These days I have been playing the catalog of the PlayStation 1 and 2 games that marked me when I was young or at the time I couldn’t play: the trilogy of Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Rayman, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, etc… And I realized that nowadays you practically don’t see characters like that in video games anymore.
Just as there was a time when all games were made for children, nowadays it seems that all games are made for teenagers and adults. Even those that don’t seem to be, such as Astrobot, appeal to the nostalgia of the more adult public.
What kind of heroes does my nephew have, for example? There’s Sonic, and it’s something in which we have a connection, but Sonic and other heroes that still remain current, like Mario or Link, are from an era that long predates him and perhaps for him they feel more like a thing of the past, similar to how I feel about Sailor Moon or Mazinger Z, which were heroes of my older siblings and parents respectively.
I don’t know of any heroes that are specifically intended to appeal to young people like my nephew, at least not in a “wholesome” way. Much of what he likes was not made with the child audience in mind, such as Five Nights At Freddy’s or Among Us; and what does, was made for more predatory motives, such as Poppy Playtime or Garten of Banban. The only thing I can think of is Minecraft and… I don’t know, it just doesn’t add up for me.
My nephew doesn’t have a Crash, a Spyro, a Sly to be nostalgic about when he gets to my age.
It’s a little… Bleak…
This sounds more like your experience, than anything over-arching. PC games had less ‘heros’ than console gaming at the time but by 1992 there were tons of characters to latch on to. Dragon quest and Final Fantasy where running on full steam by the early 90s. Mega Man had his 5th game out by then, Mario was getting into karts, multiple Street Fighter games, Sonic in his second outing, and the list goes on. I think the point OP is making is not that every kid had a video game hero, but that they didn’t have to look very far to find one.
I don’t know that FF had a specific hero as it were. DQ I suppose did in that they were at least named and had some story. Megaman is a good callout, though. We did have them in the computer gaming world in the more nebulous sense (like how I see FF). I guess I’m also thinking about how hero is used here; is it an existing character with a backstory (more like DQ or even megaman) or some character you create (FF again but also all the old SSI games on PC and many others).
I was thinking of fighting games but OP said
nowadays it seems that all games are made for teenagers and adults.and I kinda threw the early SF and MK games into that bucket.