PixlBit

Game: Blasto (PS1/1998)

Mascot for: Sony of America 

Voiced by the late Phil Hartman, Captain Blasto (who looks kinda like Batman with hair) is a space hero who must stop the alien tyrant Bosc from conquering the planet Uranus as well as save some Space Babes along the way. The game is a third-person-shooter 3D platformer (so at least it's different from most 3D platformers of the time). Blasting aliens is always fun. The game has some puzzle elements, but it's mostly just "find the switch to proceed" scenarios. Shooting is Blasto's only means of attack, but you will find various guns as you progress. The game also uses both control sticks--the left stick is for movement while the right stick allows the player to have more precision aiming if desired. 

What happened: It seems that the development team got hung up on a couple sticking points. First, they didn't want the game to have loading times (which would be great), but in order to that, they had to sacrifice redbook audio in favor of MIDI format, so the music sounds quite flat. Second, instead of texture mapping, they wanted vertex lighting so as to give better color and deinition to the floors. This was very time-consuming, so Sony allowed the team to take artists from other Sony teams to finish. So if anything, the floors look great! The actual game...not so great. Receiving mostly mixed reviews upon release, Blasto was mostly disliked because it was too hard for most players. And that's the last we've seen of the good captain.