Elpidio Valdés returns. Forty-three years after its creation and after making laugh several generations of Cubans, the most famous of the characters born from the imagination of artist Juan Padrón will also have its own video game.
The news, announced by national media, explains that the project of bringing the character to this new platform is possible through the joint efforts of several institutions, among which the Cuban Film Institute and the Computing and Electronics Youth Club.
The Cuban mambí after being a resounding success as a comic and cartoon will try soon making its way in the new digital platform. A complex challenge to the great competition he will face in the world of programming, and in which Cuba has an obvious delay with respect to the canons of video game production and marketing.
This phenomenon of exporting comics and cartoons to video game platforms is widespread throughout the world, and that Cuba has a history known in the application dedicated to Capitan Plin, another Cuban child drawing character. However, this precedent was not more widely consumed by children, who are permeated by the aesthetics and approaches of similar products from abroad.
Under such circumstances, the new product, to get inserted among the children’s preferences, must appeal to the rescue then the roots of the character, to rearrange the telling stories for more than four decades watching television that have kept entire families in front of a TV set.
The hopes for the success of the game, which seeks to insert the country in digital entertainment production , are essentially based on the acceptance that have been traditionally among the Cuban people of the Elpidio Valdés stories .
Talking about Elpidio among Cubans always raises laughs, since that the cartoon portrays a time of great events on the island without sacrificing the jocularity that identifies those who live or were born in this country.
The uniqueness of allowing the approach to a very important part of Cuban history through divertimento has allowed the mambí to be recognized, and the rest of the characters in their adventures, gain a place in the popular imagination of Cubans. Space that has not diminished even before the opening of the vast international animated programming that is on display today in Cuba.
For now it is certain that Elpidio returns. This is good for everyone, even for those who prefer to continue enjoying it in the traditional format two-dimensional cartoon. Hopefully then he will know how to readapt to the demanding tastes of new generations of Cubans have grown of consuming latest generation video games.
For : Julio Batista
