VIDEO games have come a long way from the days when you had to wait ages for a cassette tape to finish hissing and spitting its way to a shoot ‘em up, but it appears that we still have fond memories for them.
A new survey has attempted to find out which characters are the most popular, using Google search.
While people will have searched for the Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong, Jet Set Willy and Duke Nukem, it turns out that an arcade favourite is the Ding’s favourite.
Pac-Man – a game that saw a yellow character attempt to dodge the ghosts in the machine – is the most popular. Originally released in 1980, Pac-Man is one of the most popular games across the globe.
Across the country, there were 76,070 searches a month on average over the past five years.
Sonic the Hedgehog and Pikachu rank second and third respectively.
The data found that Sonic from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is the second most popular video game character in the UK. The speedy, blue hedgehog has 60,390 searches on Google every month. There has been a resurgence of interest in the character as well as the franchise as a result of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, which was released in 2020 and starred Jim Carrey, with the third instalment of the film series being released next year.
Pikachu from the Pokémon franchise ranks third. Searches by Brits for Pikachu sit at an average of 43,960 per month. In 2019, Warner Bros released Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, starring Ryan Reynolds which saw searches for ‘pikachu’ soar 557% above average in the UK.
The fourth most Googled video game character in the UK is Lara Croft. The tomb raider is searched 22,780 times each month on average in the UK.
Kirby, the protagonist from the Kirby series ranks fifth whilst Kratos from God of War ranks sixth. There are 19,800 average monthly searches for Kirby in the UK whilst Kratos is Googled 15,510 times each month.
Crash Bandicoot follows in seventh place. Introduced in 1996, the title character is Googled 12,580 times every month on average by Brits.
Two characters from the Super Mario franchise make the top ten – Mario who ranks eighth with 12,330 monthly UK searches and Yoshi who takes the ninth spot with 8,970 monthly searches.
Rayman from the Rayman franchise completes the top ten. There are 8,090 searches for Rayman every month in the UK.
The study was conducted by Casino Bonus and analysed Google search data from the past five years, across every city in the United Kingdom.
A spokesperson from Casino Bonus said: “Video games are an integral part of many people’s lives, bringing joy and entertainment to many. The characters of many series can easily end up becoming iconic staples of many franchises and are beloved by many.
“This can lead to movies about said characters being made causing their popularity to explode even more.
“This study offers a fascinating insight into which characters – as well as franchises – interest Brits the most.”
