Villains, or baddies as I like to call them. For me, everything revolves around the baddie. They’re the threat, the goal, the quest, and they have to be convincing. If they’re a bit flimsy, the whole thing goes wibbly-wobbly and I’m left thinking what’s the point? But if they’re on point and menacing and, let’s be real, probably quite alluring too, then I’m all in. Take Palpatine in Star Wars: I can’t get enough of him. He’s irresistibly evil and lights up every scene he’s in, sometimes quite literally. His pantomime menace sells (maybe one too many of) the films.
It’s the same for games. If the villain is limp we won’t feel spurred on to defeat them. So let’s celebrate the baddies for a change. Here are five of the best. Happy long weekend!
I broke my fancy see-through SNES pad because of M. bloody Bison. It was in the Street Fighter 2 days and he was the end boss, and whatever I did, I couldn’t beat him. It was that jump he did on top of my head and then the backflip back around. And his spinny forward jump, and the frontflip leg kick – I’m pretty sure I’m nailing the technical terms here. I just couldn’t get a handle on him.
Again and again he beat me, and you know what he did every time he won? He smiled about it. The arrogant bastard. And one day I just couldn’t take it any more. Like a toddler I let loose, jumping up and down on my controller before bending and snapping it my hands like a strongman (or petulant child) bending a metal bar. What a wally. I tried taping it back together but it never worked in the same way again. And it was all M. Bison’s fault. I think.
I almost wrote the Nameless One here, the protagonist from Planescape: Torment, but the more I thought about it, the more I wasn’t sure if he actually was a baddie. He definitely did bad things but he wasn’t really the baddie.