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Comment on PC Gaming’s Mascot Squad—who makes the cut?

Sure, a lot of these characters have gone multiplatform. But let’s be real, they’ll always have PC in their blood.

Doomguy was fragging demons on a beige tower long before he set foot on a console. Geralt was busy crashing Windows installs before he ever picked up a PlayStation trophy. Vault Boy practically has “runs best on PC” stamped on his forehead. Console gamers might have visiting rights now, but these mascots grew up in the wild west of PC gaming, and that’s where their roots (and all the weird mods) are.

And honestly, you can play Mario games on PC too—emulation is a thing—but everyone still thinks of Mario as a Nintendo icon. Same logic applies here. PC or bust.

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dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Define “long.” I disagree with the Doomguy proposal explicitly, because Doom appeared on the Sega 32x in November of 1994 which was barely a year after the initial PC release. One of the defining aspects of gaming in the mid '90s was the monumentally cynical gold rush of trying to cram Doom onto any damn fool console as fast as possible, in a vain attempt to capture part of the lightning and make those sales. And until the Playstation and arguably the N64, every attempt failed spectacularly in various ways.

The definitive Doom experience remaining locked to the PC for those few years was absolutely not for a lack of trying. Every greedy video game exec on the planet wanted Doom on their system. id themselves assisted with several of these ports in various ways and they had absolutely no intention of leaving Doom only on PC, either, if they could help it.

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- atomicpoet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Totally fair, but let’s put “long” in context—by ’90s gaming standards, a year was practically an eternity. That’s like five TikTok trends or three failed live-service shooters today.
  
  And sure, there were console ports flying around faster than a cacodemon on nightmare mode, but let’s be honest: nobody was lining up to play Doom on the 32X, Jaguar, or 3DO. Most people didn’t even know what a 32X was, let alone own one.
  
  The SNES version had about as much horsepower as a Roomba with a dying battery.
  
  Meanwhile, on PC, Doom was running smooth, loud, and proud, exactly how John Romero intended—mouse, keyboard, and all. Even the execs chasing that gold rush had to admit: the real party was on DOS. If you wanted Doom at its best, you were booting it up on a beige box, not squinting at a blurry mess on a doomed add-on.
  
  So yeah, everyone wanted Doom, but only the PC really delivered. The ports were like decaf coffee. Sure, you can drink it, but why would you?
  
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