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

35. Censored Goku (Dragon Power)

We who play videogames would be nothing without complaints we pretend to have. Case in point: back in 1986, Bandai releases Dragon Power on the NES, me and my brother Roy rent it, and we get all the way to the fourth level before giving up. The game is just too darn hard for us. We don't play the game for a long time. In fact, I don't come across the game again for several years. When I do, Roy has totally moved in with a really large girlfriend, and I haven't seen him in a long time. I buy the game for a dollar-ninety-nine at a flea market. By this time, I know -- this game is actually based on Dragon Ball, Japanese artist Akira Toriyama's representation of Wu Ch'eng En's "Legend of the Monkey King." The game is a pop-culture-y send-up of this legend. In Japan, the main character is monkey-boy-superhero Son Goku, complete with giant spiky hairdo. On the American cartridge decal, Goku is reduced to a midget-faced karate kid in a white suit with a black belt, when he clearly looks nothing like that in the game. As if that's not bad enough, in the game, his large spiky hair is sheared off. His head is round as a basketball. Am I supposed to enjoy the game like this, all these years later, now that I'm educated about Japanese culture and comic books? Heck no. Why didn't Bandai leave the comic-bookiness in, way back when? What were they afraid of? I totally would have been able to handle it. I'd have grown up stronger and sexier if they'd left it in. For the pain it causes me to think of him -- for what he represents: the demon of bad localization that must be wished away, Censored Goku, you will not be forgotten as long as I have a breath in my chest.

34. Ty the Tasmanian Tiger

You know when videogames were at their best? In those dark, early ages, where, like in Martin Scorcese's recent film Gangs of New York, all the battles were fought on the streets, bare-knuckle style. I'm talking about the age of constant competition and one-upmanship wherein games were sold not in the toy stores -- they were sold on the jungle gym, as a sixth-grader told off a fourth-grader for liking Legendary Axe better than Ghouls 'n' Ghosts. Well, now that those days have passed and the majority of my conversations about videogames occur with childhood friend Eric-Jon Waugh, also a writer for this fine website, about Sonic the Hedgehog's inner demons as expressed in Sonic Adventure 2 -- well, I feel like such an introvert.

Along comes Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, star of Titus' Ty The Tasmanian Tiger. He's just some dumb kind of tiger. He's wearing a big twelve-gallon Australian-style hat. He carries a boomerang.

I've never played Titus' Ty The Tasmanian Tiger. I don't imagine I ever will. I have, however, seen a print advertisement for it.

In this advertisement, Ty stands, boomerang in hand, grimace on face, in the doorway of a real-life hospital room. In the room are three beds, each one playing rest-platform to a body-casted individual. One of them clearly has a black mustache. One clearly has spines and triangular shoes. One is clearly Crash Bandicoot.

In other words: Ty has just killed our three most beloved mascots without, for all intents and purposes, even starring in a game of his own. You've got to love that gusto.

33. Galuf (Final Fantasy V)

The Final Fantasy series is always about tragedy. Sure, giant robots, planet-bound asteroids, and sci-fi villains abound; yet, at the core of each game is a small, quiet tragedy. This is a tradition established with the character of Galuf from Final Fantasy V. Galuf, under the guise of an old man, arrives from the moon on -- you guessed it -- a meteorite. Trouble begins right off the bat for the poor old guy -- he hits his head on the way down, and suffers amnesia. Luckily, hero Barts and princess Raina are on hand to carry the old man through his journey to stop the world from ending -- a task that will, in its being carried out, see the end of Galuf himself! Final Fantasy V tackles the tough themes of responsibility in the face of wiped identity, single-parentage, and royal duty with a finesse and flair that the Final Fantasy series has become more-than-known for. It all started here, folks: the beginning of Final Fantasy's maturity. Don't believe the other guys. I cry more at the end of this one than at the end of Total Recall.

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