I remember owning a Sega Genesis because I wanted to play Quackshot. That's the first and only time I remember choosing a videogame console because I wanted to play a game that was exclusive to it. Now, when a videogame is available on multiple platforms...and you're not pre-disposed to either (though having a Blu-Ray player included is a sweet extra), but still don't have the bucks to make that purchase...you let it go.
And yet...
Let me explain. I would LOVE to play Sonic Forces - that's the most-recent Sonic the Hedgehog videogame. It's received the same mixed reviews that most Sonic videogames have earned over the last two decades: interesting concepts, attractive designs, poor control & camera issues, threadbare storyline, etc...however, the reviews are unanimously positive in regard to the create-a-character/custom build feature, in which you get to design a new sidekick to accompany Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and the other critters in the latest bruhaha with Dr. Eggman.
This new character - referred to among the cast as "Rookie" and by Sega's promotional material as "The Avatar" can be created as one of seven distinct species of animals - Cat, Bear, Bird, Hedgehog, Wolf, Rabbit and Dog. From there, you have a multitude of combinations of colors, shapes and clothing/accessories to chose from. By default, Sega's Sonic Team needed to create a default avatar to appear in their promotional material, so they designed an orange male wolf wearing heavy eyeglasses and sporting a number of gadgets..fans on the internet refer to him as Gadget the Wolf/Gadget the Rookie. I think it's a great design and I hope he makes it in the Sonic comic books..
Dig deeper and fan videos on YouTube demonstrate/hint that you could use the custom feature to design other famous animal characters. I saw one gamer create Usagi Yojimbo (or Miyamoto Usagi if you want to get technical), and I think there is a potential to create reasonable facsimiles of Felix the Cat, Mr. Jinx, Jose Carioca, Oswald the lucky rabbit, Loopy D'Loop, Mildew Wolf...and Wind-Up Wolf.
Who?
Well, gosh, I'm assuming you know who the preceding characters were so that I can cut to the chase, aren't I? Wind-Up Wolf was a one-shot cartoon character who appeared in Cartoon Network's What A Cartoon! The title? Wind-Up Wolf. It was written and directed by William Hanna. The plot involved The Big Bad Wolf building a robot doppelganger to go after the 3 Little Pigs. Wind-Up does not succeed, but because he's a robot, he can endure the kind of rough-handling/cartoon violence that Network Censors would normally frown upon, so it was okay for little kids to watch a robot get rocked & socked without finding the gags particularly cruel. William Hanna co-created Tom and Jerry, so he had considerable experience.
Nowadays, you can find this cartoon available to watch on YouTube like nothing, but back in the 90's, I remember being obsessed with trying to catch it and record it, because I knew ahead of time some of the backstory behind it's creation. In the early-90s, Dark Horse Comics had the license to make comic books based on MGM cartoons directed by Tex Avery, so they produced mini-series starring Droopy, Wolf & Red, Screwy Squirrel..the inaugural issue of Droopy featured an essay by artist/animator Scott Shaw that was a reminiscence of his brief time working with Tex Avery at Hanna-Barbera Studios in 1980 - "Generation Tex". Tex had suggested an idea of a "Wind-Up Wolf" built by the Big Bad Wolf to put up with all the bruises and beatings he could no longer endure. He didn't live long to develop this concept, but Shaw worked on storyboards with William Hanna at some point, because Wind-Up wound up as a Cartoon Network short film. Perhaps as a nod to Tex, the design of the character (and the Big Bad Wolf) is a nod to Wilford Wolf, the antagonist of The Kwicky Koala Show, the last cartoon Avery worked on before he died. Wind-Up Wolf was a nice, good-looking cartoon...I imagine if it had been picked up to become a TV series, they would've broadened the horizons a bit and included other characters, like Red Riding Hood, and fleshed out the personalities of the 3 pigs and Big Bad Wolf a little, with Wind-Up as the wild card in the middle of that relationship; Hanna would've probably included new episodes of Hard Luck Duck, another cartoon he had directed at the time - a reimagined Yakky Doodle. There definitely would've been cameos from older Hanna-Barbara characters, because the brief Jetsons cameo (albeit shown only in shadow, but with a familiar music cue to help anyone who was clueless) was well-received.
So...while I mull over whether or not to buy the videogame (I haven't even thought about which console I would pick up, if I do), I found a way to calm this impulse by finding fan art of Gadget the Wolf ( remember him? That was about 2 or 3 paragraphs ago ), printing it out and using it as a coloring page to visualize my idea in lieu of actualization.
I've seen demos of the schematics on YouTube that show I could get closer to the mark than my coloring page would have you believe - bowties are available, not sure about vests - but I tried sticking with the color scheme of the cartoon character so that Gadget's apparel was color-consistent. I would definitely try incorporating both if possible to alternate.
Pretty cute...one short obscure cartoon, about 21/22 years old, causing me to write this post.
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