People love a good sidekick. I have one of my own - a small, scruffy white dog with a messy face, named after Trico fromThe Last Guardian. He’s a little stupid, but I love him nonetheless. In video games, there are so many more sidekicks that each of us will have individual experiences with, and we all have our favourites.
Seriously, the number of times I’ve watched my dog fall over and then attempt to play it off; that’s pretty iconic, tbh.
Regardless of how you feel about some sidekicks in video games, only a few deserve to be called the most iconic. And here they are, in the most definitive, official, and indisputable article you’ve ever read.
5Companion Cube
Portal
A block. A big block. That’s all it is, and yet we’d all die for it. The Companion Cube fromPortalis a beautiful creation, and if you’ve ever mistreated it in any way, I hope you never get your cake. Or better yet, I hope you find the cake, and then it’s stale. And then the table falls over. And then you fall over.
It’s pretty easy to be iconic when we’re just talking about a square with a heart symbol on it, but you know, it works. It’s been almost 20 years since we were graced with the appearance of this beautiful thing, and I’m really hoping we get a Companion Cube 2 beforeGTA 6.
4Clank
Ratchet & Clank
Our good ol’ buddyClank from the appropriately named series. To be honest, this entry could have been about Daxter fromJak & Daxter, but it’s been amuch longer timesince that series resurfaced, and even then, the sequels dropped Daxter from the title anyway, so… Clank it is.
But Clank is a great little robot, full of sass and propeller blades, which is all I want to achieve in life. He’s also had his own PSP spin-off (so did Daxter, but nobody cares about the orange ferret, apparently) named Secret Agent Clank, and if you played that one, you’re extra cool.
3Ellie
The Last Of Us
Back in 2013 -and I mean aaaallll the way back- we first got our hands onThe Last of Us. Not Left Behind, Remastered, Part 2, Part 1, or Part 2 Remastered, but the first appearance of the iconic duo of Joel and Ellie on our PS3.
Just saying The Last of Us without anything after it feels weird now. It’s like saying a sentence that just
Despite the sequel putting us firmly in the shoes of Ellie and newcomer Abby, in the first title, Ellie herself was one of the strongest sidekicks we’d seen in any video game. Maybe it was the dynamic, maybe it was the character growth, or maybe it was the terrible puns. Either way, you’ll probably now recognise Ellie at a glance.
2Dogmeat
Fallout
If you’ve ever playedFallout, you’ve probably encountered the goodest boy, Dogmeat. That goes for 1997’s Fallout, all the way up to 2015’sFallout 4. Unless you’ve only played Fallout: New Vegas, in which case you’ll know Rex. Rex is good, too.
Dogmeat also makes an appearance in the Fallout TV show on Amazon Prime. No form of media can stop this good boy from showing up.
Most of us will recognise Dogmeat from either Fallout 3 or Fallout 4. In the former, he’s modelled after the dog from Mad Max. In the latter, he’s a German Shepherd that will stand in doorways, bark at things, and can wear silly little goggles. But if you dare send him back to the Red Rocket on his own, you never deserved him in the first place.
1Luigi
Super Mario Bros. Series
And finally, everyone’s favourite: Luigi. Or maybe second favourite. The second half of theMario Bros.duo is used to being the underdog, and not always the first choice, despite a brilliant spin-off series inLuigi’s Mansion. Still, he remains iconic as ever, thanks to his numerous appearances across dozens of Nintendo games over the decades.
Well, it also helps just being the green version of the red guy we all know. If you don’t recognise Luigi, you probably don’t know who Mario is either, or that video games have evolved past the technical achievements of Pong.
