When ever someone sees a game featuring animals(Star Fox, Banjo-Kazooie, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc.) they naturally assume its a "kiddy" game or a title targeted for the younger gamers. Why are developers afraid to change that image? Why hasn''t someone made a game like Golden Sun, but featuring bipedial animal creatures? I currently have a video game idea thats very much like Dragon Ball Z but features bipedial animal creatures. Most of the characters in the idea are serious. Of course I created few light-hearted characters for comic-relief. But seriously, it would be cool playing as a bipedial wolf and shooting energy blast from your palm. I''m accepting critism. What do you think of the idea? "A programmer being told to ''''go to'''' hell sees the ''''go to'''' part of the sentence as the bad part."

I don''t have anything against it.

I suppose whether or not the characters are represented as simplistic super heroes depends upon the storyline and how the game itself plays out. And, possibly, the target audience.

Maybe some of the games are attempting to be Mario-ish to help it appeal to those who relate more to the Mario games.

I don''t think that is entirely true. For example, the Kilrathi from wing commander and the Mrrshan from MOO2 were both cat people. And RPG games like AD&D have huge numbers of weird hybrid creatures.

A great deal of it lies in the presentation - Starfox, Pokémon, Animal Crossing etc all have slightly cartoony graphics, with lots of bright colours etc - they are presented as though they are aimed for the younger audience.

It''s probably because animals are often either cute and cuddly, or sort of vicious but not very.

~CGameProgrammer( );

Try

Duke Nukem : Manhatten Project

There are lot''s of animals in there. Especially bugs and pigs.

borngamer

Well there is Bloody Roar and definatly the Icewind Dale and Baldur''s Gate Series, Gnolls and other nasties. It just depends what your looking at. When you move onto PC animals are probably looked at totally differently because most PC games aren''t for kids while consoles tend to mix it up and basically anything released on a Nintendo is branded with a fat and biased cute and cuddly sign.

I was actually surprised that Star Fox adventures had blood in it.

Not into furries, thanks anyway.

Aren''t those the nastiest things?

~CGameProgrammer( );

uh...because anthropomorphic thingies in other media are intended for kids, mostly...and, uh, if you want to be serious, then you probably don''t want it to look like something from Hanna Barbera.

I think that the "kiddie" image doesn''t change because that is really what that sort of look is best suited for. It''s hard to take a cat-person seriously, IMHO. ''cept maybe Egyptian gods just because of the different look and the context. If it is an idea you really want go ahead and do it. But I don''t think it really adds to the game to have the furries...in fact, I think i would have a rough time getting past the silliness of it.

I just can''t see myself ever taking it seriously.