OMG Nintendo.com

The Smash Bros. Brawl Dojo updated recently with a guide to the All-Star Mode you unlock by getting all of the characters. Stephen Totilo at MTV Multiplayer noticed something rather strange about a few paragraphs toward the end of the page, presumably written by Masahiro Sakurai.

When theyre all lined up like this, it becomes obvious that there is roughly 6-year blank before and after Pikmin. While there have been big series since then like "Animal Crossing," "Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day," and "Wii Sports" it does seem that coming up with a completely new character-driven series has gotten more difficult recently.

Is it really difficulty cutting back on the number of major new characters, though? While it is certainly difficult to come up with a truly memorable face given how saturated gaming is with nostalgic icons, is it more likely that people aren't doing this because there's just not money in it anymore?

Think it over, folks: character dominated game marketing when everyone pretty much wanted to either clone Mario or find some way to improve on his formula. Now, people want to participate in the game more directly. Nintendo's way of doing this is to let you interact with a game directly, as in Brain Age or Wii Sports. In both titles the game is either talking to you, or you're putting a fantasy representation of yourself in a fantasy situation.

Now, let's think about the most popular video game character created in the past decade, Halo's Master Chief. If you don't play the game, there's no way to really know much about him at a glance. Encased in armor, his intentions and attitude are perfectly mysterious, although you can't deny he looks like a badass. While playing the game makes him more distinct, he's still visually identical to most of the other Space Marines that run around the setting. If you go into Halo 3's online multiplayer and customize a character, you're essentially making your own custom Master Chief.

Master is a cipher for the player in a very direct way that even silent, traditional protagonists like Link and Chrono didn't quite manage. I imagine few players really imagined being Link and wandering Hyrule while playing 8-bit Legend of the Zelda in the very visceral way you can imagine being Master Chief while playing through a Halo title. Increasingly, a lot of FPS and other titles eschew even creating a main character so the player can make their own avatar to interact with the game world, and people like that. Why shouldn't they?

I'm not going to argue this is good or bad, or better or worse than the older ways of asking players to use characters to interact with a game world. All that matters in the end is whether or not the game is good and offers an experience that's more than a passing distraction to the player. It is going to cut down on the number of mascot characters battling for gamer brainspace and make games like Super Smash Bros. more difficult to pull off, but perhaps that not really a bad thing at all.

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