Inspired by the AVGN's "Top 10 Baddest Bad Guys"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPUmAd50o5k

...only this time recalling all our favorite old school (and old school style) adventure games. We usually root for the Hero, King Graham on his mission of peace, Indy trying to battle the Nazis, and the like.


But which adventure game villain was your favorite/do you think was the Baddest Bad Guy? (next post explains why I picked them)


I'm also including 2 well-known AGS game villains!

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Fridge Logic vs. Troll Logic

10. LeChuck never dies. The Voodoo Lady says so when she tells you that pure evil is never truly destroyed. Every bad guy you encounter in every game is always a tool for LeChuck, or LeChuck himself in disguise. It's the same old cliche that he will stop at nothing to try and kill Guybrush and take Elaine for his bride, but you can't go wrong with our childhood classics...and zombie pirates never stop being badass!



9. Alhazred was just plain a cold-blooded snake: he stops at nothing to get what he wants. He kills Cassima's parents to take advantage of her vulnerability and steals the respective islands' most valued relics to create mistrust amongst them and enable a hostile takeover of the kingdom. He stops at nothing for absolute power and is a fine example of classic adventure game villainy. And I'm extremely attached to King's Quest 6 as it was the hugest game of my childhood that gave me a shred of romanticism. :P


8. Adrian Ripburger sets the tone for the classic corporate slimeball; he not only murders Malcolm in cold blood but tries to frame Ben and the Polecats for the murder in his nefarious plans to take over Corley Motors and set on a complete ruination of American biker culture. BTW, I cried like a kicked puppy when I found out there wasn't going to be a Full Throttle 2. Either proposed sequel.


7. Louis and Leona, more corporate slimeballs, represented the typical late 1980's happy-go-lucky couple who got rich off of junk bonds to act as officious as possible to everyone around them...but use their riches for evil purposes to control all of Frumpton with an evil sugar-free sugar corporation, Tootsweet. They control the unions for their own evil purposes and take advantage of Willy's jobless father to execute their evil plan (remember when that kind of job he looks for in the paper still existed back then?!) Leona is also supposed to be a direct reference to the late Queen of Mean herself. Rich scum you love to hate, they belong on the Baddest Bad Guys in Adventure Gaming List.


6. Penelope Primm wasn't your enemy in plain sight which is probably why she's one of the most badass Bad Guys. She's sweet on Freddy and knows she's got him wrapped around her finger...which she uses to her advantage to stage the takeover of Coarsegold. She even says, "Oh Freddy. Don't you know the bad guy's always the one you least suspect?" She's just plain hardcore.


5. Sharpei is one hell of a villainness. Say what you will about Space Quest 6 not being that great of a game-- Sharpei is undoubtedly the most selfish and evil adversary Roger has had to fight. She wants to kill just so she can live forever...


4. The Countess is a medium whose mind is so long gone that she doesn't have a spirit guide-- her connection to troubled souls are living people through a living reporter, unlike the protagonist who only deals with the dead unable to leave the earthly plane. She kills and thinks she saves...just plain brutal!


3. Dr. Ubermann is a Nazi scumbag and it already sets the tone early on in the game that he's your enemy you have a bargaining chip with, just like in the movies. Like Belloq, he has something you want but you want to do what you can to prevent him and his kind from harnessing the very thing you're both seeking. He's so hellbent on harnessing Atlantis and orichalcum that he truly thinks he can become a god...a must on the Baddest Bad Guys List.


2. The Extranoids just want to ruin the totality of existence because they can't die, and their far-transcended state convinced them that all life is worthless. Now...if that's not hardcore villainy, I don't know WHAT is.


And Now, For The #1 Badass Adventure Game Villain...

Ad Avis took villainy to a new high with his power of coercion as it was not once but twice that Ad Avis managed to con the Hero into doing his dirty work...fetching Iblis and retrieving the Dark One rituals. It's also not once but twice that he not only wants total domination like the other villains...but he also just purely wants to spread hell and despondency, look at how miserable his presence made Mordavia and the devoid police state of Rasier. If the fans ever make a Quest for Glory 6, will it turn out that Ad Avis never got destroyed? Remember, the Voodoo Lady said pure evil is never truly destroyed...!

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Fridge Logic vs. Troll Logic

Uh... you're saying it was typical to get rich with junk bonds? Typical junk bonds (like, say, General Motors Corp.) only yield around 30% p.a., so you're going to have to already have a substantial financial basis to make a lot of money from those. On the other hand, it's quite easy to go broke...

Maybe not as many struck it INSANELY rich, but they were the hot thing to invest back then. It also establishes that timeframe when you play the game. Remember in "The Wedding Singer" they talked about Glenn selling junk bonds, and everyone was all about them back then?

Whereas if you were going to set the game in 2007/8, it would be all about going broke with mortgage-backed securities. I started a crappy brokerage job the day of the Bear Stearns buyout: I got to see them leaving with all their crap in boxes before the news crews arrived.

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Fridge Logic vs. Troll Logic

This one was a toss up between Adrian Ripburger and LeChuck for me. In the end I went with Ripburger mainly because of Mark Hamill voice and that I though that the game play was better, though to this day i think Monkey Island sword fighting was one of the best combat systems ever.

How appropriate. You fight like a cow.

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There is balance in all things. Live in symmetry with the world around you. If you must blow things up and steal from those around you, THAT'S WHAT RPGS ARE FOR!

Official Member of the VGL Street Team

What??? No Sludge Vohaul??? You thoguht Sharpei was a better villain than VOHAUL?

*boycotts poll*

Also, Manannan was way badder than that wimpy little Alhazred was.

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LeChuck made me feel something in my skin while I was playing Monkey Island 2, my vote's for him.

Being that I had a lack of DOS growing up (I grew up in a Mac household, we all remember when not as many people had computers for gaming use?...Macs stopped being good after the death of System 7!), I never played SQII and III. So I never really got to see Vohaul in action. Yep, I'm covered with shame. ;_;
But since I'm all grown up now (or at least pretending to be to earn my bread and butter) I have a real PC, and almost any game my heart desires. I have the Space Quest collection XP-compatible rerelease but text parsers try my patience too much.

Still, I thought Sharpei's concept was rather badass and I did like SQ6 in spite of the fact that it wasn't as good as the other SQ games. Same with King's Quest 7. Definitely inferior to the other games in the series but because I was 10 when I played it, it still has a sentimental quality to it and I remember hearing about a seventh game coming out and being so hepped up about it. Unlike King's Quest 8, where I share the AVGN's sentiment about the Super Mario Bros Movie.

But I'm thinking about starting a new poll, or just a discussion, in that regard.

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Fridge Logic vs. Troll Logic

Vohaul was in Space Quest 4 too, you know (though he wasn't in SQ3). And he was pretty evil in that one. A malicious computer virus. Tore Xenon to shreds, turned its inhabitants into mutant cyborgs, and invented time travel to go back in time and kill Roger. Don't mess with him. Sharpei was just an unknown old fogie with little to no threatening appeal at all. Vohaul was Roger's NEMESIS.

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I have to agree with MusicallyInspired, Vohaul is much more evil than Sharpei.

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Steal is such an ugly word...Borrowing sounds so much more diplomatic.

I agree with MI about Vohaul over Sharpei but I also think Mordack was more evil than Alhazred. Alhazred was still pretty evil though with a classic villain story line... actually wasn't he just Jafar without a parrot? Lechuck is an evil guy too but I find his parts to be too comical to truly admire the evil. In the end I have to choose Adrian Ripburger because like alhazred he is one of the only on the list that actually commits murder himself but F@#! the marry the daughter appeal for power just off her too and be sure to do it for money and not to have your name in the papers. Ripburger was one bad ass mofo. I'm ingoring Ad Avis in this because I just don't connect with his evil very well having only played QFG2 recently.

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Calik Status: Hero of Speilburg Has become the Prince of Shapier and a Hero among Tarnans, after freeing the Mordavians from eternal fear he was zapped to the land of Silmaria where an import bug has him trapped between worlds.
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