The Top 7... Lovable blobs

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Only videogames could make squishy lumps of gunge adorable - here are a few irresistible examples

Jan 14, 2008

Videogames are weird. Weird. Rules that apply to books, television and movies don't work at all here. Take blobs, for example; so far, Hollywood has produced only one major blob protagonist, and it was a pink monster that devoured everything in its wake. Conventional wisdom holds that nothing that horrible could ever be made cute or marketable, let alone heroic, and yet videogame history is filled with cute blobs who've touched the hearts of millions and become more memorable and beloved than many human characters.

7. The Blob

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What is it?
A green, angry-looking wad of living clay formed from the remnants of a radioactive meteorite.

Where did it come from?
ClayFighter (1993, SNES/Genesis), ClayFighter 2: Judgment Clay (1994, SNES) and ClayFighter 63 1/3 (1997, N64).

Why do we love it?
Essentially just a green lump sculpted to look like an indignant sock puppet with angry eyebrows, The Blob isn't just irresistibly goofy - he's the ultimate triumph of lazy design. He's ClayFighter's most slapdash character and its most visually interesting, able to transform into a flying saw blade, a seething morass of boxing gloves or a giant boot. He's the lump of crap that was tossed in at the last minute because they needed another character to round out the roster, and instead of fading into obscurity, he rose to become a hero. Blob's story is that of a true underdog, and who doesn't find that lovable on some level?

Forget thecreepy, leering monstrosity that Blob became in later games - it's his original incarnation that fills a special, lump-shaped place in our hearts OH NO OUR HEARTS ARE FULL OF CLAY NOW ARGH COUGH DEATH.

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.