I never thought to play the racism card for the game's failure. Maybe Sunsoft Japan just didn't find those stereotypes on a silly cartoon squirrel all that offensive to themselves. I think its failure stems more from the glut of mascot characters at the time, and the fact that there was a more popular 16-bit hero with the name Zero. That being the character from Mega Man X.
I'm surprised they didn't change the name of Zero the squirrel because of MMX Zero, though. Video game companies do that a lot. It's why Mario Kart R was changed to Mario Kart 64 because they didn't want it associated with Sonic R. Another interesting change was with Pac-Man World. I got to follow that game with the developers from start to finish when I was writing for the newspaper, and the pirate ship boss was named H.M.S. Hanky in one of the preview builds. But South Park was gaining popularity at the time, and had an awful character in it named Mr. Hanky, so the PMW team changed the name of their boss to H.M.S. Windbag in the final version.


