For the longest time, video games have featured playable animals. The big boom was during the mascot craze in the '90s, but even before then, there were lots of playable animals in games. Many of the more popular ones are animals that are more common as pets, like cats or dogs. A big appeal of one of the 2022 Game of the Year contenders Stray was the fact that you played as a cute cat.
RELATED: Fighting Game Characters Who Fight Alongside Animals
However, there are also plenty of playable animals that are rather uncommon or straight-up animals you may have never heard of before. That latter type is especially common in games made in other countries, where many of its animals are simply nowhere to be found in the states.
10 Chameleon And Bat - Yooka-Laylee
Banjo-Kazooie already featured some obscure playable characters in the form of a bear and a bird. That was rare for the time, but the game's spiritual successor decades later has even more obscure animals to play as. In Yooka-Laylee, you play as Yooka, a chameleon, and Laylee, a bat.
The chameleon choice is likely a nod to the Chameleon Twist games on N64, which are pretty obscure titles themselves. At least the animal choices were well used, as Yooka has plenty of powers that suit his chameleon nature, and the same for Laylee. It's just wild that the developers had to top themselves in terms of picking rare animals to play as.
9 Squirrel - Conker
When Conker's Bad Fur Day dropped in 2001, not many platformers featured a playable squirrel. There were some like Mr. Nutz on the Genesis and SNES, but it was still uncommon. Conker's Bad Fur Day ended up being one of the last great N64 exclusive games before the arrival of the GameCube.
Due to the notoriety of the title, several more platformers did feature a playable squirrel, most notably Super Lucky's Tale. However, Conker is still the most iconic and recognizable squirrel in gaming, and while his original title doesn't make full use of what he can do as a squirrel, it's still a central part of his identity.
8 Hedgehog, Echidna... So Many More - Sonic
Sonic himself is a hedgehog, an animal that many Americans probably had no idea even existed before the first game dropped. Sega didn't stop there, though, as most Sonic characters are pretty obscure animals. If you played Sonic 3 back in the day, you likely thought an echidna was a made-up animal, but nope. It's just a rare animal, normally only found in Australia and some neighboring areas.
Then there's the whole Chaotix team with Vector the Crocodile, Espio the Chameleon, Charmy Bee, and Mighty the Armadillo. All four are very obscure to play as in the gaming landscape. There are a few common animals, like two cats Big and Blaze, but most of the Sonic roster is out of the ordinary.
7 Opossum - Sparkster
The main character of Konami's Sparkster series is an opossum. Not a possum, but opossum, as they're two different animals. Awesome Possum was releasing the same year, so maybe Konami had to mix it up a bit. In the 90s, companies were just digging to find obscure animals they could use to make their mascot.
RELATED: 16-Bit Era Games That Still Hold Up Today
To be fair, Sparkster, in how he was portrayed in the original game, is really cute and still likely the only notable opossum in gaming. All four Sparkster games are pretty decent and worth checking out, but the first game, especially, is one of the best titles on the Genesis.
6 Mosquito - Mister Mosquito
Along with games like Chulip and Gitaroo Man, Mister Mosquito is one of the actual cult classics of the PS2 that isn't often discussed. It's an incredibly unique game, at least for its time, with you playing as a mosquito. In terms of console gaming, it might be the only title with a playable mosquito for the entirety of it.
You live in the Yamada family house, and as a mosquito, you suck blood from the various inhabitants throughout the levels. You have to suck blood from specific areas of the body, which isn't accurate to real life, as real mosquitos don't have a preference towards that, but they do have a preference over specific human hosts.
5 Penguin - Penguin Adventure
There's actually a lot of penguins in games, but not many playable penguins. Penguins are abundant in the Mario games and even have their own suit power-up, but none are playable. One of the first games to incorporate that element is Konami's Penguin Adventure for the MSX home computer.
It's a pretty interesting title that, on the surface, is a basic endless runner-type game but adds in some minigames and boss battles, which is neat to see. This game is also notable for being the first title worked on by some guy you probably never heard of called Hideo Kojima.
4 Spider And Scorpion - Deadly Creatures
Here are some obscure animals for an obscure game in Deadly Creatures for the Wii. In this game, you play as both a spider and scorpion as you engage in beat-'em-up gameplay with animals of the same or even bigger size. As you play, there's an overarching story of two men, voiced by Dennis Hopper and Billy Bob Thornton, as they search for buried gold.
It's awesome to play as these two animals, and killing other things in a beat-'em-up style is truly something else when you're in control here. In that way, the experience is sort of a novelty and definitely one obscure Wii title worth checking out.
3 Dolphin - Ecco
Ecco the Dolphin is another game from the early '90s and once again by Sega. You play as Ecco, and he definitely plays and feels like a dolphin should. He moves incredibly smoothly, but the controls can be difficult to get used to. Like actual dolphins, Ecco uses biological sonar, and for the game, this opens up the map, which you'll desperately need.
RELATED: The Most Misleading Video Game Cover Art
The plot is actually a bit off the rails and certainly not what one would expect by simply looking at the cover. A time travel plot with battling aliens isn't what most people back in the day signed up for. Still, Ecco is probably the most famous video game dolphin, and that's not an animal you see every day in gaming.
2 Octopus - Octodad
The early 2010s was the era for odd physics-based games with funky controls. A year before the launch of Octodad: Dadliest Catch, Surgeon Simulator blew up as a viral hit, and funny enough, both games ended up getting co-op control schemes. Octodad isn't a character with realistic movement or has the feel of an actual octopus, but that's the point.
The game's very much comedic in nature, with Octodad interacting with all these normal humans, and the control scheme is designed on purpose for you to flail all your limbs around. Still, to this day, Octodad is probably the only playable octopus character that most can think of, and that makes him special.
1 Kangaroo - Streets Of Rage 3
Streets of Rage 3 had large shoes to fill after coming off of one of the best beat-'em-ups of all time with the second game. Ultimately, it couldn't match up, but there was one aspect that exceeded its predecessors. That was unlockable characters. Streets of Rage 3 offered three different unlockable fighters; the most noteworthy one was Roo, the kangaroo.
At the time, it was just so wacky to see this playable kangaroo in an otherwise serious beat-'em-up series. There actually are a few other playable kangaroos in games, but they match the tone of the series. With how out of place Roo is, it makes him a special case and at least one of the more memorable aspects of the third game for Sega fans.
NEXT: Dormant Beat 'Em Up Franchises That Need To Make A Return
