The much-awaited 2020 Olympics Games will get underway today in Tokyo, Japan, against all odds. The opening ceremony of the Summer Games is scheduled for today (July 23) and in order to celebrate it, Google has launched an innovative and anime-inspired doodle. The new doodle, called ‘Doodle Champion Island Games’ is a mark of celebration of Japanese culture and sports in general. Google calls it a homage to classic Japanese 16-bit role-playing games (RPG).
It is the largest ever interactive doodle game created by the search engine behemoth and is a series of Olympic event-themed 16-bit mini-games that users can play. The anime-inspired doodle let users play as Lucky, the Ninja Cat on behalf of four teams. The users can join either the Blue, Red, Yellow, Green teams and Google will track real-time scores on the global leaderboard.
The seven mini-games include new and returning Summer Olympic events like table tennis, skateboarding, archery, rugby, swimming, climbing and marathon. The interactive Doodle Champion Island game has been described as a world packed with seven sports mini-games, legendary opponents, dozens of daring side quests on the Google Doodle page.
The cutscene animations and characters for the new interactive games were created by Tokyo-based animation studio, STUDIO4°C, cnet.com reported.
Speaking about the creative process, the creators said they initially identified stories to challenge from Japanese folklore and history, with “characters that are highly recognised.” Next, they connected these characters with each of the “featured sport events” included in the game, NDTV reported.
Meanwhile, the Tokyo Olympics Games are all set to kick off today after being deferred for over a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Summer Games, including the opening ceremony, will miss the usual fanfare and cheer around it as Japan has issued a state of emergency earlier this month, which bans spectators from all sporting venues.
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