In the spirit of Video Gaming History Month, Gamespot recently published an article about forgotten videogame mascots: ambitious protagonists of videogames that either flopped, or were so obscure that they were almost entirely erased by Father Time, except maybe for the usual bunch of dedicated cult fans. An interesting and good article, as the sole mentioning of such names as Gex, Boogerman, and Commander Keen took me back to those early years of my gaming life. This nostalgic trip to the humble beginnings of my addiction, however, made me come up with many names that could have, or even should have been mentioned in Gamespot's article. In the end I figured there was no other solution than to give it a shot myself.

So in this first article of the series I aptly named Forgotten Mascots Overtime, I'm gonna take you back to 1998. When this year is mentioned in a gaming context, odds are you'll think of one thing, and one thing only: Ocarina of Time. Then there were other worthy titles, such as Banjo-Kazooie and Crash Team Racing, one of the most satisfying rip-offs ever. But I doubt the name Glover will come to anyone's mind. Who? Yes, exactly.

Glover is one of the many ill-fated protagonists to only ever appear in one game, also named Glover. It was a bland of platforming and various puzzle sequences, with the basic goal of the game being to transport a valuable crystal to the end of each level. Although the crystal would shatter into hundreds of pieces upon the slightest impact, Glover, who was actually the glove of a magician, knew some magic tricks that allowed him to transform the crystal into various types of balls (no, not those balls), such as a bouncy beach ball-type object, a bowling ball with which you could break obstructing blocks, and a small golf ball.

The game featured many challenging, and even frustrating platforming sequences, as well as some interesting boss battles, with the final battle against an enormous robot controlled by Cross Stitch (the other glove of the magician, and Glover's arch nemesis) being the absolute highlight. The levels featured familiar themes such as a dinosaur world and a horror-themed world, and more original areas such as the ones modeled after a circus and Ancient Greece respectively. The graphics for the time were downright amazing, and the music was simply beatiful. What hurt the game in the end is that the gameplay just wasn't interesting enough to warrant facing and overcoming the game's many frustrating parts, which were not uncommonly caused by camera issues rather than innovative level design.

Although Glover started out as a Nintendo 64 exclusive, PC and PSX version appeared eventually, with the latter being butchered by the critics, as it apparently was a disfunctional, watered-down port of the original, like many N64 to PSX ports at the time (hi Shadowman). Still, the N64 version was a small success in itself, selling near to a million copies. A sequel was scheduled for 2000, but it was cancelled for unclear reasons. It's likely that publisher Hasbro Interactive realised that it was increasingly tough to compete against the many, many 3D platformers that were being released at the time, not in the last place the instant blockbusters developed by Rare. The release of the Playstation 2 only complicated matters, and as a result we never got to hear from Glover again.

And maybe that's for the better. The first and only Glover game was a modest success: while it wasn't up to par with major titles such as Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie, it stood high above most of the mediocre 3D platformers that were being put out in a time when technology could just barely keep up. This begs the question, however, how a re-interpretation of this game would fare on current-gen hardware. The camera is less of a nuisance in modern 3D games, and Wii controls, for example, could elevate a gameplay concept that was already interesting in itself. One can only dream.