The developers of Yooka-Laylee have taken the lid off of another character that will feature in the game, this time with a throw-back to the classic late 90s era of 3D platformers. The character’s name is Rextro Sixtyfourus and of course, his name is inspired by Nintendo 64, the first console Banjo-Kazooie kicked off on.
Rextro’s character design was intentionally done to resemble those blocky polygons we were all familiar with almost 20 years ago when the Nintendo 64 was at the height of its popularity. The character was designed by Mark Stevenson, who headed up Donkey Kong Country 3, Donkey Kong 64, and Kameo: Elements of Power as the lead artist.
Mark had this to say about Rextro’s design:
I wanted Rex to to feel like he captured the era of games from my early career which also included work on the Donkey Kong games on the Super Nintendo. Finally just to reinforce the retro aspect some more, I created a custom shader that creates a scanline effect on Rextro to make him look like he’s being viewed on an old school CRT TV.
He did a great job invoking the feelings of old games and it’s no coincidence that the character himself is a dinosaur, as it’s another subtle nod to the by-gone era of early 3D platformers.
What do you think of the new character reveal?
