The Top 25 Video Game Villains of Every Subtype Imaginable

[night]

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?

It plays excellent on my iPad2 iOS 6.1.3. I love Dragon's Lair since I first played it in the arcades in Greece where I was on a holiday as a child. When I was older I had has it on my Amiga and Space Ace as well. Don Bluth is a great talent, no wonder, he worked for Disney. I believe Dragon's Lair was running on a pretty early laser disk reader from Sony. I remember that when you died the screen went blue for seconds before you saw the 'death scene'.

 

[CC13]

It plays excellent on my iPad2 iOS 6.1.3. I love Dragon's Lair since I first played it in the arcades in Greece where I was on a holiday as a child. When I was older I had has it on my Amiga and Space Ace as well. Don Bluth is a great talent, no wonder, he worked for Disney. I believe Dragon's Lair was running on a pretty early laser disk reader from Sony. I remember that when you died the screen went blue for seconds before you saw the 'death scene'.

Ah, thanks for the tip! Once my money situation improves at the beginning of next month, I just might give it a look. Anyway, since nobody seems to have come up with my #10 pre-1991 Western arcade & console game villain, here's another clue: the game I have in mind is a single-screen shoot-'em-up where you have to blast through your enemy's shields to hit them with the Zorlon Cannon.

 

[DrainoBraino]

I have Dragons Lair on PS3 and wouldn't you know it, it locks up every game!

The answer: Cotile from Yars' Revenge! HSWWSH

 

[dtown8532]

Oh, man. I love Dragon's Lair. When I was a kid my local arcade had it hooked up to a projection crt. There's a guy on Facebook who's working on a documentary called Inside The Dragon's Lair. He's going to be starting a Kickstarter soon to help with funding to finish it. Check out his Facebook page for interesting facts and some footage that he's already shot.

https://www.facebook.com/dragonslairdoc?ref=stream&hc_location=stream

On the same token, the new issue of Retro Gamer (an awesome UK mag) had a cover story on the history of Dragon's Lair. Living in the US it's quite pricey for a subscription but I find it to be worth it since there's very little ads, full color pages and the lay out is excellent. Plus it's the only magazine I subscribe to anymore. I think you can find them at Barnes and Noble too.

 

[CC13]

I have Dragons Lair on PS3 and wouldn't you know it, it locks up every game!

The answer: Cotile from Yars' Revenge! HSWWSH

Oh, that's one heck of a bug! Here's hoping you can get it sorted out, either by getting a refund or otherwise.

In any event, it is indeed the Qotile from Yars' Revenge! Read on to see why they got the nod for the #10 spot:

10. The Qotile (Yars' Revenge)
Developed & Published By: Atari
Platform: Atari 2600
Year of Release: 1982

Yars' Revenge is the perfect distillation of everything that made the Atari 2600 great. Though the game was originally supposed to be a port of Cinematronics' 1980 arcade hit Star Castle, it eventually became something altogether different. A single-screen shooter might have initially seemed archaic to most gamers in 1982, but Yars' Revenge took that single screen and packed it full of frenetic shmup goodness.

You are a Yar, one of a species of insectoid aliens who seek to avenge the planet once known as Razak IV, which the Qotile destroyed, this titular revenge being further explained in the comic book that came packed in with every copy of Yars' Revenge (also, I must note that both the Yar people and the planet Razak took their name from then-Atari CEO Ray Kassar). Your objective is simple: break through the Qotile's shield on the left side of the screen and blow it to kingdom come with the Zorlon Cannon. However, it's not quite that easy–up to three homing mines will follow your ship at all times. You can avoid them by staying in the Neutral Zone, but the catch is that you can't fire at the Qotile, either; furthermore, the Qotile can still hit you with the Swirl, a pinwheel of death that it periodically transforms into, spinning in place for some amount of time before hurtling itself at your character. Thus, breaking through the shields is a tense game of cat and mouse, with the Yar trying to stay away form the homing mines and out of the Swirl's line of fire while also leaving the Neutral Zone to take well-aimed potshots at the Qotile.

Yars' Revenge is the best-selling in-house game on the Atari 2600 for reasons that I hope I managed to make clear. Its mechanics work brilliantly to build tension, giving you some measure of respite, but not enough that you're ever able to really cool your heels. This truly was designer Howard Scott Warshaw's finest hour (he is, unfortunately, probably better known for the colossal flop that was E.T.) and you can even find his initials in the game (both forwards and backwards, spelling "HSWWSH") if you fulfill a certain set of esoteric circumstances (which will end your game, just so you know in advance). Also, the game has become something of a stalwart on the remake circuit–the 2011 remake (entitled Yar's Revenge) is also pretty good, if a bit on the short side, while the Facebook app Yars' Revenge: First War garnered high praise for its reimagining of the original (the app seems to be down as of the last time I tried to play it). It shows you just how well a tense shooter with an infuriatingly devious antagonist can age, even as Atari's cachet fades into the past.

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: The cars were kind of predictable, but the breakdancers were a nice touch!

 

[DrainoBraino]

Is it.....Paper Boy?

 

[CC13]

Is it.....Paper Boy?

Indeed it is! What could possibly have come from a game about delivering newspapers to take the #9 spot on this list? You can find out below:

9. The Whole Neighborhood (Paperboy)
Developed & Published By: Atari Games
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1984

1984 is probably not in most gamers' top 5 picks for the best year video gaming ever had. The Atari 2600, Colecovision and Mattel Intellivision were all reeling from the Great Video Game Crash of 1983, scores of smaller console manufacturers & third-party developers had gone under altogether and the Famicom would not make the leap to the States for another year. All told, video gaming as a mass medium was at its most precarious position since the mid-1970s controversy over Death Race. Still, as the old saw goes, necessity is the mother of invention. The arcade was the last bastion of mainstream gaming (PC gaming would not really be mainstream for another 10 years or so), so in order to sell their wares to a public that had grown jaded, if not outright dismissive, of video games' charms, arcade game manufacturers brought the house, bringing great innovation and polish in terms of presentation, control and gameplay. Recall that 1984 gave us such indisputable arcade classics as Marble Madness, Pac-Land (the first side-scrolling platformer) & the original two Punch-Out! games, among others. Still, one game stood out from even this prestigious crowd as an innovator and an early indicator of where gaming would move in the years ahead.

Paperboy may not seem like much, but a number of its ideas presaged modern developments in video games. Consider the first thing that you would probably notice upon viewing a Paperboy machine–namely, the twin handlebars that served as your control over the titular deliverer of fishwrap. You probably already guessed that Nintendo's many experiments with how we play our games are going to be coming up here, but those efforts started hot on Paperboy's heels, with the mostly forgotten (at least until Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released) ROB and the decently well-remembered Zapper, both for the NES. Although, as those two examples indicate, Nintendo's efforts in this arena have been met with mixed results, Paperboy decisively showed that gamers could adapt to control schemes outside the tried-and-tested format of a joystick and one or two buttons that they had grown so accustomed to on the Atari 2600 and countless arcade machines.

The setting of the game also deserves mention for its more subtle influence on the culture of gaming. Paperboy's humble suburban setting demonstrated that even though fantasy and sci-fi alike were more than capable of bringing arcade thrills to the masses, reality should not be discounted as a source of material for video game settings. Video games, especially big-budget Western releases, got swept up in a wave of realism early in the 21st century and have yet to look back. The CODs and GTAs of the world couldn't differ more from Paperboy in terms of tone and scope, but Paperboy blazed the trail of realism for them over 10 years before either franchise first saw the light of day.

In gaming, however, innovations are only as good as the game that supports them. Thankfully, Paperboy delivers (pun semi-intended). At its heart, Paperboy is a shooting gallery game, with the mailboxes of your subscribers (who live in bright-colored houses) as your main targets and the windows of non-subscribers (who live in black houses) as secondary targets. Your supply of newspapers is limited, but can be replenished by newspaper bundles you find along your route. Still, you probably shouldn't just sling those papers wherever you please, since missing or vandalizing a subscriber's house will cause them to unsubscribe from you–lose all your subscribers and you lose the game! Don't lose heart if a subscriber slips through your fingers, though–by getting a Perfect Delivery, you can change one non-subscriber into a subscriber (maximum 10) and also double the bonus points you receive at the end of the day (you're trying to survive one week of newspaper delivery, Monday to Sunday). However, a bizarre rogues' gallery of miscreants will try to stop you from making it to the end of the day, ranging from bees to breakdancers to cars to the Grim Reaper himself. Some of these can be hit with a newspaper for some bonus points, but you'll have to try and avoid most of them.

Paperboy is the rare game that is both ahead of its time and popular in its own time. By using a simple, time-tested gameplay formula to support some truly radical innovations, Dave Ralston and his team made Paperboy into a highly influential smash hit. Some sardonically humorous voice clips (including a gem about "sav[ing] the land from TV journalism") and an off-the-wall cast of characters all doing their best to try and stop you probably didn't hurt, either. Overall, Paperboy is an underrated milestone in the history of video games (further adding to its cachet is the fact that its NES port was actually the first NES game developed in the United States) and you should either pop a quarter into a machine or play one of the many home ports it received over the years if you haven't already.

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: "Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?" "The same thing we do every night, Grunty: try to turn humans to Progs!"

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

pinky and the brain YOINK NAARF!

 

[DrainoBraino]

Uhh.....Is it Tron?

 

[CC13]

Uhh.....Is it Tron?

No, but that answer is closer than you might think. Here's another hint: the game I have in mind more or less single-handedly codified the twin-stick shooter genre.

 

[DrainoBraino]

It;s gotta be-------> ROBOTRON

Im on a roll now.

 

[CC13]

It;s gotta be-------> ROBOTRON

Im on a roll now.

Yes, that's it! Killing off all of humanity save one family is an impressive feat, but what else makes The Robotrons stand out in a crowd? Read on to find out:

8. The Robotrons (Robotron: 2084)
Developed By: Vid Kidz
Published By: Williams Electronics
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1982

As the second-youngest of the mass media (with only web original content having metastasized more recently), video gaming feels the vagaries of chance more deeply than its more established cousins. From John Kirby's fortuitous discovery of MCA Universal having previously argued that King Kong was in the public domain to Capcom's 1991 revisiting of a modestly popular fighting game called Street Fighter to a Mac-centric developer named Bungie becoming synonymous with FPSes under the wing of Microsoft, video gaming still trembles from the aftershocks of many an earthshaking twist of fate. Robotron: 2084 is the product of such unforeseeable chance, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale than my previous examples. During the game's development, co-designer Eugene Jarvis got into an automobile accident which he thankfully survived, but not without fairly severe injuries to his right hand. Unable to use button-based controls due to his injury and inspired by Berzerk's shooting mechanics, which forced the player to stand still while firing while letting him spin the joystick around so he could fire in any direction, Jarvis had the idea of replacing the fire button with a second joystick that would permit players to fire in any direction they wanted while still staying on the run. After building on this solid foundation with a rescue mechanic inspired by Jarvis' previous arcade hit Defender and a Terminator-esque story of machines casting down humanity (though it should be noted that Robotron came first), Jarvis and co-designer Larry DeMar had the makings of what would become the founder of the twin-stick shooter genre.

In order to ramp up tension, Robotron: 2084 places you in the middle of its single screen of play, where you must dodge enemy projectiles from all sides and hopefully also manage to rescue the last human family before either a Robotron or an ill-placed Electrode kills them all. The basic GRUNTs (Ground Roving Unit Network Terminators) are not too dangerous to the alert player except in very large numbers, but the more advanced Robotrons are more than capable of ruining your day. The indestructible Hulks, randomly-aiming Enforcers and bouncing-projectile-equipped Tanks are bad enough, but the Brain Robotrons are every would-be savior of humanity's worst nightmare. In addition to their erratically curving shots, Brain Robotrons reprogram any human they touch into a Prog, which then charges around the stage in an attempt to destroy you. Thus, time is of the essence when Brain Robotrons are on the prowl, as the 1000 plus points you score when you rescue Mom, Dad or Mikey are your quickest and most reliable source of points, with 25000 points giving you an additional man to throw against the Robotron menace.

As I have often said during this countdown, if what I described above seems relatively simple by modern standards, that's probably because it should. That said, Robotron's twin-stick design proved an invaluable gift not just to the niche genre it forged, but to countless other titles, not least almost every 3D platformer ever made (via camera controls) & especially FPSes (via separate sticks for normal movement and strafing). Speaking of the twin-stick shooter, it has been something of an "it" genre on the handheld and downloadable console game circuits, sparked by the surprise 2003 XBLA hit Geometry Wars and also giving rise to hits like the Solomon Dark games, Beat Hazard and Ballistic. Smash TV and Total Carnage, two more arcade releases by Williams/Midway, are also worthy heirs to Robotron's legacy. Hopefully, you can see now just what a momentous legacy Robotron can claim.

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: CHOMP!

 

[CC13]

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: CHOMP!

OK, I'll admit this isn't a terribly helpful clue, so here's another one: the game our next entrant hails from is often considered Activision's best game on the Atari 2600.

 

[DrainoBraino]

Crocodiles from Pitfall!

 

[DeeEff]

The alligators from Pitfall!

(sorry for pre-empting you, Draino - I'm just in the right place at the right time :^)

Edit: no fair, I spent more than six minutes typing!

 

[DrainoBraino]

Hah, it's ok I'll share credit with you.

 

[CC13]

Crocodiles from Pitfall!

You got it again, DB! Why did these toothy terrors manage to gnaw their way to the #7 spot on this list? Read on to find out:

7. The Crocodiles (Pitfall!)
Developed & Published By: Activision
Platform: Atari 2600
Year of Release: 1982

Certain franchises have always served as bellwethers for the state of the video game industry. The fall of the once-proud Sonic franchise signalled the end of the mascot-with-attitude boom of the '90s, while Street Fighter IV's rousing success gave a shot in the arm not only to its own series, but also the fighting genre as a whole. In many ways, the Pitfall! franchise has served this purpose for gaming as a whole, with Super Pitfall showing just how far American gaming had fallen (what with the game being farmed out to a Japanese developer called Micronics and the abortive sequel having initially been planned to be a port of a Famicom called called Atlantis no Nazo), while the 2012 rebranding of the series as an endless runner on iOS and Android demonstrates just how far the mobile gaming scene has risen. For their part, though, the first two entries in the series show us just why Activision were considered the best of the best on the Atari 2600.

All the elements of Pitfall's gameplay were familiar to gamers even in 1982, from dodging deadly obstacles to collecting items for points to perilous death traps. Where Pitfall! stood out was in its scope–it had 256 screens crammed into its 4K of data when many of its contemporaries took place on a single screen. By taking the familiar design tropes of its era and expanding on them, Pitfall! established itself as the pinnacle of its era's game design principles. The crocodiles on whose backs you must often jump serve as one of the best illustrations of this.

To jump across an inconveniently placed lake with no vine in sight, you will need to make use of three crocodiles in its depths as impromptu platforms. Don't jump on a crocodile when its mouth is open, though, or you'll go right down its gullet! Dilly-dallying atop its snout will also result in lunchtime for your scaly friend. Standing right on the far edge of its head can spare you from this fate and is also necessary to get enough distance for that final jump back onto the relative safety of dry land, but you can easily slip and fall into crocodile-infested waters, which will quickly prove fatal for you. In short, The Crocodiles represent a distillation of tense, arcade-style tests of timing and skill that punctuates the game's atmosphere and design perfectly (and will probably be your main source of deaths, if you're anything like me).

For all its success (over 4 million copies of the original game were sold, eclipsed only by the nefarious port of Pac-Man), Pitfall! feels like it should have had more legs than it did. Unfortunately, Pitfall II: Lost Caverns was also a sign of the times, coming out in the thick of The Great Video Game Crash of 1983, which effectively buried it, despite its improvements on the original, which actually required an in-game chip called the Display Processor Chip, which enabled the Atari 2600 to have music on 3 channels plus drums in addition to the enhancements it provided to the 2600's graphics. Since then, Pitfall! has seen several sequels, but the original still looms large, even appearing as an Easter egg in Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, Pitfall: Beyond The Jungle and Pitfall: The Lost Expedition (with the latter two also containing Pitfall II). Today, Pitfall! is mostly remembered as the granddaddy of what are colloquially called Metroidvanias, large-scale 2-D platformers centered around exploring the game world and finding various items to help you on your quest. Though this is undoubtedly a worthy legacy, Pitfall! also deserves credit for expanding the horizons of console gaming as a whole, showing that a bright future lay ahead for gaming even as the American gaming industry would hit bottom only a few short years later.

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: Shoot the pyramid!

 

[CC13]

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: Shoot the pyramid!

I thought this clue would stand on its own, but it seems I was wrong yet again. Here's a clarification of what I was going for: "Shoot the pyramid!" is a callout from a Gottlieb pin released in 1995; furthermore, that pin has the same name as the sequel to the game I have in mind.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Defender?

 

[Kolchak357]

Q*Bert?