Great Scot! A look at Gaming's Scottish Stars

We've been filling up on shortbread at Tag Towers today as, like the rest of Scotland, we celebrate St. Andrews Day 2016.

Us Scots have a fantastic and ever-growing game development scene especially in our hometown of Dundee, but we couldn't help but think that Scottish characters are a little under-represented in games themselves. That in mind, we trawled the depths to find three of the best (maybe worst in some cases) so you don't have to.

So, let's raise a glass of Irn-Bru to this little lot...

Scrooge McDuck

Find a gamer old enough to be thinning on top and there's a good chance that they'll get teary-eyed with nostalgia at the mention of Scrooge McDuck's NES escapades. In this 8-bit adventure the hero of Disney's Duck Tales lives up both to his name and the penny-pinching Scottish stereotype, risking life and limb in the pursuit of a bigger bank balance.

With fantastic graphics for its day, an earworming soundtrack and level after level of challenging yet fun platforming, Duck Tales remains one of the most fondly-remembered console games of the NES era. Sadly it hasn't made it onto the playlist of the Nintendo Classic Mini, but you can still get hold of the 2013 remastered version on mobile and console.

Angus MacGregor

We're unsure about whether or not a kilt is the best attire for a bare-knuckle brawl, but that won't put off Scotland's representative in the "classic" Atari Jaguar fighting game Kasumi Ninja. With bagpipes blaring in the background, Angus's poorly-digitised Loch Ness arena was a battleground for a small band of unlucky 90s kids, all of whom had asked their parents for Mortal Kombat instead.

Projectile attacks weren't anything new in one-on-one fighters back in 1994, but if memory serves us correct Angus is the only character we know of to fire them out of his crotch. Please correct us if we're wrong!

Demoman

With a persona that's perhaps not the best advert for the Scottish populace, Demoman is a violent, unpredictable drunkard who's been capturing flags and grabbing control points for almost a decade in Valve's Team Fortress 2. He swigs from a bottle in-match and throws explosives around like confetti, so it's hard to believe he hails from the sleepy highland village of Ullapool, a town with nary a sticky bomb in sight.

If you'd like to try out Demoman's Scottish-themed moveset for yourself ("Loch-n-Load" anyone?), Team Fortress 2 is currently free-to-play on PC.