so egregiously and lazily designed with the intent of doing little more than selling soft drinks to the masses - it's almost as if he landed in a decent game by accident rather than design. The PAL release of the game didn't even manage to do that, removing the majority of the 7-Up references due to the fact that Spot himself was a purely American mascot, and thus surely removing any semblance of relevance that Cool Spot might have had to that market. In a way, it's almost fortunate that the game was merely good rather than very good, as that could have found a way to spawn more spotty offspring to make more money for 7-Up. In the pantheon of great gaming protagonists, Spot himself surely has to rank rock bottom.

Thankfully, the ravages of time haven't been entirely beneficial to Cool Spot, and the game is probably best left abandoned in the 90s along with other relics of that decade like 2 Unlimited and Eric Cantona. Spot did, at one time, threaten to morph into an actual franchise, with semi-sequel Spot Goes to Hollywood released a few years later, confusing observers of pop-culture and fans of Eric Hill alike, but thankfully the game's isometric nature derailed Spot even further and he sunk without a trace after that. Cool Spot really is one of those games that, despite any fond memories you may have, doesn't deserve to be brought of the cupboard of nostalgia for another play through, unless you have a fetish for red spots. On the other hand, I suppose if you fancy a whizz down memory lane to a time when Sonic really was the coolest character around and everyone else was just a pale imitation, it can't hurt to bring Cool Spot out. Just don't let him out in public.


Cool Spot trivia

• Cool Spot isn't the only 7-Up mascot to receive the videogame treatment - European spokes-character Fido Dido also starred in a horrendously generic platform game on the Genesis sometime around 1993.
  
• A bonus quest in each level sees Spot try to collect the letters 'UNCOLA' from around the level, somewhat ironic given that Virgin is now famous for their own brand of Cola.
  
• A NES puzzle game featuring the character was also released a few years prior to Cool Spot, a variant on the old Ataxx game from 1990.
  

The Videosphere

Let's take a look at this week's video highlight. Here we see the introduction of gaming's coolest *ahem* character, born into a realm of product placement and MIDI renditions of 50s surf-rock. Possibly the lamest character introduction of all time is here:




Reactions and interactions

Posted by: john

"ahh...Secret of Evermore, great article, but I wish you would have mentioned how insanely hard the final fight in this game is. I've owned this game for about 10 years and have only beaten it ONCE."

Yeah, Carltron and his minions were definitely pretty tough, but I don't remember the battle being in the same league as, say, Lavos or something. Still, it certainly took me a fair old few goes to complete the game as well, and in fact it may have inspired me to have another play through...


General indulgences

Every week in this section I'll endeavor to provide you, the faithful readers, with a fascinating insight into the various forms of entertainment currently dominating my spare time.

This week, I have been mostly enjoying:

Guitar Hero 3, again. It's a weird balance of the difficulty curve - I've gotten as far on Expert as I have on Hard, but still can't beat the final battle on either difficulty. Madness, I tells thee.

Just Like Blood by Tom McRae, an inspiring acousticy folky poppy rocky record that should have been heard by more people. Go out and buy it, you won't be disappointed.

Planet of the Apes, the 35th anniversary release of which is currently doing the rounds in the spring sales for a paltry £3. £3! That's a wonderful price to pay for a wonderful movie, which still has one of the best cinema soundtracks of all time.

and tidying the house, because the landlord is coming to visit tomorrow. Provided he doesn't find the brothel in the cellar, I think we'll be alright.


And finally…

As always, reader feedback and suggestions are welcome, I respond to everything so just drop me a line or leave a comment. You can also check out my science fiction column "The Flux Capacitor" over at 411 Movies. Next week in "The Wonder Years" - the 16-bit debut of a certain mystical ninja. Until then - keep it real, keep it retro.