Mappy’s history is an interesting one. For starters, the character of Mappy wasn't originally designed for videogames: he first existed in the early 80s as a robot for micromouse mazes. Micromouse is a form of robotics that has programmers and robot developers designing a small unit that can navigate a physical maze. Namco has always had a hardware-oriented experimental side, and with the aid of ace mechanical designer Shigeki Toyama, they created a micromouse robot that was… an actual mouse. Clever!
Mappy would roll around mazes, popping balloons with images of cats on them. He was definitely an attention-getter, as he had a lot of character for a simple little robot. Eventually, it was decided that Mappy would star as the lead character in a game concept rolling around Namco called “Panic House.” Thus was born the eponymous game that people most remember Mappy from.
One thing that really made Mappy stand out at the time was that he was a distinct, memorable character at a time when games didn't really have many marketable heroes. Pac-Man was big, but Pac himself was a nondescript pizza-shaped amorphous blob. Q*Bert… Q*Bert was just kind of unsettling. Donkey Kong put its characters front and center, but at the time, the ape was more popular than the lead character. Mappy, though? Mappy was colorful, recognizable, and represented in-game through masterful pixel art by game graphics pioneer Hiroshi “Mr. Dotman” Ono. There's a lot of personality in Mappy’s visuals, from the little stereos and Mona Lisas you pick up to the reactions of the enemies as they're whacked with doors and bouncing around the house.
Mappy never saw quite the same amount of success as Namco's blockbuster Pac-Man, but he's still quite fondly remembered, and has made numerous cameos across various Namco properties to this very day. Sometimes I wonder if Mappy is more of a pioneer in the “animal mascot platformer” field than we give him credit for. It wouldn't be the first time Namco made something influential in the early 80s that history has largely forgotten.
Well, now that we've waxed nostalgic, let's take a look at the news that's been accumulating over the last two weeks. With the Christmas holidays in the West and the New Year's holidays in the East, there hasn't been too much in the way of announcements, but there's still some worthwhile news to talk about.
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