Arcade Game Dog Names

Ok, so Bill Grey sounds more like an accountant than a canine hero, but he is, in fact, the latter and also one of the main characters in the game that helped transition arcade-style games into three dimensions: Star Fox 64 — although the original title for Super Nintendo surely made an attempt, with limited success and without the help of Bill Grey as a character. 

Although Nintendo 64 helped to deaden the arcade game craze that was already descending into oblivion thanks to in-home video game consoles, it was also able to play off of arcade-style gaming, the kind that gave players one view, one goal, and in the case of Star Fox, a set of limited dynamics that easily would have transitioned into an original cabinet-style setup, had it been developed at the time — it only took one joystick and six buttons to command the ship to maneuver and fire. 

Star Fox was a great game for its style for numerous reasons, including its easy control-scheme that allowed newer players to adapt quickly, interesting perspective that allowed players to play third or first person, its well-developed levels and landscapes, and more importantly for this case, brought animals as protagonists front and center, including Bill Grey himself, and was one of very few series/franchises since Donkey Kong that placed such a highlight on anthropomorphic characters. 

Of course, Star Fox went far beyond just having great leads like Bill (and of course, the true lead, Fox McCloud himself, who is somewhat canine in his own right). It blended numerous genres in the process, bringing to mind some serious classics. It played like a closer-up combination of Asteroids and Contra, two highly-regarded games in the grand arcade timeline, and did so all without getting too repetitive and providing a decent storyline and significant character backstories. 

Realistically, Bill the Cornerian Bulldog was no groundbreaking character by himself, as he was simply one of many who populated the game with details that helped bring it to life (plus there was also another dog character named General Pepper, a droopy-faced hound dog), but he is still considered one of the first playable dogs in video game history and helped to represent a change in the wind, not only in the style of video game play, but who and what type of characters could be at the helm of them.