It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day!  And you know what that means?  We all have to wear green!  Green is my favorite color, and I have some Irish in my family so St. Patrick’s Day is a pretty fun holiday for me.  So in honor of that, here is a blog about my favorite green video game characters!  They’re always ready for St. Patrick’s Day!  These are in no particular order, by the way.

Yoshi

One of the reasons why I wanted to write this blog is because I’m really excited for the upcoming Yoshi’s New Island for 3DS.  The original Yoshi’s Island game on SNES is a very special game to me.  Not only is it one of the best 2-D platformers ever made, I also have fond memories playing it with my college roommate and his girlfriend (now wife).  She loved that game.  And I also enjoyed playing it with my little brothers, too.  I loved how every game back then had to be all 3-D and have amazing graphics, and then Yoshi’s Island comes along with its crayon style visuals and ends up being one of the best-looking SNES games ever.

Anyway, I like old-school Yoshi better than his newer take.  He was an awesome power-up in Super Mario World because he was so versatile.  No wonder he got his own game!  When Yoshi’s Story came out and Yoshi adopted that annoying baby “Yoshi” voice, he wasn’t near as cool.  I liked that SNES “bree-burp” sound he made before that game came along.  It was a noise no human could possible make.  A lot of people rag on Yoshi’s Island DS, too, but I didn’t think it was THAT bad.  Sure it had problems and wasn’t near as good as the first SNES title.  But it was a step in the right direction and much better than Yoshi’s Story anyway.  Even though Yoshis come in different colors, his default hue is green, so that’s why he’s on the list.

Luigi

Last year for St. Patrick’s Day, I think I wrote a blog just about Luigi, seeing as though it was the Year of Luigi and all, and I think Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon was about to be released as well.  For the first couple of Mario games on the NES, Luigi was my favorite character in the series.  Mainly because I was usually Player Two.  But as I discovered how awesome Toad was in Mario Kart, SMB2, etc., the little mushroom man quickly became my favorite Mario character instead.  But Luigi is probably a close second.  He is way cooler than Mario and has much more personality, and he’s usually more fun to play as in games, too.  And he wears my favorite color.

Cammy

She’s my favorite Street Fighter character, not really for how she looks (although she is purdy for a video game character).  But I like her because she is an interesting character with a neat story line, and I can pull off a good portion of her moves in the Street Fighter games, too.  And she wears green!  Not only that, but when Street Fighter 2 was new in arcades, my friend was really good and I could never beat him.  But when Super Street Fighter 2 came out, we played it together and I picked newcomer Cammy and I actually beat him with her!  Now I know some of you are probably thinking, “Well Cary, you probably only beat him because he wasn’t familiar with that character yet.”  JUST LET ME HAVE MY VICTORY, DARN IT! :)

There are lots of other fighting game characters that I like because they wear green, too.  I’m not really big into Mortal Kombat games, but I like characters such as Reptile, Sonya, and Jade because they wear green.  Leona is one of my favorite SNK fighters, and she wears green army clothes.  And She-Hulk from Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is always green!  I didn’t know she existed before that game came along, but I liked her because her ending had Phoenix Wright in it.

Link

Even though I like Princess Zelda better, Link is pretty good at saving the day while wearing green a lot.  So I guess I’ll put him on this list, too.

Grune

Tales of Legendia is my favorite in the Tales RPG series, mainly because the music was done by Go Shiina, my favorite video game music composer.  But I also liked the characters a lot, too.  My favorite was Grune, even though she was kind of a fan service character (but she was kind of purdy).  She fit the ditzy, silly anime lady stereotype very well, and anything that came out of her mouth cracked me up.  Even though she was mostly a magic user, I liked her attack weapon of choice.  A pot.  She would just carry a vase pot around and conk enemies on the head with it.  Plus, she wore green clothes and had green hair.  Heck, even her NAME means ‘green’ in German! 

There are a couple of other green-clad RPG characters that deserve an honorable mention.  Summoner Rydia from Final Fantasy 4 also wore a lot of green and had green hair.  She was very cool in The After Years, too bad the game wasn’t as good.  Chrono Trigger’s Frog was also a favorite character of mine, and he’s green, being a frog and all.  And finally, my favorite Final Fantasy character, Terra, has green hair (at least in the game she does).

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

And that’s all for now!  Don’t forget to wear green on Monday!  Let me know your favorite green video game characters in the comments section!  Later!  --Cary