The Top 25 Video Game Villains of Every Subtype Imaginable

[Kolchak357]

Evil Otto! Run away, run away!

Excellent! I would have never thought of it.

 

[CC13]

Evil Otto! Run away, run away!

That's the way to do it, DeeEff! A smiley face may seem an odd choice for the #3 spot on this countdown, but Evil Otto completely lives up to his name:

3. Evil Otto (Berzerk)
Developed & Published By: Stern Electronics
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1980

One of the running themes of this countdown has been the radical simplicity of many of the games we have examined thus far. This is to be expected, as arcades were the driving force of innovation in this early part of American video game history and they depended on accessible gameplay so as not to scare off potential customers and their customers. However, by 1980, arcades were in the middle of a sea change in terms of how much complexity and scope arcade gamers would tolerate–true, the unbelievably simple Pac-Man came out in 1980, but we also saw Battlezone's seemingly infinite plains, Defender's five-button control scheme and Wizard of Wor's comparatively mind-bending mechanics of summoning invisible new enemies in response to the deaths of the old ones; even Pac-Man had a changing maze, four ghosts with radically different behavioral patterns, a tunnel that let you jump from one side of the screen to the other and a means of becoming immune to the ghosts which formed the basis of strategy for the game. Berzerk balanced on this tricky precipice like a past master and is also often proclaimed as the first game to use voice synthesis (that honor actually goes to Sunsoft's Stratovox).

At its core, Berzerk is–you guessed it–very simple. The object of the game is to escape from as many rooms as possible while blasting as many robots as you can. However, there are four main wrinkles to the gameplay that make it more interesting than it initially sounds. First, the robots shoot back after the first room, eventually shooting 5 fast bullets at once at their highest levels. Second, the walls of the maze are electrified, making them deadly to your player character. Third, you can shoot in 8 directions, but to do so, you must stop moving, leaving yourself vulnerable to any surviving robots in the maze. Finally, if you dally in any one room for too long, a bouncing smiley face named Evil Otto will chase after you from the left side of the screen. How fast he is varies depending on the version of the game you're playing and how many points you have–in early versions, Evil Otto moved as fast as the player on the X-axis (he is always quicker than you on the Y-axis) unless you had at least 5,000 points, in which case Evil Otto would move at twice your speed. However, as later versions of Berzerk's ROMs had a much more difficult progression of robots, Evil Otto's speed was halved to rebalance the difficulty, thus making him only half as fast as you until you scored 5,000 points, at which point he would then move as fast as you.

As one might expect, Evil Otto claimed many players' quarters and on-screen representations, but Berzerk also gained notoriety for its role in the death of two players in the early '80s. Both of them–Jeff Dailey in January 1981 and Peter Burkowski in October 1982–died of heart attacks shortly after posting high scores on a Berzerk machine. These were the first deaths known to be linked directly to a video game and they left an indelible impact. The unfortunate passing of these two young men almost certainly influenced the Nightmares story Bishop of Battle, which concerned a game hard enough to kill players.

On a less downbeat note, Berzerk enjoyed great popularity in its day, receiving official ports to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and Vectrex consoles (though only the second of these had the digitized speech that made the arcade original so famous, the Atari 2600 version would be hacked by Mike Mika to have speech in 2002). It also received a sequel the following year, Frenzy, which added new features such as making Evil Otto briefly destructible if you could shoot him three times before he got you and Big Otto, who would spawn multiple Evil Ottos if you killed an Evil Otto in one of his rooms. Notably, both games have a song dedicated to them in an album specifically about video arcades, with Berzerk receiving tribute in the form of Bruckner & Garcia's "Goin' Berzerk" while Frenzy got a shout-out from R. Cade and the Video Victims in the form of "FRENZY!", which is usually considered the better song by those who have heard of it (which is a bigger qualifier than you might imagine). More recently, it has been referenced on The Simpsons, Futurama and My Name Is Earl, as well as having Evil Otto recognized as the most frightening vieo game enemy ever by Cracked (Sinistar took the #3 spot, in case you're wondering).

Since I just brought up Sinistar, examining what makes Evil Otto tick as an antagonist compared to what makes Sinistar so terrifying and what the two represent may prove fruitful. As I expounded on at length in my previous entry, Sinistar is a massive, obviously evil, extremely loud (given that the game does take place in space, which has very little atmosphere, as we well know) eldritch abomination. This would mean that if he does indeed represent some force in the real world, then it would have to be something which could have been similarly flashy, loud and supremely terrifying if it had ever come to fruition, yet also simply lurked in the background most of the time, creating a general sense of anxiety and fear; the parallels to the Cold War should be obvious enough. Furthermore, the large amount of red in Sinistar's design makes it even clearer that our interstellar demon is a metaphor for the Russian Bear, viewed not as the run-down force being thoroughly outmaneuvered by CIA-backed Afghan partisans, but as the omnipresent, almost diabolic force that could initiate the annihilation of the free world by pressing one red button.

Evil Otto, however, represents something different. Even in 1980, the smiley face emblem was a well-known pop culture symbol, having first taken its modern form in 1963, when Harvey Ball designed the modern smiley face to boost morale at the State Mutual Life Insurance Company of Worcester, Massachusetts. Considering how much abuse motivational posters come in for almost anywhere outside of an office or school setting, it hardly seems a stretch to think that most of Berzerk's target audience would have rolled their eyes at such a morale-boosting measure as Harvey's. Thus, having Evil Otto take the form of something so mainstream and conformist clearly indicates at least a broad anti-establishment outlook on the game's part. This is further corroborated by the story of how Evil Otto gained his name–Alan McNeil (who had just come off the success of Meteor with Stern's pinball division) named him after one Dave Otto, the head of security at Dave Nutting Associates and also a grade-A sadist by McNeil's account, locking employees out of the building to enforce a noon-time lunch hour and filling every room of the building Dave Nutting Associates operated out of with "beautiful" music.

In addition, robots have long been used in works of science fiction as a metaphor for stultifying conformity, so having them led by a bouncing smiley face named for a sadistic security chief takes our previously-established anti-establishment thread and amplifies it almost to the point of self-parody. In this context, electrified walls could easily be taken to represent the bonds of social conventions and expectations, while the endless maze is an apt simile for society's never-ending demands on each individual, as well as the ebb and flow of moral fashion. Furthermore, the robots will soon fire much faster than you if you last very long, thus effectively shrinking the area of play, much like how the combination of increasingly effective means of surveillance and increasingly efficient weapons has made the world a very cramped, dangerous place for any dissenters against the agendas of the powers that be.

Berzerk's message becomes much clearer now: in every age, those who hold power in the world mold society into a form that its members find pleasing, maximizing both their own comfort and their perceived necessity to the social order. Most people either do not perceive the injustice of the system or do not want to see it, so they are only too eager to conform themselves to the prevailing order (represented by the fact that everyone but the player character is a robot, mindlessly following programs decided on by some higher-up). However, a few (like the player character) see this order for the power grab that it truly is; they mean to fight back, but the real culprits have set up the system to shield themselves from harm, so the robots are the only ones they can attack, either literally or metaphorically. Furthermore, the system punishes those who step too far out of line with society's strictures, even if they should do so non-violently (the electrified walls), and will send the enforcers of its order out even if unprovoked; they believe in the system completely and enforce it with a clear conscience (why else would Evil Otto always have that smile on his face?).

Thus, we see that Berzerk is no mere game about running around and blasting robots, but the allegory of Plato's cave, with the added wrinkle that those still in the cave are probably trapped forever and will take pains to isolate or even eliminate those that make their exit from it. The world cries out for an übermensch, someone who can rise above the dreary conventionality of ossified thought and finally apply cleansing flames to the forest of the mind to break the cycle of old ideas overgrowing, collapsing and rotting away to feed the new ideas so they can, in turn, overgrow, collapse and rot, but alas, we are bound by our mortalities and our social natures to never truly see past the maze, even if we are among the lucky few who can conceive of anything beyond it. Death and hermitage are the only real escapes, with all the fruits of human philosophy leading only to yet another permutation of the maze. In short, hell is not merely other people, but the very nature of humanity itself, yet each of us has an inescapable duty to stand up to groupthink and rotting conventionality, even if the battle is ultimately quixotic, for that is the only way to secure even a measure of freedom of ourselves, which is the highest goal even the wisest and most insightful can hope to attain (recall that you can only meaningfully interact with the other denizens of the maze through destruction, either theirs or yours; also bear in mind that the player's sprite is the only one to be unique, while the robots are copied & pasted through the maze and even Evil Otto is revealed not to be unique in Frenzy).

Well, that got heavier than I expected! Still, it goes to show that even things that seem simple can have a lot more going on than you might initially think. Bear that in mind whenever someone denounces old games simply for being old. After all, you never know when that timeless arcade classic might actually turn out to be a sophisticated allegory for the doomed moral victories of tragic übermenschen!

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: Are you sure these robots are Three Laws Compliant?

 

[DeeEff]

Wow, I never knew Berzerk was that deep - profound write up, CC!

 

[CC13]

Wow, I never knew Berzerk was that deep - profound write up, CC!

Thank you very much, DeeEff! When I write one of these entries, I always hope that my readers will take away something more than just the simple facts of the game and it seems that I succeeded with that here. Having said that, though, I must confess that I'm probably just as surprised as you are that Berzerk can support such a deep interpretation. I quickly figured out that Evil Otto was some sort of metaphor for social conformity, but once I started writing, everything simply...clicked. Personally, I think that Berzerk's ability to support such a deep interpretation is a testament to what a singularly great piece of art (yes, I do consider video games to be art) it is. We'll probably never know for sure if I'm on to something or not, but I think that that's half the fun of these sorts of exercises!

 

[DeeEff]

In other news, your edited hint for #2 gives it away - but I'm gonna let someone else take a crack at it.

 

[Kolchak357]

I always thought the kid having a heart attack from playing Berzerk was just urban legend. Now I find out it happened twice. Wow!

 

[DrainoBraino]

Yeah, I love these write ups too. CC13, do you have a website or blog for these?

 

[jkonami]

Hmmm, Xybots, Escape from the Planet of Robot Monsters, or I-Robot.

 

[CC13]

Yeah, I love these write ups too. CC13, do you have a website or blog for these?

I actually have a blog on this very forum, called "The Pinball Apprentice." It's supposed to be about reviewing video pinball, but since I haven't finished my Rollerball review yet, I might syndicate these entries at the rate of 1-2 per day for the next few weeks.

Hmmm, Xybots, Escape from the Planet of Robot Monsters, or I-Robot.

It is indeed one of those three! Here's another hint to help you winnow things down: the villain of the correct game takes his name from a character from a well-known dystopian novel.

 

[CC13]

It is indeed one of those three! Here's another hint to help you winnow things down: the villain of the correct game takes his name from a character from a well-known dystopian novel.

I'm surprised nobody was able to place this one yet! Anyway, here's another clue: the correct game out of Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters, I, Robot and Xybots was the first game to have 3-D polygon graphics.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Big Brother from I, Robot.

 

[CC13]

Big Brother from I, Robot.

I was beginning to wonder if anyone other than DeeEff had even heard of this game (you and he will each get a share of the credit for this one, since he indicated that he knew what game I had in mind). Read on to discover why the eye in the sky is the #2 pre-1991 Western arcade & console game villain:

2. Big Brother (I, Robot)
Developed & Published By: Atari
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1983

Every area of human endeavor has its forgotten innovators and unsung heroes. Nikola Tesla died penniless while Thomas Edison enjoyed great wealth in his lifetime, The Mysterious Cities of Gold is largely forgotten while Avatar: The Last Airbender was one of the most beloved animated series of the past decade and Cav & Pag are the only contributions Ruggero Leoncavallo was able to make to the mainstream repertory of opera while rival composer Giacomo Puccini seemingly contributed about every second or third of opera's warhorses. We have just such a lost treasure to consider today in the form of Atari's I, Robot.

Why did this incredibly innovative game slip through the cracks the way it did? It certainly wasn't for a lack of good ideas or forward thinking–the game sported the first polygon graphics in any video game ever, 26 unique levels, an 'ungame' mode called Doodle City and a fun mix of platforming and shoot-'em-up gameplay. Some say that the esoteric storyline drove players away, but who plays arcade games for the deep stories? Even if that theory held weight, the scenarios of the previous year's arcade hits, including BurgerTime, Joust and Q*Bert, were comparable in their bizarreness to the idea of a maintenance robot rebelling against an Orwellian space deity's edict against jumping.

Unfortunately, though, I, Robot was not nearly as stable as those titles I mentioned. At the time, Atari awarded each of its engineers bonuses based on the net profit of each arcade machine released without taking into account the man years spent on engineering. Thus, engineers spint inordinate amounts of time trying to keep manufacturing costs down; to do this with I, Robot, they replaced its TTL logic chips with a single ASIC, but since the people they had doing the conversion were inexperienced, the chip was underpowered and very failure-prone. By the time this was detected, it was too late to fix and would have required a complete board overhaul to do anything substantive.

Even if it had been constructed with more care, though, I, Robot would still have suffered greatly from the Video Game Crash of 1983. Its innovation would probably have actually helped it to stand out, but with so many peoples' faith in video games broken, it would still have struggled to gain a foothold. Atari was also hemorrhaging money at this point, so they would have been largely unable to do very much to push I, Robot either way (although they still tried, most notably with an abortive port of the game to the Atari 2600). Sadly, Atari have done little to push the game since, as it has not appeared in any of Atari's compilation releases; furthermore, no more than 1,500 I, Robot machines were made, so for most people, emulation via MAME is the only practical option to experience this piece of gaming history.

What awaits those who play I, Robot by hook or by crook? Unlike many previous entries on this list, I, Robot is actually fairly complicated, with changeable camera angles, an eye that will blast you if you jump while it is open, enemies that can directly attack the player (change your camera angle to dodge them) and a change-up between platforming and flying stages that will catch many first-time players off guard. You take on the role of Unhappy Interface Robot #1984, who is unhappy with Big Brother's ban on jumping. During the platforming stages, your objective is to change all the red squares to blue by walking over them. Some of them will be in places where you must jump to reach them, but if you jump when Big Brother's eye is open, he'll blast you and you'll lose a life. Furthermore, you will be attacked by a rogues' gallery that includes beach balls, flying space fish and specialized missiles called viewer killers, which are the aforementioned player-attacking enemies. Early platforming stages are fairly simple affairs, but later ones add breakable walls, mazes, teleporters and various other wrinkles to the gameplay. You'll also want to move quickly, since getting the best time on a stage will score 2,500 points, which is a big deal when you get a free man every 20,000 points (but is void if you die during the level).

The other half of the game is the shoot-'em'-up segments between platforming stages, where you must blast through Tetras and asteroids to make it to the next level, with Porcupines (rainbow-colored spiked mines shaped like a cross) and Tankers (multicolred rings) joining in at later stages. Destroying all Tetras in a space level scores 999 points, while spelling I, ROBOT will grant a bonus life; beating the high score for the stage will, of course, score 2,500 points. Also, every fourth space level is a showdown with Big Brother himself. As long as he is facing in your direction, he will fire spikes at your ship; missing even one will result in your swift destruction. However, you can turn Big Brother around by shooting him in the face; this is the easiest way to survive 20 seconds and escape Big Brother's wrath.

On a related note, am I the only one who noticed that Star Fox took an awful lot of cues from both I, Robot and Blaster? Look at Big Brother's face (http://www.thelogbook.com/phosphor/2004/i3.gif) and the first level of Blaster (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gIZIYaccS0), then compare them to Andross' face (http://doc-0c-8g-3dwarehouse.google...e4b34a084a1261206?ts=1202487512000&ctyp=other) and Corneria from the original Star Fox (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0vIcSnaBoY). Clearly, somebody at Nintendo and/or Argonaut Software was aware of these two games and used them as sources of inspiration. A quick Google search hasn't turned anything up, but I'll see if somebody else has picked up on these astounding similarities.

I, Robot is one of the 50 most influential video games ever released. Its polygon graphics showed what lay ahead for gaming a full decade down the line, the 'ungame' mode presaged the rise of casual gaming and some of its design elements directly influenced a solid second-tier Nintendo franchise. Who could possibly beat out Big Brother for the top spot? Hopefully, this last clue can help you find the answer...

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: Somebody get this freakin' duck away from me!

 

[CC13]

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: Somebody get this freakin' duck away from me!

I guess nobody here watched Homestar Runner back in the Noughties, so here's another clue: you can find the name of designer Warren Robinett in the game; in fact, this is widely considered to be video gaming's first Easter egg.

 

[DrainoBraino]

Adventure. The 3 dragons. fhqwhgads

 

[jkonami]

I knew it was probably I Robot from the "Three Laws" but I didn't think that game would really warrant a #2 spot so I picked two better robot games among my guesses

 

[Shulk]

Yeah I would've known the dragon had I came in earlier. Love Homestar Runner.

 

[CC13]

I knew it was probably I Robot from the "Three Laws" but I didn't think that game would really warrant a #2 spot so I picked two better robot games among my guesses

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.

Adventure. The 3 dragons. fhqwhgads

Come on, fhqwhgads, I said, come on, fhqwhgads! Everybody to the limit, everybody to the limit, everybody, come on, fhqwhgads!

Anyway, it is indeed the three dragons from Adventure! We've reached the top of the mountain, but why are these three knight-munching beasts at the top of the list? You'll find out momentarily if you read on:

1. The Duck-Dragons (Adventure)
Developed & Published By: Atari
Platform: Atari 2600
Year of Release: 1979

Here we are, at the final entry of this countdown. A lot of you probably expected to find these three atop the list, but they were the only ones who truly merited it. As I hope to show, these three are the complete package—they come from a great game that introduced numerous innovations, their surprising amount of personality makes them iconic even to this day, their character design certainly stands out from the crowd and a certain Easter egg was not only one of the earliest protests against Atari's anti-employee policies of its era, but also the first well-known Easter egg in any video game. These are heady claims indeed, but as you'll find below, every one of them is completely true.

For all its innovation, Adventure might actually come off as bland to somebody who played it without knowing how many of its clichés were actually invented for the game. In addition to the first widely known Easter egg (more on that in a moment), Adventure also had the first persistent items, the first "fog of war" (sharply limiting your sight in the catacombs) and the first action-adventure game on a home console. That last part is important, as a number of heavy-hitting franchises, ranging from The Legend of Zelda to Kingdom Hearts God of War to Banjo-Kazooie, can claim Adventure as an admittedly distant ancestor. In addition, Game 3 of Adventure randomizes the locations of items, thus giving the game nearly limitless replay value, something many modern releases struggle to deliver (although Adventure does occasionally come up with an unwinnable configuration of the maze).

The Easter egg I mentioned earlier was a protest against Atari's policy of not acknowledging its designers in its games. As I mentioned when I brought this up earlier in the countdown, this was a major bone of contention with many developers, to the point where several left Atari to form companies such as Activision, but Warren Robinett registered his discontent in a more roundabout fashion. In the maze, there is a gray dot that the player can grab. You must then take the dot to the room right below the golden castle while other objects of a different color are present; doing so will make the wall disappear, allowing you to cross over into a room where you will find the words "Created by Warren Robinett." Although Atari did eventually find out about this Easter egg, the high cost of manufacturing new chips precluded them making new Adventure ROMs without Robinett's protest.

In my first paragraph, I mentioned the personality of the dragons. The amount of exposition they get, though infinitesimal by modern standards, was unprecedented in 1979. Each dragon has a given name (the yellow, green and red dragons are named Yorgle, Grundle and Rhindle, respectively) and a unique set of behaviors. All of them will guard the Golden Chalice if able, but Yorgle fears the Golden Key, Rhindle is slow and guards the magnet, the bridge & the black key and Rhindle is the most aggressive and guards the white key. If one of them eats you, your game is over (although you can squirm around in your vanquisher's stomach, hopefully causing them some nasty indigestion), but the sword will kill a dragon on contact (it also makes the dragons run away if you have the right difficulty switch on A; also, the dragons cannot be killed if they have their mouths open, which happens right before they attack).

Because of good timing, their comparatively strong personalities and the sheer impact of their game, The Duck-Dragons are a touchstone of retro gamer culture. You can find both keychains and T-shirts with the likenesses of The Duck-Dragons and a sequel (known, rather logically, as Adventure II) was included with the Atari Flashback 2, giving you one more reason to pick up that fantastic piece of hardware. In addition, one can find the usual bevy of shout-outs in popular culture, ranging from the inclusion of a Dragonduck as the superboss of Zeboyd Games' Breath of Death VII: The Beginning to an appearance in Robot Chicken to one of the menu animations of Homestar Runner (www.homestarrunner.com/main13.html; move your mouse over the E-Mail button and Strong Bad will run across the screen, carrying the Golden Chalice and running away from Yorgle, while shouting, "Somebody get this freakin' duck away from me!"). From my own admittedly subjective standpoint, they are the characters most likely to be used as synecdoches for the Atari 2600, for all the reasons I described above; they represent both Atari's and early video gaming's finest hour in the popular consciousness, which is why they had to be the ones to top this list.

Thank you for joining me for this countdown–I hope you enjoyed it and maybe even learned a few things along the way. I'll tally the guesses soon; the winner gets to choose which of my already-written lists I'll do next (which will be the next one overall), while the runner-up gets to pick which of my not-yet-written lists I'll do first. Whatever I end up doing next, I hope you stick around–the party's only just begun...

Next Time on The Top 25 Pre-1991 Western Arcade & Console Game Villains: I tally the correct guesses, give my perspective on what writing this was like and hopefully draw some constructive criticism...

 

[CC13]

OK, we're back! First, here's an FAQ concerning this and future lists:

Q: How did you decide on the makeup of this list?
A: Each list gets ranked on a witch's brew of personality, gameplay, influence, timelessness and several other factors, to some greater or lesser degree. The interplay of all these elements on the lists is what gives each one its own unique personality. Here, gameplay and influence mostly carried the day, with personality and timelessness serving more as tie-breaking factors than primary ones for ranking purposes (although personality became noticeably more important by the time we reach the top 10 or so on this list). Gameplay will remain an important factor on all remaining lists, but influence may not be so easily quantified going forward...

Q: Hey! You snubbed one of my favorites!
A: Aside from the obligatory statement about how these lists are are at least somewhat subjective (and the obligatory joke that this isn't really a question), here are my justifications for some of the higher-profile snubs from the list:

-The Fleet (Rampart): As we have already discussed, 1990 wasn't a good year for Atari Games, but there was at least one incontrovertible bright spot: Rampart. As the progenitor of tower defense games, Rampart has had a huge influence on the face of gaming. Your objectives vary depending on whether you play single-player (where you attempt to fend off an invading fleet) or multiplayer (where you try to destroy the other players' castles), but the core mechanics remain the same: you have to enclose land on the map to give you more room to lay down cannons, then fire on your enemies, then repair the damage your enemies managed to do to you. If you fail to have any enclosed land under your control before the building phase's time is up, you are automatically defeated.

-The Helicopter (Armor Attack): 1980 was a bumper crop for the video arcade and arguably its best year ever. From Atari's Battlezone to Midway's Wizard of Wor to Stern's Berzerk to Williams' Defender, it seemed as though arcade manufacturers had all decided to send the Carter era out with a bang. The downside to all these amazing games coming out around the same time is that many other deserving titles got overlooked, including Cinematronics' Armor Attack. Basically, the game took the formula of Atari's Combat, added in a mobile-but-fragile helicopter that also partially governed the score for destroying enemy tanks depending on how many choppers you had downed and threw on a spiffy coat of vector-graphics paint. Though it was great fun (and also one of the premier titles on the ill-starred Vectrex), it didn't push the envelope quite enough for me at the time. That being said, I might reconsider if I ever have occasion to come back to this list and edit it, as Vectrex Regeneration has done a fantastic job of showing me what might have been for the Vectrex if not for The Great Video Game Crash of 1983.

-The Mystic Hurler (Fortress of Narzod): If there's one thing the Vectrex did superbly, it was shmups. The Vectrex port of Scramble could well be that game's definitive home version, while Vectrex fans often argue that MineStorm is better at being Asteroids than Asteroids and Solar Quest brought a surprising amount of depth to the table for an early-'80s single-screen shmup, but one game stood above all others on the little arcade cabinet that woulda, coulda, shoulda: Fortress of Narzod! Simulating depth by having you go into the screen was the least of FoN's bright ideas–careful ricocheting of your shots is the cornerstone of strategy (the shots bounce off the walls and can also kill you if they bounce back your way), while Warbirds can prove an invaluable asset if you shoot them at the right spot or an insufferable nuisance hanging ever outside your blaster's reach while they fire upon you with impunity. Later levels add Spikers (the ground enemies' shots) that split when you hit one with your bullets, just to make the fight even more hair-raising, but the greatest challenge of all awaits you if you can clear the Upper Roadway (something I have never personally achieved, despite holding the #7 score on the game's GameCenter leaderboard), you will face the Mystic Hurler, a cruel beast with an infinite supply of splitting Spikers and the ability to absorb six of your blasts before going down and taking the Fortress of Narzod with it. It's a tough road, but I'm sure I'll feel like I earned it once I finally reach the Mystic Hurler and show him who's the king of vector graphics!

-The Reptilons (Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters): I love '50s kitsch (I am a MSTie, after all), but Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters doesn't quite do it for me. The Hall joystick makes for tight gameplay and the Gauntlet-esque action is pretty fun, but I've always despised 3/4-isometric view games. I still play this one from time to time, but I usually spend my time on games that do a bit more for me.

-The Xybots (Xybots): Speaking of Gauntlet, Xybots was very nearly Gauntlet III, but management informed the design team that fantasy was so five minutes ago, so they came up with a sci-fi theme instead. The results was Xybots, a fantastic little corridor shooter often marked as the first free-roaming third-person shooter ever released. The game mechanics owe a considerable amount to Gauntlet, with constantly decreasing health and multiple exits from some levels being only two design ideas Xybots has in common with the series, but Xybots also has much more frequent speech, a shop where you can buy items with coins scattered through the levels, a pretty rad soundtrack and tough boss battles with the Master Xybot to its name, among other things. If I had occasion to take a mulligan on the past list, I might end up putting The Xybots in there.

Q: What other lists do you have planned for the future?
A: I have 8 Top 25 Video Games Villains lists already written (Nintendo, non-Squeenix JRPGs, pre-1991 Western PC games, Sega, Square Enix, Western console & arcade games of the '90s, Western PC games of the '90s & Western console & handheld games since 2001), in addition to at least 3 more that are still in the planning phases (new-school Japanese games, old-school Japanese games & Western PC games since 2001). Also, keep your eyes peeled for some surprises, because you never can tell what I have up my sleeve!

Q: Why do you divide up video gaming the way you do?
A: To my mind, this method really is the only way that allows for sensible comparisons between games. It really doesn't make for a fair comparison to look at, say, BioShock on one hand and Armor Attack on the other–not only has the available technology skyrocketed in power since Armor Attack's day, but the expectations of narrative & world-building have also left most of the games of Armor Attack's day behind. Thus, a temporal component was necessary to keep these expectations from unduly dinging deserving old-school games & characters. The cutoff years I chose were not chosen capriciously, either, as 1991 gave us Street Fighter II (a literal game-changer for arcades everywhere), Sonic the Hedgehog, who spearheaded the first real challenge to Nintendo's dominance of the North American & Japanese video game markets) and the incorporation of numerous influential American PC game developers, including Blizzard Entertainment, Bungie Studios, Epic Games and id Software, while 2001 gave us The Grid (Midway's final arcade game), the XBox (the first broadly successful American-made video game console since 1980), the Game Boy Advance (the first real step forward for handheld gaming's processing power) and Windows XP (the default OS of PC gaming for over a decade).

The arcade/console vs. PC divide is admittedly at least partly a product of an America-centric viewpoint. To most American gamers, arcades are far closer kin to consoles than PCs, since most of the memorable old-school arcade conversions that came to the States landed on the NES (with Berzerk, Bionic Commando and Contra leading the pack, at least IMHO). In addition, the consoles-vs.-PCs war rages even to this day, with consoles having the clear upper hand commercially, but being looked down upon by PC gamers for their relative inflexibility and closed-shop natures (consoles require you to have a dev kit to make games for them).

Finally, the Japanese-Western divide has been the defining cultural line of video gaming since the 1970s, although it didn't become more widely known until the mid-1980s. Japan and the West are still the two main cultural blocs in terms of video games (though South Korea has also made its presence felt as of late, mostly in the mobile scene), switching off who sets the tone for gaming every 10-20 years (we're definitely in a Western-dominated age now, BTW). You can see this phenomenon at work in how poorly each region's most emblematic genre–the JRPG and the FPS, respectively–translate across cultural lines, although the JRPG has arguably translated slightly better to the West than the FPS has to Japan.

Now that that's done, here's the tally of all the correct guesses for this countdown:
D1 (Madam Q): Sean DonCarlos
D2 (The Masked Warrior): DrainoBraino/netizen
H1 (The Bees): N/A (Really? The clue wasn't that tough...)
H2 (The Dracons): jkonami
H3 (Mukor): Fungi
25 (Zachary Graves): dtown8532
24 (The Xenos): Fungi
23 (Flotsam): DrainoBraino
22 (Coily): DrainoBraino/netizen
21 (The Wizard of Wor): jkonami
20 (The Marble Munchers): DrainoBraino
19 (The Mad Bomber): Kolchak357
18 (Harry Hooligan): DrainoBraino (1/2)
17 (The Chefs): Kolchak357 (1/2)
16 (The 'Invincible?' Pterodactyl): netizen (1/2)
15 (Mr. Big): netizen
14 (The Host): SKILL_SHOT
13 (Malkil): netizen
12 (The Emperor of Blobolonia): Sean DonCarlos
11 (Singe): netizen
10 (The Qotile): DrainoBraino
9 (The Whole Neighborhood): DrainoBraino
8 (The Robotrons): DrainoBraino
7 (The Crocodiles) DrainoBraino
6 (The Irata): DeeEff/Sean DonCarlos
5 (The Centipede): Squid
4 (Sinistar): DrainoBraino
3 (Evil Otto): DeeEff/Kolchak357
2 (Big Brother): DeeEff/Sean DonCarlos
1 (The Duck-Dragons): DrainoBraino

Here are the final standings, from the lowest score to the highest, totaling 27.5 out of a possible 30 points:
1 point: dtown8532, SKILL_SHOT, Squid
1.5 points: DeeEff
2 points: Fungi, jkonami, Kolchak357
3 points: Sean DonCarlos
4.5 points: netizen
9.5 points: DrainoBraino

DrainoBraino takes this one in a blowout, catching fire in the Top 10, where he claimed 7 out of 10 possible points (I told you things would get easier higher up the list!), while netizen takes a respectable second, getting 3.5 of his 4.5 points in the middle third of the countdown. Both of you should watch for a PM from me with your options for the list you want me to do–I'll announce your selections once you get back to me.

Next Time on The Top 25 Video Game Villains of Every Subtype Imaginable: I announce the next two planned lists and start off with DrainoBraino's list of choice!

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

DAM! CC13 job well done.

 

[DrainoBraino]

*takes bow*

Good stuff! very fun