89: The anthropomorphic animal mascots with "tude" era of the early 90s
Yeah, Sonic deserves all the blame for this one. Somehow developers were misled to believe that just because it worked for one video game franchise, it would work for any game.
This has to be one of the most appallingly cliche and unimaginative trends in video game history. Sure it worked perfectly for Sonic, because he was just the right mix of badass and adorable, in both appearance and personality, and his games were amazing.
But that being said, he inspired this awful trend, you know how it is, a great formula works once and becomes a huge success, next thing you know everybody wants to recreate it.
Now not all Sonic clones are bad, in fact some of them were great in their own right, Rocket Knight Adventures, Ristar, ToeJam and Earl, Earthworm Jim. Those were great. But while they were inspired by Sonic they weren't a direct imitation of him either, gameplay wise they were original takes on the platforming formula. The good clones however were overshadowed by the tons of awful shameless Sonic ripoffs. Awesome Possum, Rocky Rodent, Wally Bear, Aero the Acro-Bat, Radical Rex and of course everyone's favorite representive of everything a video game mascot shouldn't be, Bubsy Bobcat. These characters were just obnoxious, annoying and with ugly designs, but more importantly their games were HORRIBLE.
Somehow dispite all these sh*tty games of the 16 bit era, the trend didn't die during the crossover to 3D in the late 90s and early 00s. Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Gex, Sly Cooper. Generic Sonic wannabees, but they were still good games so I can't complain about that.
Still, the 90s was flooded with the "tude" characters, some of them like Kid Chameleon still ended up being great games but so many of them were just horrible games and laughable attempts at "replacing" Sonic and Mario.
I mean look at that above picture, have you seen ANYTHING so generic and retarded? That has to be the most uncreative character in gaming history. If anyone came up with something like that now they would be crucified.