games

This is a weird fad of the 90’s, but classic 90’s ‘tude: it was everywhere and carried on even in the 2000s.

I’d say the quintessential 90’s ‘tude character was Bart Simpson: the rebellious kid who wasn’t afraid to put teachers in their place. More relevant to the conversation, Simpsons video games were crawling with ‘tude. Almost immediately after sonic came out and was a more benign version of this. Unlike Mario, he was cool and edgy.

We got a little bit of this still in the 2000s and Sly Cooper’s a good example. Sly Cooper was arguably 90’s ‘tudes mature, suave older brother in college. Sly himself was always confident and quick with the joke, and regularly flirted with Carmelita. Even when he got angry in the first game, he spoke in a somewhat calm manner as if he knew what he was doing. Look at boss banter with the fiendish five vs his banter with Bentley.

In some ways, I liked it because American media was flirting with more moral ambiguity, even if it meant having objectively good but “chaotic” characters like Sly Cooper.