History of the Spot series of games

Making cool advertising is not an easy task. Creativity, big budgets, stars, nativeness, humor and songs that stick in the memory are used.

But sometimes everything goes too far and the understanding comes that TV commercials alone cannot show the full power of the brand. This is where TV series, films, some activities in the real world and, of course, games come to the rescue.

Since this section is dedicated to games of the 80-90s, it is worth remembering such game advertising as games about Chester (Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool, Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest), endless projects of McDonald’s (McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure, M.C. Kids, Global Gladiators, Donald Land, McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure), Pepsiman, UFO Kamen Yakisoban, Zool, as well as the hero of this issue – the Spot game series.

How did this round thing appear and where did it disappear?? What are the reasons for the differences between the European version of Cool Spot and the American one?? What were the first Spot games and why were they so lame?? In short, again intrigues, again scandals, again old games, again we tune our nostalgimeter to the desired frequency and again plunge into the past.

And your choice of text or video version of this blog will help you with this. Enjoy watching/reading!

At the end of the 80s, 7up’s people looked around, analyzed the market, carefully monitored their competitors and came to the most logical and correct conclusion – for success they desperately needed their own talisman. And while Chester loved Cheetos, McDonald’s Ronald spread the fear of clowns, mothers trusted, and children adored Kwiki the rabbit, 7up’s mascot became… no, not Spot. Well, for now.

Sue Rose, an American animator, came to help in choosing one and suggested a certain Fido Dido as the cartoon face of the brand. And she offered, I must say, very successfully. After all, this painted guy remains a talisman to this day.

“Pa-pa-pagadi, where is Spot? If it all started with Fido and to this day he flaunts everywhere?- you ask. I love you for asking questions like this! Let’s dive into the abyss of the soda business. Well, let’s take a gentle plunge, ankle-deep.

The fact is that in the USA and abroad the 7up trademark is owned by different companies – Dr Pepper Snapple Group and PepsiCo, respectively. Fido Dido first appeared and settled in television advertising in the states. But in 1988 the rights were transferred to PepsiCo, which now meant its presence in advertising outside the most democratic part of the planet.

One talisman was given away, so it’s time to create a new one. Meanwhile, the idea lay on the surface. More precisely on the 7up bottle. All that remains is to imagine that this circle can be selected from the label, add a couple of attributes that add coolness and resemblance to Mickey Mouse, shoot a couple of commercials for TV and create a game.

Most people know this round guy from Sega games, but the first game with Spot’s participation was Spot: The Video Game in 1990. The title does not shine with originality, but just appreciate the “genius” of the choice of genre.

While platformers were conquering the market and the minds and hearts of gamers of varying degrees of youth at an insane speed, the developers from Virgin Mastertronic made a game in the…puzzle genre.

The main goal of the game is to take up more space on the board with your chips than your opponent. By moving up to two squares, you either duplicate your piece or take away enemy ones standing in your way. And just like that, move by move, you fill all the space on the board, where the winner will be the participant with the most chips of his color.

The role of our hero of the issue here is approximately the same as that of Bruce Willis in his last years of acting. No, Spot did not become the face of the Russian operator. All participation came down to appearance, the need to show off your appearance and make a couple of moves.

In general, this is all that the project consists of. Move the pieces, watch several prepared animations, listen to equally prepared sounds for these animations. Is this interesting?? At least a couple of games sticky. Do you want to drink some sparkling gastritis potion after this?? Not at all. Hurry up and drink some tea with your little finger stuck out, because while all the rabble were stupid in action games, you got crazy smart here in a logical-strategic-hell-knows-who-knows-what-oriented masterpiece among logical-strategic-hell-knows-who-hell-knows-oriented games. But the need to follow genre trends very soon made itself felt.

After all, this was just the beginning. The low budget of this video game test allowed us to test the waters without tangible consequences and draw the necessary conclusions. Therefore, just two years later, the result of a merger of the game about Chip ‘n’ Dale, Mario and Game Boy exclusivity was born. one can only envy the creativity of the 7up analytical group.

As for the game itself, this, as already mentioned, is the child of Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers and Super Mario Bros. At the same time, such a child…well, you know…where mom didn’t want, dad didn’t try. We run, jump, throw boxes, listen to the squeak of the local soundtrack, epically fight the only boss, look at the gray backdrops, looking for the meaning of life in this gray world. “Some kind of hack,” you say. And I will answer: “even more than you think”.

The symbiosis of Visual Concepts as a developer and Virgin Interactive as a publisher is a perfect example of the love of producing games under advertising licenses and not the love of work. Although this applies more to the former, because Visual Concepts is currently busy developing a series of NBA and WWE games whose quality is sometimes depressing.

Where do these words come from?? The fact is that the ears of chipmunks and the mustache of an Italian sticking out here and there in the game, of course, have a place to be, but first of all this relates to another project – McDonaldland. So, Spot: The Cool Adventure is nothing more than a reskin of the necessary models for advertising the desired product. Otherwise, the same levels, the same gameplay, the same boss, with whom it’s not clear what our differences are, but consider it the same game!

In short, playing this Casinospingenie.co.uk is not interesting, like advertising is an even stranger creation than the first game (after all, promoting something that should be very recognizable, not least by its color, on a device with a monochrome screen is an “interesting” solution), Cool Adventure turned out to be not so cool, let’s uncover the normal consoles and move on to projects already recognizable to many.

The year 1993 in the video game industry was marked by the release of a whole bunch of beloved hits, the most technologically advanced game on Sega, as well as a new round of development for our red-faced character.

Virgin Interactive got rid of the apparently annoying appendage in the form of third-party developers, increased the budget, remained committed to the platformer genre and at the same time partially retained a semi-hacky approach to work, which for some reason is not so pronounced in other games developed and published by it. Later I’ll explain what this means, even if those who have passed Cool Spot understand what we’re talking about.

I’d like to immediately jump ahead and praise the big leap in both gaming and advertising terms. Already in the initial menu we see a bottle of 7up in full screen from which the main character appears and dashes through it as if we were watching the sequel to “Point Break”. After this, unprepared children’s minds immediately ran to grab all the soda from the nearest stores.

Although there is an interesting fact here. Still remember that at that time outside of the US, 7up’s mascot was Fido Dido? So, the above-described screensaver in the menu appeared exclusively in the American version. In Europe, the 7up label was removed, leaving only a bare bottle with a note inside. It was also removed from the bonus levels, bashfully replaced by the inscription Pop.

As for the game as a whole, this is finally a new strong representative of jumping rope adventure games with nice graphics, smooth animations, original and very recognizable sounds, as well as a couple of problems. But first things first.

We have before us the already so familiar formula “run, shoot, collecting coins” that the young gamer at that time had seen more than once, or even dozens of times (depending on the money in the family and the number of friends with consoles ready to exchange cartridges), but with some features. For example, we shoot not just pebbles, apples, energy clusters or, God forgive me, snot with farts (but we will return to this topic in the next issues), but air bubbles. It seems like a small thing, but attention to detail. Well, coins are not needed for just some bonuses, but are necessary to complete the level. If you have accumulated enough coins, you can rescue your friend from the cage. Yes, the game raises themes of corruption and corruption of legal guards.

The truth is why other Spots were imprisoned and why they are in these locations is unclear. But we are given imagination not only for looking at Dad’s mug with a half-naked aunt drawn (and filling the mug with boiling water actually allowed us to grow up a little faster… hmm, the world did not deserve such technologies). So here are the levels.

In fact, it is unlikely that the design of these locations will be able to bring anything new to our gaming experience. Haven’t you and I seen the basements of houses covered with cobwebs?? Complete metal structures factories? Or a beach with reggae playing in the background, after which you want to use an already empty bottle of 7up?

But seriously (and how can one not be serious in our pre-retirement almost thirties), the levels have some problems.

Let’s start with something funny. Still remember the words about the unique approach to the work of a publisher who has now become a developer? So, there are 11 levels in the game, if you don’t take bonus gags. “Well, that’s fine,” you say. Normal, yes, but there are only 7 locations. After completing the 6th level, you will have to visit all the previous places in reverse order, except perhaps those that were in the 4th level (and this is very good, but the principle of passing it remains the same and this is already very bad, but more on that a little later). Some will not see anything wrong here, but not everyone is such a fan of the 4th Devil May Cry and there is not much pleasure from such a decision.

But in fairness, it should be added that in the SNES version, they tried to smooth out the situation by throwing a little cosmetics on a couple of repeating levels. Be it partial destruction of the environment or a change in time of day.

Second point. More so to speak, rushing in the eyes. Looking at these images, do you have any unpleasant sensations??

Making a beautiful background in a game is not easy. Invent, draw, optimize – all this requires many man hours for final implementation. But it’s no less important to think through all this splendor from a gameplay point of view. Here, in certain levels, we see a clear victory of graphics over game design. An overloaded background, sometimes even with colors merging with the foreground, hinders the enjoyment of the gameplay more than it delights with its views.

And finally. The difficulty curve here resembles the 2020 US presidential election. In the sense that there is clearly some kind of step hidden in this curve. In short, completing the first three levels is unlikely to cause big problems for even slightly experienced players. Run, shoot gas, and collect chips without any obstacles. But then prepare a scraper in advance, because you will need something to scrape off the remains of your scattered asshole from the walls.

Level 4 is quite short, but very rich in emotions and, despite its compactness, can take up the most of your time. But the fact is that it consists of three levels of separate platforms. Moreover, there are also ordinary flat ones that do not hide any surprises, those that allow you to barely fit your flat round butt on them, those that don’t mind throwing you down, and there are also slippery surfaces at an angle. And if you happen to fall from them and miss the lower islands, then get ready for a minus life. And if you are lucky enough to land on a hard surface, then just start all over again. The camera also adds spice to this holiday of hatred of humanity. When jumping, it moves exactly behind the character, which means that you will not see where you land while flying. And some platforms are completely hidden somewhere behind the scenes, so in such situations only luck or non-flammable materials in the house will save you. Oh, and don’t forget about the enemies. They haven’t gone anywhere and will still happily destroy your HP.

And the 6th level may not be so much difficult as it is simply infuriating. After all, its peculiarity is its labyrinth-like structure and the ubiquitous slides from which you fly down with a whistle, or torment the jump button to move a little further and a little higher. Utilities in my city happily provide this to me every winter.

But despite all the disadvantages, the game received high marks from players and critics. Maybe deservedly so, but personally I don’t really share such enthusiasm. Most likely due to the fact that I touched Cool Spot quite late, when I had many other games in similar genres behind me, as well as a sequel called Spot Goes to Hollywood.

But let’s stay a little longer in ’93 to discover something interesting. Namely, a game about the second mascot 7up, the release date of which was planned in the same year as Cool Spot.

Some of you may assume that this game was intended primarily for the European market, where Fido Dido appeared in commercials for delicious water with sodas? May be. Or maybe not. The game was canceled, and when it was actually completed. Many years later, one of the developers posted an image of the game on the Internet, where all the levels were ready, all the mechanics worked, all the cheat codes were activated.

To put it very briefly, what appears before us is…another platformer with a slight touch of puzzle. We travel through various levels (and here they are really diverse and it’s cool and I love it), we find the necessary items to move further through the location, we ride a roller coaster, we fly on a UFO inside a shogi, we learn interesting facts about dinosaurs, we go surfing, we take part in battles on paper airplanes, and this is not all I have listed.

Sounds interesting? Definitely! Is it interesting to play?? Well, a little polishing would be nice in some aspects, but otherwise this game would clearly find a place among other good adventure games and in the nostalgic corners of the players’ souls. But she found only oblivion, the closure of the publisher and modest mentions many years later.

But Fido himself will still have time to feel the taste of victory, glory and soda consumed in all commercials. After all, Spot’s talismanic life was rapidly coming to an end, but in the end he gave us one of the best adventure projects.

The early-mid 90s for Virgin Interactive turned out to be quite productive, but no less stressful. There was a lot of game development in the works for various film, cartoon and trademark licenses. Here we have Robocop vs Terminator, and Aladdin, and two parts of Dune, and The Lion King, and now you finally understand what the repeatedly mentioned Virgins are all about.

The density of releases at one point forced us to give the development of The Jungle Book to a third-party studio Eurocom, which was very careful with the existing developments and successfully turned them into a finished and very high-quality product. This incident led to another interesting collaboration for us, where Eurocom became responsible for the entire development process of Spot Goes to Hollywood. But only versions for 16-bit shogi. The owners of Playstation and Sega Saturn owe the appearance of Spot’s Hollywood adventures on their platforms to Burst Studios, which again belonged to Virgin.

The financial success of many projects produced by the studio allowed them to increase budgets for new games, and Spot Goes to Hollywood demonstrates this in all its glory. Magnificent colorful graphics, pseudo 3D, an impressive variety of locations and mechanics, a wealth of secrets, Easter eggs, references and all this applies only to the Segomegadrivegenesis version! On more powerful platforms the game is even more beautiful, sounds nicer, and also reveals at least some details of the plot.

According to the FMV video (by the way, very high quality), which was only in the versions for PS and Sega Saturn, our red-faced friend, having survived a series of events, ends up in a film projector with a certain set of films, becoming a direct participant in them. Mega Drive’s version, which we’ll talk about for now, doesn’t spoil us with an explanation of the plot, so we’ll stick to the version with a projector. And such a plot made it possible to create locations unlike each other, the appearance of the hero in which is quite justified.

You will visit a pirate ship, go diving at the bottom of the sea, admire the mirrors with working reflections in a haunted house, stroll through an ancient castle, reduce the monkey population in the jungle, appreciate the humor of the developers and fire safety in the center of the Earth, have a blast on the Barnaul metro, save humanity from the rebel machines in the abyss of nuclear fire, feel like Luke Skywalker, you will find yourself in a virtual world inside a virtual world and fight with the dad of strangers.

As you can see, the plot, built on participation in various films, inexorably leads to references to film hits of those times. Here you will find unambiguous hints of Terminator, Star Wars, Alien, Tron. But what the levels in the dungeons, the jungle, on the ship and the haunted house are dedicated to, I personally don’t quite understand. There are, of course, assumptions, but let’s better share your thoughts, because why else are comments needed?.

The elaboration of each location is admirable. Both graphically and design-wise. Each level has its own personality and atmosphere, a distinctive set of enemies and selectable bonuses, and sometimes a completely different gameplay. At the same time, the number of hidden rooms, secrets with bonuses and other secrets cannot but rejoice. This is one of those games where it’s nice and you want to explore every corner, search for hidden passages and check the destructibility/clickability of suspicious objects, and often this does not go unrewarded.

And it all sounds so tasty and intriguing that those who haven’t played have already gone to the site with emulators, but seeing some flashbacks in the eyes of those who have completed this game, I must warn you about something. To enjoy this project you need to go through all the stages of accepting the local camera and the peculiar management caused by it.

When you move through a semi-open area, where there are no traps, obstacles and enemies, there are no problems. But soon, when you encounter platforms the size of a one-room apartment in a new economy class building, which are also collapsing like Volgograd sewers, you will experience sadness, melancholy and an existential crisis. And when you get to fly the X-wing from AliExpress, you will appreciate the idea with inverted vertical control.

Fighting with opponents is also not pleasant. Here again the controls come into play, which makes it difficult to target attacks, the rapid movement of some enemies and their thick skin. On average, to somehow impress an enemy with your bubbles, you need to hit about 10 times.

Also my personal complaint is music. She tries to set the right atmosphere for each film, but she doesn’t always succeed. For me, the musical accompaniment turned out to be somehow dark and tense. Instead of relaxing, inspiring or emphasizing the surroundings of the world, the soundtrack puts more pressure on the player, creating the feeling that all the films in which you will be exposed are exclusively thrillers and horrors, which, by the way, is not far from the truth, but still there is a place for adventure here. And the sound quality itself is somehow strange. The sound clearly lacks volume and quality, which is especially noticeable on drums. Just let’s listen to a few excerpts and you will understand everything yourself. Or you won’t understand. But let’s listen anyway:

As you may have heard, the situation with music in the PS\Sega Saturn version has been slightly improved. What else has been fixed?? Yes, almost everything. If for some reason you became a fan of Spot and completed both games on a 16-bit sega, then you can safely complete it on 32-bit platforms, it almost feels like an independent project, rather than just a port. Improved sound, transformed graphics, partially new locations (although some from the older version were removed), new mechanics, new traps and secrets, new enemies and bosses, new controls would be very useful, but alas, they are just as inconvenient.

But in order to somehow simplify life and add pleasure to the gameplay, the enemies were made a little more susceptible to our shots, which is why now we need to spend much less time and bubbles on their destruction. This idea is certainly good, but hiding interesting levels under the lock of a bonus level is already a disgusting idea. After all, only by fulfilling certain conditions you will be able to visit the world of the wild west, Jurassic Park and take part in Star Wars. Without them, we have only three biomes, each of which is divided into 5-6 levels, although they try to look different, but we would still like more variety.

But 7up’s people didn’t need variety, albeit mascots. Over the years that Spot appeared only on TV screens thanks to commercials and video games, Fido Dido gained momentum, showing off on stationery, banners, clothing, comics, in short, on everything that was somehow suitable for promoting the brand. Thus, having compared the popularity and recognition of each of the characters, the winner was not our red friend. Having expanded the rights to use throughout the world, since the late 90s the only mascot of 7up soda has become Fido.

This is the story of the rise and fall of a character familiar and beloved by many. As for his such a short lifespan, at the moment all that remains is to be indignant at the injustice of this world or consider everything completely natural.