A year after appearing in NBA Jam (with Vice President Biden, and eight other political figures of both parties), President Obama will not cameo in January's NFL Blitz, one of the game's designers said recently.
Though Yuri Bialoskursky didn't say so specifically, it's probably because a presidential election year is coming up, and EA Sports doesn't want to appear to be making any endorsements. Smart move, Republicans buy video games too, and whatever the case, it's not worth the headache when one of the political talking-head shows hears of it and starts making it into a campaign novelty story.
That makes me wonder if Obama, who appeared in White House ceremonies in Madden NFL (releasing in August) and in NBA 2K (releasing in October), will also be on hiatus from those two franchises in 2012.
Bialoskursky said that as Blitz design team hashed out which unlockable characters the new game would have, they settled on eight holdovers from previous versions of the game, and creating four new ones. President Obama was not the only one who got cut; the Viking, Bear, Alien, Knight, Eagle, Dolphin and FBI Agent all didn't make it.
Those who did make the cut are in the screenshot above. Looks like we have Zombie, Cheesehead (Yuri's a Packer fan, btw), Clown, Hotdog, Horse, Lion, Robot, Pirate, Ninja (possibly an homage to Mortal Kombat's Raiden, unlockable in the original Blitz), Gladiator, Cowboy and Bigfoot.
You can rumble and stumble with these guys in the game's Gauntlet mode, described in greater detail at the link.
NFL Blitz Gauntlet [EA Sports]
You can contact Owen Good, the author of this post, at owen@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.