Minnmax recently did a new interview with the former Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida, in which he answered some questions about his lengthy career as one of the key individuals at the influential game company.
During the interview, he shared some insights into what it was like playing the Nintendo PlayStation, his thoughts on the Switch 2 announcement, and what his favourite studios were to visit. But one story that stuck out to us, in particular, as fans of the weird and wonderful, were his reflections on Sony Computer Entertainment of America's (SCEA) ill-fated mascot "Polygon Man", which was revealed at E3 1995 before shortly disappearing off the face of the earth.
Polygon Man, in case you've never heard of it, was a 3D flat-shaded character that was going to appear in the North American advertisements for the game as Sony's mascot for the "PSX", talking directly to customers. It originated from the (then) SCEA president Steve Race's fears that the PlayStation branding sounded too childish, and was designed in collaboration with an ad agency called Chiat/Day, who produced the Apple "1984" advert for the Super Bowl. However, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. in Japan absolutely hated the character, believing it was undermining the PlayStation brand, with the father of the PlayStation Ken Kutaragi immediately demanding that the character be removed from all marketing once he found out about it.
Yoshida recalls, "When we were launching PlayStation in the US, they tried to introduce a new character called Polygon Man. It looked like a lot of flat-shaded polygons. And they prepared everything like posters, t-shirts, and things for E3. But Ken Kutaragi found out and got really mad. He ordered them to remove everything, every reference to Polygon Man. But still some goods were there when we got there. The reason he didn’t like it? Because Polygon Man only used flat-shaded polygons. But the PSX/PlayStation had Gouraud shading. Much beautiful textures."
This is a story we've seen shared before by others who worked at Sony. Steve Race, for instance, gave an interview with Electronic Gaming Monthly shortly after leaving the company stating, "There was a large disagreement. We felt that the product needed a very edgy. We thought that the Polygon Man from a U.S perspective was the kind of spokes character that was leading edge. He never was expected to be a central character like a Mario but rather to be a master gamer who was hip and rather edgy, but the Japanese thought it got in the way of the Sony brand. The Sony brand stands on its own - it never uses a character or celebrity endorsement, so culturally I didn’t get that. We had a fairly celebrated difference of opinion as to what Polygon Man’s role would be. As a Japanese company, they had the final vote."
Meanwhile, the former executive Phil Harrison also recalled in a 2009 interview with Edge Magazine how Kutaragi went "insane" upon seeing the character at E3 1995. According to Harrison, Kutaragi's anger was directed at how the company was spending its limited budget, and again, the design, which seemed to misrepresent the console.
As Minnmax's Ben Hanson notes, shortly after Kutaragi left PlayStation in 2011, Sony Computer Entertainment and SuperBot Entertainment released PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale in 2012, which featured Polygon Man as a final boss.
In reply to this, Yoshida explained that because of the amount of time that had passed, "No one really cared" anymore about the objections Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. originally had to the character.
More recently, Polygon Man has also appeared in the 2024 platformer Astro Bot under the name "Forgotten Mascot", serving as one of many references to PlayStation's long and storied history.
Do you remember reading about Polygon Man back in the '90s? Let us know in the comments!