the insert credit cold fifty: videogame icons: compiled by tim rogers -- with a foreword by chris kohler, fulbright scholar

23. Irvine (Final Fantasy VIII)

Final Fantasy characters have been memorable before, yeah. Yet they're usually memorable in such a dejected way. We remember Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife as a psychologically screwed-up young assassin with a giant blade. How, really, can we relate to that?

When Tetsuya Nomura wrote the scenario for Final Fantasy VIII, he was thinking of us, not just his girlfriend's pocketbook. He wanted characters we could relate to, like hardcore fists-a-pumping face-tattooed Zell, or plucky class president Selphie. Thrown into this mix is the man who eventually brings up the memory that everyone grew up together on the same orphanage (spoiler), the exchange student majoring in sniper-marksmanship, Irvine Kinneas.

Irvine, for one thing, wears a cowboy hat. We, the people of the real world, have no doubt seen someone wear a cowboy hat at some point; this goes a long way in our identifying with the character, whether he's studying rifle marksmanship in a fictitious fantasy high school or just the boy next door who works at the local filling station. What a little story reveals of this young lady's man goes a long way:

Faced with the task of assassinating a sorceress, Irvine suffers a sudden freeze of the trigger finger. When the game's hero, Squall, by his side for the purpose of suddenly turning into computer-graphics and jumping into the seat of a full-motion-video car, asks what the problem is, Irvine replies with a soft, human answer: "I've never shot a real person before."

Depths of human emotion are rolled back in this instant, and we get the perfect glimpse of the portrait of a videogame icon. Whenever he uses his shooting skill in random battle, sometimes getting a Limit Break and killing six enemies in one turn -- well, we appreciate him even more, then.

22. Umjammer Lammy

I'm talking with Edge editor Ste Curran at this very moment. We're discussing the first draft of my list, here. He's discussing how Masaya Matsuura's creations are best not neglected, and I'm saying how there should only be one. Luckily, we agree unanimously:

[17:50:03] ste: i love lammy. if i was a furry lammy would be my animal of choice.

[17:50:21] tim: she's a pretty sexy cartoon sheep, yeah

Far from being just a sexy cartoon sheep, I'd call Lammy the first lady of music/rhythm games -- and with good reason. Once a boy's genre inhabited only by the stately wool-cap-endowed dog Parappa the Rapper, the rhythm game didn't know what hit it when singing guitarist and all-around appealer to every man's T-shirted, jeans-wearing punk-rock girl fantasies hit the scene. Slick, and calm, and sexy, Lammy is our new hero. Independent of male assistance, Lammy rocks and rolls until her band Milk Can becomes a big success -- and it's more than just a big success in our eyes. It earns a place in our hearts, probably forever.

21. Godzilla / Ultraman

Games based on movies are usually crappy, right? Who can forget the monsterpiece that was Acclaim's Total Recall for NES? No one who played it, that's for sure. The philosophy behind those early licensed games was to make one, and then get away Scot-free with as much money as you could fit in your plaid sport coat.

Enter Godzilla. Toho Inc. made dozens of horrifyingly bad Godzilla games for the Famicom, Super Famicom, Nintendo 64, and even the Nintendo GameCube. Not a single one of these games is better than any of the others, and not three among them are playable. Still -- you've got to respect the gusto. You've got to respect such an honest attempt to turn a shoddily-made movie character into shoddily-made videogame character. Playing these games is, in a way, like looking at a big nasty rubber lizard on a silver screen. Some people like that sort of thing. Many don't. We at insert credit happen to like it. You got a problem with that?

(Replace "Godzilla" with "Ultraman" and "Toho" with "Bandai" in the above paragraph, and you can see the other side of this two-way tie.)

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