The Top 25 Video Game Villains of Every Subtype Imaginable

[CC13]

Defender?

That's right! I hope you spent a few more quarters on this one than on the sorry likes of ThunderJaws. Anyhow, can you give me the name of the villain? This one's kind of tricky, so I'll give you a hint: the name of the villains is a backwards spelling of one of Williams' competitors in both video games and, to a lesser extent, pinball.

 

[DeeEff]

I'll take a SWAG: Irata?

I played a gazillion games of Defender way back when, but don't remember any master (or other) villain other than the pesky ships that kept kidnapping my people. And I was always partial to Atari's games so figure they might be Williams' video game competitor, even though I don't recall any Atari pinball machines...

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Irata.

And Atari did make a few pinball machines, one of them being 4X4, a machine with no less than 8 captive balls.

 

[CC13]

I'll take a SWAG: Irata?

I played a gazillion games of Defender way back when, but don't remember any master (or other) villain other than the pesky ships that kept kidnapping my people. And I was always partial to Atari's games so figure they might be Williams' video game competitor, even though I don't recall any Atari pinball machines...

It is indeed the Irata! They actually only gained their collective name in Defender II: Stargate, which is why my initial hint was designed to point you in that direction. Also, don't worry too much about Atari's pinball machines—the only three of any real interest are Airborne Avenger (which was the first pinball table Steve Ritchie designed), Hercules (the largest pinball machine ever made) and Superman (usually considered the best player out of Atari's lineup). Anyway, let's find out why The Irata are such compelling nemeses below:

6. The Irata (Defender)
Developed & Published By: Williams Electronics
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1980

Throughout this countdown, I have tended to emphasize the broader influences of each game on the list, pointing out how it would help shape elements of gaming we take for granted today. I take this approach because I think that the part of video game history I dedicated this list to loses influence by the day not only to the ravages of time, but also to competition from NES-centric video game nostalgia. However, though Defender does indeed have a legacy worth boasting about, one little bit of trivia can summarize what makes it so appealing much more efficiently: this was the game that Will Smith played to get into the right mindset for Independence Day. Still, that legacy I mentioned merits an exploration, as few games have changed the face of the medium quite like Defender.

For starters, Defender invented the horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up. The space-based shooters that came before it had all been single-screen affairs, including classics like Space Invaders, Galaxian and Asteroids. The latter two did manage to spice up the Space Invaders formula by the addition of greater freedom of motion, either for you (as in Asteroids) or your opposition (as in Galaxian), but Defender upped the ante with erratic, fast-moving enemies in a colony that essentially served as a large arena. Adding in smart bombs to save your ship from sure destruction and colonists that had to be protected lest the colony be destroyed certainly didn't lower the tension, either.

Defender's genre-pioneering ways quickly found an audience, but its other great innovation would take much longer to gain full acceptance. Unlike many other games I have mentioned thus far, Defender's control scheme is actually noted for a rather high level of complexity. You have a joystick to change your orientation, as well as a then-unheard-of five buttons: reverse, hyperspace, smart bomb, thrust and fire. In addition, the on-screen mini-map would prove key for efficiently pushing back the alien menace, which includes Landers that want to steal your colonists and merge with them to become fast, deadly Mutants, Bombers that will pepper the air with mines, Baiters that will force you to move quickly near the end of a battle and Mother Ships, who leave behind several Swarmers when destroyed. In short, Defender can credibly be called the first hardcore game to enjoy mainstream success, with 55,000 arcade machines manufactured and over $1 billion in quarters since 1980, establishing Williams as a force to be reckoned with in the video game industry and paving the way for classic arcade titles like Joust, NARC and Smash TV.

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: The spiders are his only friends...

 

[DrainoBraino]

HERO. I don't know the enemies, bats maybe?

 

[CC13]

HERO. I don't know the enemies, bats maybe?

Sorry, but as great as H.E.R.O. is, that isn't the answer I was looking for. Here's a big clue about the game I have in mind: it was the first coin-op video game to give a design credit to a woman.

 

[Squid]

I'm not much of a video gamer but, Centipede was a favorite of mine.

I was always grateful that the spiders came by to clear out the toadstools.

 

[DeeEff]

I'm not much of a video gamer but, Centipede was a favorite of mine.

I was always grateful that the spiders came by to clear out the toadstools.

I hated the spiders when I was playing the "trap the centipede pieces with shrooms" strategy, even though they were good for points.

 

[Kolchak357]

I'm not much of a video gamer but, Centipede was a favorite of mine.

I was always grateful that the spiders came by to clear out the toadstools.

Centipede was great. I found one recently and it still holds up. The track ball was wonky but I still played three games.

 

[CC13]

I'm not much of a video gamer but, Centipede was a favorite of mine.

I was always grateful that the spiders came by to clear out the toadstools.

Centipede is indeed the one! How did this creepy crawly find its way to the #5 spot on this list? Read on to find out:

5. The Centipede (Centipede)
Developed & Published By: Atari
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1981

Video gaming has always had issues with having women in its midst. So-called core gamers tend overwhelmingly to flock to hyper-masculine FPSes and cheesecake-laden fighting games, neither of which does any favors for the image of video gaming to the broader public. Still, despite what many would have you believe, women have been gaming in large numbers for some time. Pac-Man was the first game to really draw in female players, but Centipede built on that legacy and ran with.

Centipede is the first arcade game to have a female designer, with Dona Bailey co-designing the game alongside arcade game design legend Ed Logg (Carol Shaw's 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe came out on the Atari 2600 in 1980, but has largely been forgotten today). With its bright colors and whimsical garden setting, one need not wonder why women felt more comfortable around Centipede than, say, Defender or Wizard of Wor. Don't rest too easy when you play Centipede, though–beneath that bright exterior resides a shoot-'em'-up that can run with the old-school arcade's finest in terms of both strategy and intensity.

The focus of the gameplay is, of course, the titular centipede, who heads down towards your garden gnome (no, really) through a maze of mushrooms. Each time he hits either a mushroom or the edge of the screen, he will head down to the next row unless he touched a poison mushroom, in which case he will head straight down until he hits a mushroom, the bottom of the screen or your gnomish avatar. Each shot to a segment of the centipede destroys it, but unless you hit one the two end segments, The Centipede will split into two, giving you yet another target to keep track of; furthermore, the destroyed segments turn into mushrooms, making future centipedes come at you even quicker. Other enemies includes mushroom-eating spiders (who are also great sources of points in the game, being worth a relatively paltry 300 if shot from far away, but a meaty 900 points if shot up close), mushroom-leaving fleas and mushroom-poisoning scorpions (who are the highest-scoring enemies, scoring 1000 points each).

The game also has several well-known strategies for efficiently scoring many points. The main ones are the Tunnel Strategy (create a tunnel under the 1000s digit of the score to make The Centipede come straight down when he appears), the Blob Strategy (destroy mushroom higher up on the screen while leaving those on the bottom intact, thus slowing The Centipede down), the Safety Zone Strategy (keep The Centipede looping through the screen by destroying all but two mushrooms near the bottom of the screen) and the Trap Strategy (keep The centipede trapped in the bottom-right of the screen, leaving you free to pick off spiders and scorpions at your leisure). These clever uses of what the programmers gave to players were some of the first truly strategic exploitations of video games, following in the path of previous, simpler exploits such as moving your ship to the score counter in Asteroids, where asteroids would not go, and preceding game-changing strategic innovations such as Street Fighter II's combo system, which quickly transformed from a programming error to the foundation of combo systems in every fighting game since. This legacy of showcasing out-of-the-box thinking may well be Centipede's most lasting legacy, as players search thousands of games for new strategic wrinkles, undiscovered secrets and just plain funny bugs daily and, failing that, make their own variations by modding games, thus helping to build lasting communities around many games and extending their shelf lives years beyond what they would otherwise have been.

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: One of our own hungers...

 

[CC13]

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: One of our own hungers...

Nobody's able to figure this one out? Dang it, I thought this was a good one, too. Just to clarify what I meant, though, one of our higher-profile members bears the name of a classic arcade game. I think you can all guess who I mean...

 

[DeeEff]

I was thinking that's what you meant, and I'm sure it'll be a "D'oh!" when someone gets it...

Wait! I know! It's Skill Shot! Funny, I don't remember that game...

 

[DrainoBraino]

Sinistar.

 

[DeeEff]

D'oh!

 

[CC13]

Sinistar.

And DB pulls through yet again! Beware Sinistar's hunger, for he could well be the most terrifying video game villain the arcades ever produced:

4. Sinistar (Sinistar)
Developed & Published By: Williams Electronics
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1982

Video games have long struggled to be recognized as having the same ability to have an emotional effect on their players as other media have on those who partake of them. From King's Quest IV using the question "Can a video game make you cry?" as its advertising tagline to the angst-driven protagonists of countless JRPGs trying to capture what made Final Fantasy VII so special to the strange absence of either survival or horror elements from more recent entries in its two founding series (Resident Evil & Silent Hill), emotion has long stood as gaming's true final frontier. Many outsiders have expressed skepticism of gaming's ability to deliver on this front, at least in terms of the commonly accepted gaming paradigms. However, the arcades of old produced a past master at generating at least one primal emotion: fear. His name is Sinistar and to this day, he stands as one of the most terrifying entities in any video game ever released.

What makes Sinistar so uniquely frightening? As one might expect for a game meant to attract attention (and, by extension, loose change), it starts with the cabinet art. The front art depicts a bright white ship hurtling through the darkness of space straight into Sinistar's maw, with only some asteroids punctuating the darkness; Sinistar is also flanked by the two halves of his own name, written in a jagged, almost gothic font. The sides, meanwhile, show Sinistar as several times larger than the Williams logo, as if to show that this monstrosity was too much for even the people who brought us Defender to fully contain, which should say all that needs to be said about your own chances of doing so.

The game's sheer scope builds masterfully upon this promising beginning. Unlike most shoot-'em-up games, Sinistar has a fairly open world, letting you travel infinitely in any of 49 directions, thanks to its optical joystick; however, most of that world is simply the void of space. There are a few elements that break this up, though, with various pockets of asteroids being the most important. You can shoot these to release Sinisite crystals to make into Sinibombs, which are the only weapons that can destroy Sinistar, but you will also have to fend off Workers, who want to take the Sinisite to use it to build Sinistar, and Warriors, who want to blast you before you can destroy Sinistar. Your blaster will destroy a Warrior or Worker in one shot, but the Warriors can do the same to you and your blaster does nothing against Sinistar himself. Furthermore, when Sinistar himself appears, I hope you have enough Sinibombs, because otherwise, he'll chase your ship down and have it as a light snack. To make matters worse, after the first wave, the Workers will rebuild him if you can't finish him off in a single volley of Sinibombs. As with many arcade games, Sinistar's persistence will eventually win out, no matter how skilled you are.

Finally, we have the most iconic part of Sinistar: the sound package. Having no music against the cold vacuum of space already makes for an unsettling experience, but Sinistar and Gorgar must have gone to finishing school together, for Sinistar speaks! His voice was provided by radio personality John Doremus (probably best known for his syndication of The Passing Parade), whose voice was played through an HC-55516 CSVD decoder. He announces that his construction is complete with a rumbling "Beware, I live!" and will also advise you to "Run, coward!" or simply "Run, run, run!" He will also occasionally emphasize the fate that awaits the unprepared, slow of thumb and those whose aim is untrue with the simple statement "I hunger!" or even simply roar at the player. Sometimes, he will even see fit to remind you that his mere existence spells doom for both you and humanity by saying "I am Sinistar."

Despite never seeing a home release due to the Video Game Crash of 1983, Sinistar has enjoyed substantial popularity among hardcore gamers, even spawning a minor meme called The Philosophical Revelations of Sinistar (http://onastick.net/drew/sinistar/), which takes the iconic quotes from the game and treats them as a philosophical treatise to hilarious effect. Meanwhile, the original game has seen several home releases in various compilations, first appearing in Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits in 1996, then in Midway Arcade Treasures in 2003 and Midway Arcade Origins in 2012, in addition to receiving a largely forgotten 1999 sequel known as Sinistar: Unleashed. It also receives an outsize number of tributes and shoutouts, getting referenced in games as diverse as Kingdom of Loathing, Team Fortress II and World of WarCraft, as well as making non-gaming appearances in Bob the Angry Flower, South Park, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series and even a student-produced musical at The College of William and Mary in the spring of 2009. These tributes are only fitting for such an accomplished master of fear as Sinistar, who exploits art, the vast scope of space and the sound of his own mighty voice to such terrifying effect.

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

 

[Kolchak357]

Has to be Berzerk with that crazy smiley face. What the hell was that thing named?

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Total wild guess: The Edisons from Maniac Mansion

 

[CC13]

Has to be Berzerk with that crazy smiley face. What the hell was that thing named?

Berzerk is the one! Here's a hint to the crazy smiley face's name: the first word could be applied generally to the majority of villains, while the second is a fairly common German name.

 

[DeeEff]

Evil Otto! Run away, run away!

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Aww..that's too bad. That purple tentacle in Maniac Mansion sometimes said "Intruder alert!" if it saw you. Oh well...