The Top 25 Video Game Villains of Every Subtype Imaginable

[jkonami]

Xybots is quite the game, but it didn't quite have the impact further down the road that I, Robot would have (though Xybots was the first third-person shooter, according to my research). If I were to do this list over again, I might place The Xybots somewhere in the 25 to 19 area of the list, but they aren't top 10 material, IMO. As for Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters, while it is good fun, I've always been terrible at 3/4-isometric games, so I never got as much out of it as it felt like I should have when I played it. Besides, The Reptilons were not all that exciting, from what I recall. To summarize, Xybots probably is a better game than I, Robot, but didn't have nearly the influence on game design that I, Robot did, while EftPofRM is an alright game that fell through the cracks.

Fair enough! Maybe I should fire up I Robot and give it a little more playtime in the future. Thanks for the entertaining distraction!

 

[CC13]

*takes bow*

Good stuff! very fun

Thanks! I'm glad that I'm not the only one who's getting a kick out of me doing this. Also, you may want to check your inbox–I believe I sent you a message late last night asking you which list you wanted me to do next. Once I hear back from you and netizen, I'll announce your decisions and start in with your chosen list (since you took first place).

 

[CC13]

OK, I'm ready to announce our next two planned lists! First, I'll be going through DB's chosen list, The Top 25 Nintendo Villains, followed by netizen's choice, The Top 25 Western Console & Arcade Game Villains of the 1990s. The format for both chosen lists (and all future lists) will follow the exact same pattern as The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains, so you should already know what to expect. Anyway, I'll leave you now, but not before I give you your first clue of the new list—happy guessing!

Next Time on The Top 25 Nintendo Villains: This clock is worth millions...

 

[CC13]

Next Time on The Top 25 Nintendo Villains: This clock is worth millions...

Apparently, my clues haven't gotten much better since last time, so here's another one: the series this villain hails from had a clarification of the structure of its timeline around 2 years ago.

 

[netizen]

Next Time on The Top 25 Nintendo Villains: This clock is worth millions...

This remonds me of Twilight Zone. Too much pinball, lol

here's another one: the series this villain hails from had a clarification of the structure of its timeline around 2 years ago.

With the retconning hint i'm going to have to take a guess at gannon from the Zelda series.

 

[DrainoBraino]

Dracula from Castlevania?

 

[CC13]

This remonds me of Twilight Zone. Too much pinball, lol

That was indeed my intention.

With the retconning hint i'm going to have to take a guess at gannon from the Zelda series.

Why would Ganondorf be a dishonorable mention? He's one of the classic Nintendo antagonists from one of Nintendo's Five Pillars, with a history that stretches back to 1986, charisma to spare and great manipulative abilities—in other words, we won't be seeing him until MUCH further up the list. Think about why my initial clue was a Twilight Zone reference and what this could have to do with the Zelda series...

P.S. Gannon Banned!

Dracula from Castlevania?

No, Castlevania is a Konami game. When I refer to "Nintendo villains" in this context, I specifically mean "villains from games produced by Nintendo", not "villains from games that just happened to appear on a Nintendo system." Besides, Dracula will be very high up on the Top 25 Old-School Japanese Video Game Villains, even if the post-reboot games have largely been disappointing if what I've heard is correct.

 

[netizen]

Think about why my initial clue was a Twilight Zone reference and what this could have to do with the Zelda series...

The ocarina of time, the last reboot being a prequel, the use of time travel as a plot device. IDK, given your sierra like clues it seemed to fit atm. LOL

 

[CC13]

The ocarina of time, the last reboot being a prequel, the use of time travel as a plot device. IDK, given your sierra like clues it seemed to fit atm. LOL

You're focusing in too much on the specifics of the reference. I thought that the Twilight Zone reference would give it straight away, but here's another clue: the villain I have in mind is hijacked by Ganon near the end of his game.

 

[DrainoBraino]

Zant from Twilight Princess

 

[CC13]

Zant from Twilight Princess

That's a great start to your championship defense, DB! Why did Zant stumble so badly near the end of his tenure? Read on for the sordid details:

D1. Post-Penultimate Dungeon Zant (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess)
Developed & Published By: Nintendo
Platform: Wii
Year of Release: 2006

Even more so than most long-running video game franchises, The Legend of Zelda is largely defined by each individual game's reinterpretation of a number of core tropes. We all know to expect a young man named Link to wear green, wield bombs, boomerangs, bows, hookshots and other assorted gadgets, have to undergo a perilous quest to collect the plot coupons du jour, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. One point that does vary somewhat is who Link aspires to defeat by collecting the aforementioned plot coupons—Ganondorf is both the most common and most well-known of Link's foes, but the Hero of Time has also crossed swords with Bellum, The Demon King Demise and The Nightmares of Koholint Island, among others. However, Ganondorf's ability to manipulate others is legendary, so you will often find that the villain you spent much or even most of the game fighting was merely one of The King of Evil's catspaws. This is common enough that TVTropes refers to it as being Hijacked By Ganon (that is, a new villain turns out to have been a cover for a more-established antagonist) and its highest-profile victim is almost certainly the Twili called Zant.

Being Hijacked By Ganon is certainly an embarrassment for any villain, but why does this qualify PPD!Zant for a dishonorable mention? The answer lies in how competent and powerful Zant seemed prior to the reveal that Ganon had been pulling his strings for the entire game. For most of the game, Zant successfully presents himself as a truly formidable foe, forcing Princess Zelda to surrender to him, nearly killing Midna and shattering the Mirror of Twilight. What we see from him after his overthrow, however, is a sharp diversion from what we have grown to expect from the self-proclaimed King of Twilight, as he has degenerated into a frantic, ranting, tantrum-throwing shell of his former glory. Thankfully, he does not last long after this, as Midna unceremoniously destroys Zant after you defeat him; he does not return, despite his claims that his 'god' (actually Ganondorf) will revive him infinitely, but does arguably get some measure of revenge, as we later see an image of him breaking his own neck, which somehow leads to Ganondorf's own demise.

Tropes exist for a reason and the reasoning behind Hijacked By Ganon is obvious enough–it gives the thrill of something new to fight for a short while before returning to the old pattern that we really do enjoy, but did think had gotten to be old hat after a while, thus making the classic villain's appearance a thrill instead of a groan inducer. However, undermining the newcomer too much works against this effect, since it turns the fans' attention away from the stalwart scoundrel's return and onto how pathetic his catspaw is. Apparently, Nintendo learned their lesson here, perhaps too well–three Zelda titles have come out subsequent to Twilight Princess, but none of them have The King of Evil as the heavy. Somehow, though, I don't think his absence will extend to four games–it just wouldn't do to miss the sequel to arguably the most revered game in the series, after all...

Next Time on The Top 25 Nintendo Villains: Audi famam illius...

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the game, but I'm afraid that bit of lyrics isn't enough for me to connect it to a particular villain, and I'd expect the obvious answer (Bowser) to be much further up the list.

 

[CC13]

Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the game, but I'm afraid that bit of lyrics isn't enough for me to connect it to a particular villain, and I'd expect the obvious answer (Bowser) to be much further up the list.

It is indeed Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Here's another hint for the villain: he only appears in the single-player campaign mode (NOT the Classic single-player mode), where he is the final boss.

 

[CC13]

It is indeed Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Here's another hint for the villain: he only appears in the single-player campaign mode (NOT the Classic single-player mode), where he is the final boss.

OK, this one apparently could stand some clarification—the mode I'm talking about is The Subspace Emissary.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Tabuu.

 

[Captain B. Zarre]

Tabuu!

 

[CC13]

Tabuu.

You seem to have a knack for dishonorable mentions–this is the second straight list where you've full-pointed a dishonorable mention entry. What made Tabuu such an underwhelming end to an ambitious-but-overreaching campaign? There are several reasons, all of which I'll further explicate below:

D2. Tabuu (Super Smash Bros. Brawl: The Subspace Emissary)
Developed & Published By: Nintendo
Platform: Wii
Year of Release: 2008

In the late 1990s, few people thought of hardcore, tournament-friendly fighting games when you mentioned Nintendo. Those who grew up on Nintendo in the '90s might have though of Killer Instinct, while Gen-Xers reminisced over Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! and the odd import fan might have had good things to say about Joy Mech Fight, but nobody could have seen the runaway success of Super Smash Brothers coming. Though the idea of a mascot fighter seems obvious in retrospect, the original N64 game was actually a budget release that only received the familiar Nintendo characters late in its development. Since then, the GameCube and Wii have both seen entries in the series and a large tournament scene has grown up around the game, while discussing who will or should be in the next Smash is a popular pastime for many gamers.

However, one part of the evolution of the Smash series is often overlooked: the evolution of its single-player modes. Though you could always play against up to 3 opponents in a one-off match with the stage, items and CPU prowess of your choosing, the original game had only a bare-bones series of fights, punctuated by three special stages tailored to the character you were using; the campaign eventually culminates in a showdown with an ambulatory glove named Master Hand, who has an HP counter, unlike all other opponents in the game, who simply fly further from each of your blows the higher you increase their damage percentage. Despite its bare-bones nature, however, the single-player mode was necessary to unlock characters, so you did need to spend some time with it to get the full experience of the game. Super Smash Bros. Melee upped the ante with Adventure Mode, a longer single-player campaign with side-scrolling stages to cleanse the palate between pummeling Nintendo's finest, with both single-player modes playing a role in unlocking characters.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl, on the other hand, went for something altogether more ambitious. The Subspace Emissary expands on the more epic scope of Melee's Adventure Mode and the results are, in my opinion, mixed. One area where The Subspace Emissary excels is in giving players the sense of playing through a sprawling epic–the scope is far beyond anything the first two games did with their single-player modes and completionists should look into getting all the stickers in the mode (stickers can be used to gain boosts in TSE); also, being able to get all the unlockable characters through here makes it much less of a hassle to get your Smash roster filled out. However, many of the levels seem sparse and the plot is very difficult to decipher at times, despite (or perhaps because of) the copious cutscenes in the game. In many ways, Tabuu represents the apotheosis of the mode's issues.

At the end of the game, you find yourself in Subspace, an alternate dimension that the bugs that have been making evil clones of our heroes have been coming from all this time. To complete this level, you must first fight your way through clones of every single character in the Smash roster. After this, you are presented with a cutscene where Tabuu (who had appeared previously as the man behind Master Hand, much to Ganondorf's chagrin) has his wings shattered by a blue blur who turns out to be Sonic the Hedgehog, after which you pick six characters and go to town on Tabuu. Yes, it really is that sudden–I'm not leaving out any context or exaggerating events for comedic effect here.

One can easily tell what Nintendo wanted to do with Tabuu–they wanted him to be another addition to their surprisingly proud tradition of superpowered eldritch-abomination-type big bads (a tradition that includes Dark Matter, Giygas, the Shadow Queen and arguably also The Nightmares of Koholint Island). However, too much went wrong in the process for him to be able to take that next step (although the final battle with Tabuu is quite epic, particularly since he has those one-hit KO red rings of death). In a way, Tabuu's arena being the black void of Subspace is strangely fitting, since The Subspace Emissary itself can often feel like that–devoid of context, explanation or even terribly much interesting to do. Hopefully, Tabuu will have a chance to redeem himself in Super Smash Bros. U...

Next Time on The Top 25 Nintendo Villains: Drop the hammer!

 

[CC13]

Next Time on The Top 25 Nintendo Villains: Drop the hammer!

It seems as though we'll need another clue to move this one along, so here you go: the hero of the franchise did not gain what is usually considered his signature power until the second entry in the franchise's main series.

 

[netizen]

Mario franchise - hammer Bros

 

[CC13]

Mario franchise - hammer Bros

No, that isn't quite right. For starters, you would have to leapfrog both Donkey Kong Jr. and Mario Bros., going straight from Donkey Kong to Super Mario Bros., in order to call SMB "the second main entry in [Mario's] main series." Anyway, here's another clue: the antagonist I have in mind went soft after his debut game, having only subsequently been the primary villain in remakes of that game and spin-off titles from the main series.