Here’s Peppino, you all know this guy. What makes his design work? He’s a fat middle aged guy wearing a chef hat and apron. So what, right? The game’s art direction is a part of character design. If this was in a less cartoonish style, it wouldn’t have worked. Instead, Peppino squashes and stretches and does typical cartoon takes, so his design being simple works, especially since they needed to animate roughly 3,500 frames for him. He’s a protagonist in an extremely fast paced game, so his black and white design is perfectly readable and contrasts nicely over the backgrounds and from other enemies. It also helps that he’s very expressive.