Google Doodle celebrates Tokyo Paralympics with Champion Island Games | Check Out

In an attempt to celebrate the spirit of the Tokyo Paralympics 2020, Google Doodle on Monday brought back the Champion Island Games that it had introduced in July during the Tokyo Olympics 2020 games. The tech giant relaunched the set of its largest-ever seven mini Doodle games created in partnership with STUDIO4°C, a Japanese animation studio, as competitive spirit soared with the commencement of Tokyo para Olympics. “Compete in the Champion Island Games as Lucky—your new favorite feline”, it wrote, adding that the “Fur-midable opponents: The Legendary Champions" were back. 

“Join calico athlete Lucky as she explores Doodle Champion Island: a world filled with seven sport mini-games, legendary opponents, dozens of daring side quests, and a few new and old friends,” Google wrote in a statement about the doodle.

“Her [Lucky’s]ultimate goal? Defeat each sport Champion to collect all seven sacred scrolls—and complete extra hidden challenges across Champion Island in the purrr-ocess,” Google adds. 

Google Doodle game with 'sur-purrr-ise' supporting lineup

Google Doodle featured games such as table tennis against the mischievous ‘bird of prey’, skateboarding with the legendary champion Tanuki that demonstrates the gnarliest aerial moves to beat this shape-shifting trickster, and archery with the legendary champion Yoichi, who, Google explains “quickly and accurately”  outscores the Samurai general and expert marksman. The Rugby sport is played by ‘The Oni’ that darts, dips, and dodges the fearsome foes to reach the goals. The game also features a “sur-purrr-ise” supporting lineup of Momotaro and friends. 

There’s also a game of artistic swimming with Princess Otohime competing ‘unWAVEring’ in the underwater kingdom. Legendary Fukuro athlete is the lead in mountain climbing that avoids obstacles thrown at him by the ladle-yielding owl champion. Doodle also features a Marathon, lead by ‘The Kijimuna’ that, as per Google, outsprint the spry tree spirits, and does not “let the crazy crustaceans slow her down”. 

The games feature the ‘Lucky’ the Ninja Cat that goes on a spree to the Champion Island and is joined by the team of Red-Karasu, Blue-Ushi, Yellow-Inari, or Green-Kappa, the colours of the Google logo as it then ventures out on the competitive game. Four colour teams contribute to the real-time global leaderboard. Google’s cutscene animations and characters are inspired by Japanese folktales from Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa in the south that is highly recognized that are connected with the sports events.  Besides commemorating the sporting event, Google with its Doodle aims to convey the rich and diverse natural beauty of Tokyo, including underwater, sandy tropical beaches, forests, and snowy mountains. 

“The team mascots and the characters in the city such as Kappa, Yatagarasu, lion dance, were also chosen as they are very well known across Japan,” Google explained. “Each character’s design was based on their original story image, but then adapted for the game.”  Google’s own favourite team from the game is ‘The stone guardians,’ which it says can be a bit scary given that they’re lions.