Do You Remember These Early 2000s Video Game Characters? Neither Do We.

In the early aughts, video games were undergoing a change. PS1 to PS2. Xbox to Xbox 360. And Sega Dreamcast to… uh… Well, N64 to Gamecube. And gamers met a deluge of what would become obscure 2000s video game characters from studios desperate for eyeballs and sore thumbs.

But Mario, Sonic and Link these video games mascots certainly are not. Game devs hope they’d be breakout characters. But they exist only in the corner of our collective memory that covered in cobwebs. So now it’s time to travel back in time.

Because we’re gonna revisit some of these obscure 2000s video games characters. So how many can you remember?

Harman Smith – Killer 7

Suda51, the eclectic, punk rock video game developer behind No More Heroes and Lollipop Chainsaw, made his American debut with Killer 7. With its abstractly cell-shaded graphics, counterintuitive rail-shooter control scheme, and fragmented “what is real?” narrative, the game was a cult hit.

As for Harman Smith, the center of the split-personality adventure, he has faded into obscurity.

Cate Archer – The Operative: No One Lives Forever

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Before there was Archer, there was Archer — Cate Archer, the sleek, chic, and totally fab hero at the center of the tongue-in-cheek The Operative: No One Lives Forever.

A first-person shooter with charm to spare, the game played like an indie comedy version of Austin Powers, and I mean that as a sincere compliment.

Joanna Dark – Perfect Dark

Everyone remembers Goldeneye, but only true believers remember Perfect Dark, the Nintendo 64’s other high-quality first-person shooter. At the center of this cyberpunk sci-fi game was Joanna Dark who, despite not being as well-known as James Bond, objectively has a cooler name.

Did you even realize a 2005 sequel, Perfect Dark Zero, was released for Xbox 360?

John Mullins – Soldier Of Fortune

John Mullins is the titular Soldier Of Fortune in this shooter, but he was instantaneously overshadowed by the content of his own game. Soldier Of Fortune features garishly, ghoulishly, gratuitously rendered violence.

Heads explode, guts are sprayed, limbs are severed, and main characters are immediately forgotten.