If you want a window into how successful Sonic The Hedgehog's character design was, one needs to look no further than the countless attempts to replicate the "animal with attitude" mascot platformer. Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, Bubsy, Aero the Acrobat, Conker the Squirrel, BUG!, Croc. They came and went with moderate fanfare. Klonoa, Spyro, and Crash Bandicoot survived the culling and saw success (I still want a new Klonoa game), but by the late 90's, most of them phased out. I'm trying to think if any of them flamed out faster and more awkwardly than Gex.

The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer (welcome to Retro Reboot, 3DO!) was a very curious piece of history. It launched with the idea of being the next generation of video game consoles. It's pretty unique, as the 3DO wasn't developed by 3DO company. Third party manufacturers like Panasonic, Goldstar (now LG), and Sanyo to produce different models.

Its library was pretty decent, seeing a quality, very close to arcade port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, along with great games like Wing Commander, Lucienne's Quest, and Blade Force. Despite its hardware capabilities, its US$699.99 launch price tag, the lack of strong third party support, and also competing with the much more accessible Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, the 3DO saw marginal success and made its way into few homes. Crystal Dynamics came up with the wise-cracking green gecko as the 3DO's answer to a Mario and Sonic-ish mascot to define the console, and Gex is the console's best-selling game, topping 1 million copies. It was later ported to the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation in late '95. 

It's a decent side scroller, not really much to write home about. Even for its time, it was okay, but never felt like anything that the Sega and Nintendo franchises have already provided by this point. Gex even has a pretty varied skill set, based on his gecko traits. He can tail whip to attack, coil his tail into a spring and bounce off enemies, and can crawl along surfaces vertically and upside down. The wall clinging gets on my nerves, it's the same issue I run into when during Ninja Gaiden. When playing platform games, I have a habit of hugging a wall I'm jumping against. Gex proves to be very sticky, and latches onto any outcropping that's just the right size. It gets quite fidgety to right myself. 

Gex has decent controls, but there's an imprecise, fidgety feeling to them. It's nearly impossible to edge yourself near a platform and make a jump without just falling. Sticking landings can be a touch suspect, I'll overcompensate because I feel I don't have enough momentum. Then I'll slip right off the opposite side. Along with the jerky camera (it'd be nice if the shoulder buttons scrolled the camera to the left or right. Even plenty of SNES games allowed that), Gex's gameplay just feels a touch dated, this doesn't hold up well. He's pretty fast and all, but despite being a gecko, I don't find him to be very agile or the core game design bursting with a lot of personality. 

I do like the graphics, Gex's sprite and animations do look really cool. Gex himself is bitmap rendered combined with the hand drawn animations for enemies, backgrounds, and environments. The 3DO was a curious beast for its time when it came to processing power, the next generation of hardware would outclass it immediately. The stage hues had a fascinating watercolor appeal to them, along with some nice parallax scrolling. Big thumbs up for the visuals.

Gex has five total worlds with 24 levels, or "channels". He's a stunt performer named "Gecko X" who's just chillin' out max and relaxin' all cool when Rez, a show producer, literally bugs him by tricking Gex into eating a drone fly that pulls him into the television dimension to make him into a new marketable mascot. Yeah, real subtle with the meta there, Crystal Dynamics. That wink and a nod might become a nervous twitch. In each stage, you must find a TV remote that unlocks the next stage, which requires going into a submenu to manually activate it, or "turn the channel". Okay, I can appreciate trying to be different, but can't you just acquire the remote, say "you got the remote, new stage available"? I don't mind a fetch-quest structure, it just feels tedious to actually go through these extra motions to access a new area. It's not a puzzle, brings nothing unique to the table, just wastes time. It's already enough that Gex has some of the most sleepy level designs in platform game history, we're going to drag out the process of selecting a course!?

Speaking of courses, at some point in my life, the only stages I would ever see from Gex in any promotional material or YouTube clips talking retro games is the beginning Cemetery world. I have a theory that after more than a few minutes of listening to Dana Gould's one-liners, the game was shut off before any significant progress was gained. Either that, or played the game on mute. In what universe is Dana Gould considered hilarious? I feel like he's the comedian you call when Kevin Meaney knocked the receiver off the phone cradle. As Gex, even if I put aside the fact that his quips are as timeless and culturally relevant as the cartoon Hammer-Man, nothing he ever says is funny and the Gex character comes off as welcome as a fart during a funeral. I always said Dante in Devil May Cry is one of my most hated video game characters because of the non-stop catchphrases and one-liners, but after turning this on and hearing "GERONIMOOO!!!" or "This place is weirder than 4th of July at Rick James' place!" for the 800th time, I'd sooner grab cacti with my bare hand. When you make Jeff Dunham sound funny by comparison, you're in the sixth circle of comedy Hell.

Is Gex worth playing today? Honestly, no. Unless you want an aspiring blast from the past, I don't think the gecko is all that missed, or necessary. It feels very for its time, the character is about as entertaining as being whacked in the face with a board with a nail in it, the stages aren't enthralling and have a paint-by-numbers appeal that's outclassed by other platform games around the era like Pandemonium, Vector-Man, and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. With humor on par with your homely aunt trying to quote Rick & Morty lines at a family picnic, it's easy to see why this character and the franchise tumbled into obscurity, the fact that it got a trilogy is perplexing. Hell, I might talk about those games to document Gex's [not very] rise and fall.

Forget the lizard. Go play Klonoa: Door to Phantomile on PlayStation 3's PSOne Classics.