What are the top 50 most popular videogame characters in Japan? Below you can see the incredible and controversial list, as decided upon by the readers of the Weekly Famitsu magazine.
Snake ends up on top of the list as the readers of Japan’s favorite character. Here is what Hideo Kojima himself had to say about his character getting voted on as the best.
“Snake was completely silent until Metal Gear Solid, simply because the [8-bit platforms] didn’t let you do speech,” commented Hideo Kojima, producer of MGS and the “father” of Snake. “In MGS, Snake became this sharp-tongued, Lupin III-like guy who flirted with women and told lots of jokes; again, that was a side effect of the new speech technology we had. Once motion capture entered the picture, we were able to give Snake a lot more active ability, because the technology allowed it. Hardware has advanced by leaps and bounds over the past twenty years, and Snake’s changed his look, personality, and even age to match what the platform could do. He’s literally been raised within the battlefield inside your game console.”
As always with these kinds of lists, most people will not agree with all of them, so what are your top 10 or so favorite characters?
1. Snake
2. Mario
3. Cloud Strife
4. The slimes from Dragon Quest
5. Sora from Kingdom Hearts
6. Link
7. Yuri Lowell from Tales of Vesperia
8. Amaterasu from Okami
9. Pikachu
10. Sonic
11. Kazuma Kiryu from Yakuza
12. Kirby
13. The Felynes from Monster Hunter
14. Toro, Sony’s PlayStation pseudo-mascot in Japan
15. Professor Layton
16. Yuna from Final Fantasy X
17. Sakura from Sakura Wars
18. Luigi
19. Tifa Lockheart from FFVII
20. Tidus from FFX
21. Sephiroth from FFVII
22. Mega Man
23. Dante from Devil May Cry
24. Aerith from FFVII
25. Shiren from Mystery Dungeon
26. The chocobos from FF
27. Zidane from Final Fantasy IX
28. Roxas from Kingdom Hearts
29. Squall Leonhart from Final Fantasy VIII
30. Ryu from Street Fighter
31. Leon S. Kennedy from Resident Evil
32. Vivi from FFIX
33. Auron from FFX
34. Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII
35. Bayonetta
36. Kuro, Toro’s sidekick
37. Zack from FFVII
38. Adol from Ys
39. Chihaya Kisaragi from The Idolmaster
40. Chris Redfield from RE
41. Shantotto from Final Fantasy XI
42. Raiden from MGS
43. Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden
44. Locke from Final Fantasy VI
45. Miku Hatsune, virtual idol and Internet sensation
46. Nene Anegasaki from Loveplus
47. Alena from Dragon Quest IV
48. Yuffie Kisaragi from FFVII
49. Luke from Tales of the Abyss
50. Rikku from FFX
Via 1UP