You have all seen them, and you have fought them,
but now it's up to you to choose the baddest of the bad ones!

Yes !

The Ultimate NES Bad Guy Contest,
(Of course ultimate is a rather flexible word y'know..)
coming to a browser near you
(Unless it's an IE in which case the thing to come is instead a graphical interpretation of a gut punch in blue)
in full colour !
(Yeah well, that depends on your definition of the said phrase, but hey..)

Having gone through extensive filtering, several of the most memorable evil guys of the NES era *)
are now pitted against each other in a duel of devilishness, where there can be only one! A winner!
*) Contest limited to evil game characters only because you know the live ones would likely win

And now, let us begin the contest!

Contestant one...
Master-D !

You all remember this cuddly and lovable character from your history books,
occasionally also appearing under his code name "Smirk".

His rise to fame quickly followed a great idea,
but as someone found his idea of global unity somewhat miffy, a lot of forces
aligned against him because he supposedly did several pretty nasty things while at it,
but of course we all see through the slanderous vilifications, and truly know better!

Not allowed to go through with it, he was forced instead to take his own life.
A man with a true German sense of thoroughness and accuracy, he took some poison
AND shot himself in the head, after a successful bout of bingo in a gloomy bunker.

But that's not the end of his tale..
Miraculously, an army under the obvious cover name of the Badds managed to
patch up the nasty bullet gash in his head, dusting him up and resurrecting the man
to help them rule the world. But then some guy with a severe hair problem appeared
and stopped him with a firm round shot from a curious bazooka...


But were he to rise again, he would definitely love our brave new world where
the great forces that be no longer team up to rid us of atrocities, instead turning
multiple blind eyes to systematical genocide or maybe even committing some themselves!
But hey, those filthy Chechens all had it coming,
and fossil energy is just as just a cause worth fighting for!

So let us hear it for Master-D, and keep the hope for his return in our hearts!

And the second contestant is...
Dr. Wily !!!

Who could ever hope to forget Mega Man's evil arch-nemesis Doctor Wily,
whose plan of worldly domination always included a neat number of terribly useless robots
of some stereotypical motif, that were programmed to jump-attack-walk-attack-jump-attack,
which was good enough since Mega Man was damaged by touching anything from ice cream cones to sand.
While Wily's programming skills sucked, the amount of materials he had available easily compensated.

Wily, with his patented flying saucer (fittable with various expansions that are all skull-shaped
and have a crystalline weak point right there on the face) waged war upon the brave blue robot,
only to always end up getting his skull cannons, skull machines and skull fortresses blown up.
Smartly, however, Wily himself always begged for his life, getting away with it each and every time
due to Mega Man's inability to take up painting Wily's castle crimson with the owner's entrails instead.


Finally, frustrated by the laws of probability evidently bending around his achievements
he went a bit daft and his final method of attack started to repeatedly consist of teleporting
around the screen in his saucer and firing violet balls of energy into random directions,
which made it sorrowfully easy for Mega Man to beat him.

But everyone has flaws, and his pros well outnumber the cons,
especially with a strong resemblance to Albert Einstein (the proverbial father
of the greatest invention ever - nukes), so let's hear it for Wily!!

And who might be contestant number three ?
Guardia de mieux, more often known as the Jaquio !

A recurring foe from the Ninja Gaiden line of games, he's incredibly evil,
totally impossible to figure out what he actually looks like,
incredibly verbose with his trademark " Ha, ha, ha, ha.... " laugh
and finally incredibly lame with his float-and-launch-fireballs attack.

Ryu Hayabusa really had it tough against this spawn of true Evil.
Actually, well, he would have had if Jaquio hadn't been such a nice wide target
that just passively floated about and occasionally fired small fireballs
that made one hit of damage.. on a particularly good day and frame of mind.

He planned to enclose the Earth into the Shadows of Darkness
with the help of an ancient demon, and later with the help of a Dark Sword of Chaos(TM)
but both times brave Ryu ran around the screen a lot and used his Dragon Sword of Light(TM)
to swish long wounds into Jaquio's large body, ending his life (and later, unlife).
Truly evil, from the laugh of darkness to the fact that his name sounds French,
it's easy to see that he is truly a servant of darkness, one of a large caliber!

And now to contestant four,
Mother Brain !

Yes, the ultimately badass Mother Brain,
defined in the equally ultimately boring game Metroid as
'the mechanical life vein', whatever that is,
lead a group of dastadly space pirates, although it is still unclear
how could a bunch of third rate mutant flies fare as pirates,
and was intent on unleashing a terrible threat upon the unsuspecting galaxy;
The horrible Metroid, who were aerial jellyfish that attached onto
people's heads, and took only 5 rockets to kill !
(Yes, as you can see the 'threat' threshold is pretty low in this particular galaxy,
in fact the previous terrible threat to this galaxy was a particularly nasty flu.
Actually, it is even speculated that the Metroid are what became of this flu
when it all was exposed to the careless use of super-strength antibiotics.
Yes, that's right! Another by-product of human carelessness. Just blow antibiotics
at anything vaguely threatening and watch everything get immune.
Yeah, then send in a bounty hunter in a desperate cover-up to blow up some planets
or whatever, that'll distract the people real good! For shame!)

Still, Mother Brain and her horrible (in several ways) plan was thwarted by the morale-less
(and shameless too, apparently, if you've seen the ending --
the game was probably written by a bunch of geeks that really
need to get a life.. or possibly a girlfriend.. or maybe just some tissues.)
female bounty hunter Samus Aran, who survived the lethargic lameness of the game
and broke into Mother Brain's lair, firing loads after loads of rockets
into Mother Brain, which proved to be little more than
John Romero's head behind a demon skull bitmap texture.
Wait, no, that's not it, Mother Brain was a bloated brain in a glass jar.

Lousy as her plan was, let us all applaud at her,
for this is as good as that sad game could go !

Number five ?
Count Dracula !

Castlevania III states that he
'practiced sorcery in order to create a bad world filled with evil'.
That sounded so lam.. er, profound, what more needs to be said ?
Personally I thought he was a vampire, but hell, Konami knows better !
And of Konami, Konami USA naturally knows best !!

He appeared every hundred years, ravaging the countryside,
terrifying the population and generally being a pain in the ass,
but he was always brought down nice and fast
by the members of the Belmont family
who always stepped into the shadows of the hell house and brought him down.

The Belmonts later founded a company and started selling tobacco instead.

Anyway, Vlad might have hit it big time in the world,
but instead he always terrorized Transylvania (population 23),
never making a big entrance, and he died relatively unknown.. several times.

He also had a son, which he creatively named 'Alucard'
(Obviously Vlad was by no means an inventive man).

Also, in his later date, he stopped looking like a sinister vampire
and started to look like a somewhat queery anime character..
Why is anybody's guess, but it is believed very strongly that
his constant failures to take on the world, combined with his
sheer disappointment of all his hopes for his son crumbling
when Alucard not only announced his unwillingness towards evil
but his choice of becoming a transvestite
(He was always picked on because of his name by his classmate vampires,
and it is believed that this triggered his will to look like Michael Jackson)
lead him into a sexual identity crisis (or whatever) of his own.

Alucard, who, later in his life, kept dressing to look like a pretty girl
and wore nice dresses that really went well with his beautiful hair and fine face,
eventually had a nervous breakdown, which is believed to originate
from his unrequited, tragic love for Richter Belmont,
who unfortunately was already quite in love with someone else altogether.

The tragic, poetic story of his family's bloodline aside,
Vlad had a mean streak, so let us show our appreciation !

And now to number six, our celebrity nemesis of the day,
Mike Tyson !

He appeared in the game Punch-Out!! (Name written with the exclamation marks)
where he did what he used to do best, beat up people smaller and less crazy than him.

The updated version of Punch-Out!! also features his recent special attack,
where he bites off Little Mac's ear and eats it,
blood flying out of Mac's recently acquired ear wound
and splattering all over referee Mario
(Who was later found out to have been bribed..
I knew that italian fellow had mafia connections, I just knew it!).

The updated version of Punch-Out!! (I'm getting tired of this)
also had his between-round speeches revamped into
death threats, random swearing and foaming at the mouth.

Off to number seven,
Red Falcon !

The mysterious Red Falcon, arch-foe in the Contra storyline
invaded our planet in order to take it for his own (or something, this part is never exactly clear),
but he was always stopped by one or two aggressively attacking regular Rambo characters
with moronic robot walking animations and asinine names Konami USA staff made up
while simultaneously eating broccoli pizza, doing something nasty and watching Lucy Liu flicks.

It has been speculated that the final boss of the first Contra game would be the heart
of the Red Falcon (which may or may not resemble a live falcon), but more scientific
research investigations have claimed that it may instead be the reproductive organ,
placing Konami's heroic epic in the same genetic survival league as their later Metal Gear games,
or even the products of Irem. Of course, Irem never even attempted to hide the fact
that they're liberally pasting gigantic alien penises and vile vaginas all over your screen.

Anyway. Congratulations, you've ruined Red Falcon's shots at parenthood, which would effectively
amount to saving your own ass, but as the humdrum ending will soon tell you, the government's stealth
bombers promptly appear to shoot the whole island (and you in the process) to shit.

Nobody ever really saw the complete Red Falcon... but an applause to him nonetheless, please.

And the last one of the evil guys..
Mario.

Yes, Mario.
There is definitely something really evil about an overweight guy that
(during his tedious adventures that no-one in command of their senses would wilfully follow)
bounces around with rolling jumps, squishing innocent wildlife under his fat a... ppearance.
What's worse, he has attained a worldwide following! The dark powers at work are obvious.
A satanic evil of malicious intent is simple to spot in this case. Thus, I recommend
either a lobotomy or a sawed-off shotgun / hockey mask combo to whoever would play
a Mario game from now on... just in case.

Of course, not only is his evil demeanour worthy of note, but also his corrupt frame of mind
and immoral actions scream for attention, making him quite a bad guy. We have all seen the blatant
recreational misuse of plants and chemicals, the bulk of which makes up his "adventures"..
or "trips", as we perhaps should say.

From mushrooms that he claims to make him grow in size to leaves that he claims to make him grow tails,
his drug-induced dreams of alternate realities and red potions that "open a door to the other side",
this nihilist plumber is everything that is wrong with the backbone of a modern worker generation.
An addict with a Furry streak and a yearning for underaged "princesses",
we can definitely see he isn't even close to an acceptable role model.

So vote for Mario, when it's satanic evil you can't go wrong with an
overweight Italian murderer of fauna and abuser of flora.

And those were the contestants.
Huh, what are you driveling on about ?
Oh, you're wondering about PRINCE DARKNESS " GANNON " and Bowser Koopa ?
Well that's simple. Ganondorf is a terribly sorry third-rate weak plot bad guy who shouldn't be
paid any attention to at all. This might stop him from making such a noise about Hyrule.
And as for Bowser, he really isn't the bad guy of the series.


Soon it is the time to announce the winner, but first we need to take a look at our judges.

Lord Winthrop E. Blightsonslockshireborough
A renowned british cook with quaint little restaurant in the backwaters of Wales.

k3wld00d
k3wld00d (no capital K there) here harassed people for a living,
and used to actually be the source of approximately 84 per cent of the ROMZ and Pokémon mail
console emulation authors used to receive. However, as the years went by, big N's knee-jerk wore off
and k3wld00d's living took a turn for the worse. Now, he does anything for money, and we decided
to hire him into this project. Because he obviously is well acquainted with the concept of evil.

Arthur F. Wood
Art is our dearest contributor, a half-blind bohemian artist living in Seattle.
He drew these four amazing character portraits, too.

John
And finally, here's John J. Johnson, an average American we picked from street,
claiming to suspect him as a potential terrorist and dragged him off here,
supposedly for him to perform his duty to the country. He doesn't realize
he's no longer in the USA, and we'd be glad if you didn't tell him, either.
We believe that he quite possibly couldn't understand the concept.

And now the judges have done their work, so the winner is...


...
[A pause for extended dramatic effect]
...


THE JAQUIO !!!

He will arrive to receive his accolades shortly.




" Yes, I would thank you if I really cared about you
lowly humans and your pitiful need for competition.
I would incinerate you immediately, but I need my powers
for my new plan to lead the Forces of Chaos into your world,
but as thanks for choosing me I promise you a quick death.
Now I hope that the annoying Ninja doesn't appear anytime soon.
Goodbye, foolish mortals.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.. hm, hm, hm, hm !! "



" Hold, you fiend !
I grow tired of your speeches, and I grow tired of YOU !
Taste my Dragon Sword, you servant of darkness ! "



" What the... ?
Ahh.. shit. You again.
Wasn't your sword sacrificed in the ending of Ninja-II ?
What the hell is it doing with you AGAIN !? "



" Hmm.. uhh.. err...
Actually, I do not know. "



" But it does not matter..
For I have grown stronger and now my attack takes three hit points !
Die, foolish Ninja.. take that ! "



" Your day has come,
Jaquio !! "



Okay, it would seem that the things have gotten out of hand here,
so we are currently evacuating from this maelstrom of fireballs
and sword cuts.. no, not me, hey, sTOOOOOOOOOooOOOOOOooooogh...



Back off, you bothersome swine.