The Top 25 Video Game Villains of Every Subtype Imaginable

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CC13

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SKILL_SHOT said:
SMASH TV good luck youll need it!
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That's the one! Read why Smash TV is awesome below:

14. The Host (Smash TV)
Developed & Published By: Williams Electronics
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1990

Eugene Jarvis needed a real corker of a follow-up to top a game as awesome as NARC, but Smash TV is more than equal to that task. Jarvis used the same basic formula as classic arcade pulse-pounder Robotron: 2084, added in a bunch of Contra-style weapon upgrades, changed the setting from apocalyptic sci-fi to one much more redolent of The Running Man and cranked the difficulty up to 11 (though Jarvis does claim to have completed a no-hit run of the game). Add in huge bosses, plenty of memorable quotes and some Running-Man-by-way-of-Robocop-derived social commentary (your character is risking life and limb–not to mention killing countless people–for the sake of new cars, toasters and 2600'' TVs) and you have all the makings of an arcade classic. Smash TV pulls all this together brilliantly and the game's host is the linchpin of it all.

At various points throughout the game, The Host will pop up (along with his two badly rendered bits of arm candy) to egg you on with quotes like "I'd buy that for a dollar!", "Big money! Big prizes! I love it!" and, quite fittingly given Smash TV's insane difficulty, "Good luck! You'll need it!" Furthermore, a giant robot version of him called Evil M.C. serves as the final boss of the game. After defeating Die Cobros, ou go through the two most brutal rooms in the entire game, which is really saying something (the second room can easily take you 10 minutes to get through). Hopefully, you picked up at least 10 keys throughout the rest of the game and also entered a money room in each level, because if you did, then you can enter the Pleasure Dome, where hundreds of the models who flank The Host are at your disposal.

Either way, you proceed to the final battle with Evil M.C.; this is actually kind of underwhelming, mostly due to the fact that he has the exact same strategy as Mutoid Man, the first boss of the game. Still, knocking Evil M.C.'s glitzy red jacket off to reveal his polka-dotted undershirt is always good for a laugh and the expression he makes when you manage to damage him is hilarious. After you blow Evil M.C.'s head off twice (just like with Mutoid Man), simply head on up to see the ending, which could well be the biggest disappointment since Evil M.C. himself. Seriously, it's just an A-Winner-Is-You-type text crawl telling you what a badass mofo you are for reaching the end of the game. Without those two disappointments, The Host would have been Top 5 material for this list, but the winning combination of social commentary, white-knuckle action, punishing (in a hurts-so-good sort of way) difficulty and and memorable sound clips still makes Smash TV a classic; with the game having seen its latest re-release on Midway Arcade Origins for XBox 360 and PS3 and having last been re-released for Midway Arcade Treasures for Gamecube, PS2 and XBox, there's absolutely no reason not to give this one a try.

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: Merlin's mentor walks the forgotten realms of Twycross...
 
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netizen said:
Wizards and Warriors - Malkil. Rare software?
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This was another one I thought people might have trouble with, but you got it in one, netizen! Read on to see why Malkil represents the leading edge of one of the greatest golden ages any developer ever experienced:

13. Malkil (Wizards & Warriors)
Developed By: Rare
Published By: Acclaim Entertainment/Jaleco
Platform: NES
Year of Release: 1987

Rare are mostly remembered today for their glorious run from 1994 to 2001 under minority ownership by Nintendo, but they actually have a long and storied history prior to this (we don't like to talk about the Microsoft era, though, and Star Fox Adventures is usually considered a bittersweet parting note, at best–hopefully, the rumors that have reached my ears of a Nintendo buyback will prove true). Much of this actually centered around systems most of our readers would likely be unfamiliar with (although many may be familiar with Jetpac, the first game released by the Stamper brothers, due to its appearance in Donkey Kong 64), but for our purposes, we'll start with the first use of the Rare name, which conveniently coincides with the first games the Stamper brothers released on the NES.

The Rare name was first used with Slalom, a skiing game that initially premiered on the Nintendo Vs. System hardware in 1986 (which was essentially an NES cartridge in an arcade cabinet) and would see a home release on the NES in August 1987. Four months later, Rare would release Wizards & Warriors, their first NES-exclusive title. The game could be broadly termed an action-RPG, but it would be far more accurate to call it an action-platformer with some mild RPG elements. Aside from the hack-and-slash at the heart of the gameplay, there are also various items that have a number of effects, including the Alarm Clock (which freezes all enemies on the screen for a short time), the Boots of Force (which kicks open treasure chests), the Dagger of Throwing (a thrown weapon that returns to you after you throw it), the Exploding Egg (which destroys all enemies on screen) and the Horn (which reveals various hidden passages with extra items in them). Don't get the Cloak of Darkness, though–all it does is make the screen dark and make it so that you can't see Kuros, the game's protagonist (who appears as a knight in-game, but is portrayed as a Fabio-esque barbarian on the game's cover; speaking of Fabio, he was actually the model used for the cover of the game's sequel, IronSword, which is one of the most controversial covers of its era, being named the #2 video game cover of all time by IGN, while Scott Sharkey lambasted it in his 1Up article "Hey Covers! You Suck" and Kevin Bowen named it the fourth worst video game cover of all time by in his GameSpy article "Top Ten Worst Covers").

Wizards & Warriors is also noteworthy for its odd take on difficulty. Although the game is quite difficult, it also has unlimited continues, with your score as the only casualty, so anyone can complete it if they set aside enough time. The next game in the series, IronSword: Wizards & Warriors II, would continue the tradition of high difficulty, especially in the final battle with Malkil, which might well be the hardest on the NES, as you have to eliminate the four fast-moving elementals that Malkil has split himself into to win; also, you only had two continues this time out, so careful play was a must to complete this game. The series would also eventually include Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear for the Game Boy and Wizards & Warriors III: Kuros: Visions of Power for the NES; neither of these latter two games had any sort of password or continue feature, making them even harder than their predecessors.

Wizards & Warriors stands as one of Rare's great early successes, as one might have guessed from its having spawned three sequels. Though I could only find hard numbers for IronSword, 500K copies in North America and 50K copies in Europe were more than respectable for an NES game released in December 1989, what with the Sega Genesis posing the first serious challenge to Nintendo's dominance of the North American console market and the Master System destroying the NES in terms of commercial success in Europe. It also enjoyed almost unparalleled crossover success for the time, not only appearing on both Captain N (in the episode "Nightmare on Mother Brain's Street") and The Power Team (where not only was Malkil practically a co-antagonist with Mr. Big, but Kuros was one of the five heroes), but also receiving a novelization in Scholastic's Worlds of Power line of books. This success showed how bright the future could be and indeed was for Rare, paving the way for their string of hits in the 1990s...

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: Nothing moves The Blob!
 
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Sean DonCarlos

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Hmmm? I had the game as a kid; I was 8. My mother used to hate it when I played because I'd die a lot and get mad and throw the controller!
 
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netizen

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I'd have guessed Dragon Warrior. it made slimes and blobs synonomous with video games
 
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Sean DonCarlos said:
The Emperor of Blobolonia.
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That's the one! Why did a literal fat blob get the #12 spot on this list? Read on to find out:

12. The Emperor of Blobolonia (A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia)
Developed By: Imagineering
Published By: Accolade/Jaleco/Majesco
Platform: NES
Year of Release: 1989

Few games occupy a stranger place in the old-school video game canon than A Boy and His Blob. As a largely non-violent, undeniably pioneering release by David Crane, the same man who gave the world Pitfall!, A Boy and His Blob could have been one of the defining titles of the NES, but instead, it fell somewhat short. First of all, the game's emphasis on trial and error has aged VERY poorly–time is tight for many adult gamers, so the boy's utter incompetence at anything and everything can be somewhat grating. Also, certain jellybeans (the means by which you solve puzzles–feeding one to Blobert will make him transform into something that hopefully gets you out of your current predicament; notable ones include the Tangerine Trampoline, the Root Beer Rocket and the Ketchup Catchup, which instantly brings Blobert to your side if he should get separated from The Boy) are limited in number, which can make for yet more frustration if you wasted one too many trying to figure out what each one does. Furthermore, the decision to have The Emperor be vulnerable to vitamins is highly strange, at best, and serves mainly to pad out gameplay by requiring you to get valuables to trade for them. Finally, the 2009 re-imagining by Shantae developers WayForward Technologies for the Wii completely overshadows it. Yes, this is the rare old-school game better experienced through a latter-day update.

The first thing you'll noticed about the remake (simply titled A Boy and His Blob) is that the 2D graphics are amazingly gorgeous. It almost looks like early Osamu Tezuka, with its broad color palette and rounded lines, and the art style has been confirmed to be deliberately reminiscent of '80s animated films, so you know WayForward knew what they were doing on this front. In addition, you also have as many jellybeans as you need for each stage (although you can only use certain jellybeans in each level) as well as unlimited lives, so the process of trial and error, though still present, won't raise nearly as many hackles as it did in the 1989 original. I should also note that the hug mechanic, although only a remnant of what was supposed to be a much more elaborate emotion system, is one of the cutest things I've seen in any video game...or any form of media at all, for that matter. Voice clips are sparse, since The Boy is the only speaking character in the game, but they do a good job of establishing the growing bond between boy and blob (who has no name given this time, but hey, you can't win 'em all). The turn for the poignant in the final few levels of the game (which I am NOT spoiling here) is sudden, but since we know how close our protagonists have gotten, it works; let me simply say that if you aren't cheering your lungs out during the final battle with the Emperor after what he did to The Blob, I sincerely doubt that you have a soul.

Sadly, this wonderful little gem didn't sell very well, with a grand total of 184,238 units sold since 2009. However, you have one other option if you really need more A Boy and His Blob: The Rescue of Princess Blobette, a 1991 follow-up to Trouble On Blobolonia. The implementation has its flaws (who thought that making it so that Blobert could push you onto spikes was a good idea?) and the presentation is rather plain, but it still manages to capture what made the original work so well and take it onto the pea-green screen. Treasure all three games well, for we've probably seen the last of Blobolonia for a long time to come.

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: Enter the dragon!
 
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CC13 said:
Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: Enter the dragon!
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I thought this was a clearer clue than what I initially had in mind, but I'm guessing not, so here's another clue: the game I have in mind was a pioneer in the use of quick time events in video games.
 
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netizen said:
i'll have to re guess dragon warrior then
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No, it isn't Dragon Warrior. Has any Dragon Warrior/Quest game even used quick time events? Since you've been on such a roll lately, though, I'll give you another clue: the game I have in mind was one of the first commercially successful laserdisc arcade games.
 
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netizen

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Dragons Lair with Princess Daphne lol

I thought you meant quick time in a different fashion originally. brain fart :eek:
 
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netizen said:
Dragons Lair with Princess Daphne lol

I thought you meant quick time in a different fashion originally. brain fart :eek:
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Yes, indeedy! Step into the dragon's den and read on:

11. Singe (Dragon's Lair)
Developed By: Advanced Microcomputer Systems
Published By: Cinematronics/Taito
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1983

In recent years, quick time events have been a design staple for big-budget games. From God of War to Shenmue to Die Hard Arcade to Road Blaster, this method of testing the player's reflexes has been a popular one for quite some time. They have come in for some criticism recently because of their perceived overuse in games as of late, but in the early 1980s, players had never seen anything quite like them. They had also never seen anything like Dragon's Lair, which not only blazed a trail for laserdisc games (and, by an admittedly very long extension, the eventual transfer of gaming onto compact discs and DVDs), but found a solution to the problem of the limited graphical capacities of sprite-based graphics of the time so elegant that the game stands alongside Pong and Pac-Man as one of only three video games in the Smithsonian.

Like many other games on this list, Dragon's Lair has incredibly simple gameplay–you simply press either a direction button or the sword button to get past the many traps and enemies that stand between you and rescuing Princess Daphne from the clutches of the evil dragon Singe. If you fail, you will be treated to one of many humorous scenes of your death, followed by the skeleton of Dirk the Daring (the knightly protagonist of the game) staring out at the player and reverting back to life if you have one or more lives left (if you have no lives left, a cross-looking Dirk the Daring turns into a skeleton and then falls apart). This sounds basic and it is, but what really carries the game is the animation by The Secret of NIMH director Don Bluth. Even in his less well-regarded work, the animation is gorgeous and Dragon's Lair is no exception, with expressive characters and a varied color palette that really help the game world come alive. That's not even getting into the fair Princess Daphne, who...well, I think she can very well speak for herself, n'est-ce pas (http://televandalist.com/notes/19787778287/L0NvAXYCv; link is probably NSFW)?

Dragon's Lair is a hard game to appreciate by modern standards, but its contribution to gaming can scarcely be overstated. For one thing, who knows how far having a high-class animator like Don Bluth working on a video game advanced the point of view that games are art? In addition, one could make the case for Dragon's Lair being a distant ancestor of modern rhythm games (I'm certain anyone who can breeze through Heavy mode on DDR should have little problem with Dragon's Lair). On a less unabashedly positive note, it was also the ancestor of video gaming's desire to be Hollywood, but whether or not that's a bad thing depends on which Hollywood they end up emulating. It's one thing if they imitate the modern, focus-tested nonsense of today, but frankly, I think stealing a few leaves from the director-driven era's playbook would be one of the best things that could happen to gaming right now. The relationship between a large, well-funded corporate entity and a single individual can never be a fully equal one, but if more directors and producers were to become household names–or even underground circuit stalwarts–then I think that that relationship would become far more equitable and Dragon's Lair would have an undeniable stake in that fine legacy.

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: Watch where you put that apostrophe, dangit!
 
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Kolchak357

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I remember standing in line waiting to play Dragons Lair when it first hit. We were all amazed by it at the time.
 
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night said:
Did you know that you can buy Dragons Lair in the App-store? It's such a masterpiece.
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Not only that, but you can also find Space Ace, the lesser-known follow-up to Dragon's Lair (Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp was apparently also available at one point, but got pulled for some strange reason). Does anyone know how well these apps work under iOS 6.1.3 on an iPad 3?

On a related note, the App Store also plays host to a Dragon's Lair comics app. I took the plunge yesterday night and I can give them a good recommendation for the price (Issue #1 is free, while Issues #2-#6 each cost 99¢). The writing is definitely the main draw here, leaning heavily on a stream of shout outs and witty banter from Dirk—I'd love to see what the team behind these comics could do with Space Ace or Dragon's Lair II. The art is pretty solid, although characters definitely get more love than backgrounds here. Overall, the app is a solid buy, especially if you have a hankering for the arcades of the early '80s.
 

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