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Bowser voted greatest video game villain by Guiness.
In the 2013 edition of Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition, more than 5,000 people were polled on who they thought was the greatest video game villain of all time, and Bowser was number 1.
While it may be true that he's the most iconic game villain ever, I thought it was strange to call him the greatest since he isn't really interesting as a character. Or is he?
After some thought, I realized that Bowser is actually a surprisingly complex character. He's a selfish jerk who is constantly kidnapping Princess Peach and trying to take over the Mushroom Kingdom, but he's not actually as "evil" as he might appear to be at first glance.
Ever since Super Mario RPG, Bowser has been consistently portrayed as someone who only really wants attention. He kidnaps Peach because he has a crush on her, but doesn't understand that kidnapping someone isn't the best way to win their affection. He respects Mario greatly and seems to enjoy fighting him every time they cross paths. Hell, he's even willing go go-karting with him, if Mario Kart is to be believed. And whenever a greater threat appears, he doesn't mind joining Mario and company because he can't stand the idea of someone other than him trying to take over the Mushroom Kingdom. And God forbid that someone tries to destroy it, because then he couldn't take it for himself!
This, paired with his tendency to throw a temper tantrum whenever he doesn't get the way, leads me to believe that he isn't really evil so mush as he is a bratty child in the body of an adult Koopa.
Comments
I think it's silly for Gunness to stray from the non-empirical honestly.
Bowser's plans are complicated in themselves and involve numerous crimes such as abduction, theft, robbery, terrorism, abuse, harrassment, blackmail, arson, destruction, numerous attempts of mass murder, minion facilitation, child endangerment, assault, and even acts such as frame-up, fraud, and identity theft as evident in Super Mario Sunshine. Bowser is usually portrayed as angry and remorseless. While Bowser has been shown from pure relentless evil to a comical villain, there have been hardly any instances where Bowser has shown any form of emotion other than anger or hatred. Bowser has never shown any remorse for his actions, which have led to numerous atrocities and caused much destruction from the Mushroom Kingdom all the way to the outer reaches of the universe. Bowser also seems to lack sympathy and has disregard for any form of life. Bowser's many attacks on the Mushroom Kingdom could have easily taken many lives, but Bowser has never shown any remorse when doing these attacks, only focusing on obtaining power and ruling the Mushroom Kingdom with Peach at his side. In Paper Mario, Mario's defeat at the hands of Bowser, to which Bowser mockingly laughed at, could be considered murder as he is only able to rise up after the combined energy of the Star Spirits. In Super Paper Mario, Bowser has shown to have no problems killing his own minions when they attack. He has even on occasions abducted infants to fulfill his nefarious goal of conquest and did not care in the least for their well being. Perhaps Bowser's biggest demonstration for disregard for other lives is in Super Mario Galaxy, where his plot was to wipe out entire galaxies to create a cosmos he can control.
I may be biased, but I think the greatest video game villain I can recall is Letho from The Witcher 2. Mind you, a great villain doesn't exist in a vacuum, requiring an equally effective hero to make things truly interesting. For the most part, a great villain is great in relation to the overall narrative context of their work; the Joker is interesting in Batman because he and Batman reflect one-another. Weyland-Yutani is a great collective villain in the Alien films, in part, because their corporate incentives and methods are so heavily juxtaposed against the survivalistic struggle between Ripley and the Alien itself. And so on and so forth.
Bowser is a very notable villain in video games, but I don't think he deserves top spot because while effective, he's just not that interesting or memorable beyond being that villain from the franchise that has defined video games since the NES. It also reeks of "settling" with something, which I dislike because I would encourage game developers to keep searching out new ways to tell stories through games, or to refine existing methods. For the most part, video games aren't as narratively relevant to the average person as films or books and I'd like to see that change in the future. A big part of that, I think, will be ceasing to be complacent.
Which is really why I brought up The Witcher 2 and Letho at the beginning of this post. I'm generally not a fan of the approach wherein a game is styled as a playable movie, but The Witcher 2 is the game that I find validates that approach. All the classic film beats are in that game, and many of them are really obvious. But they're pulled off with a combination of grace, elegance and audacity that makes it work. Most of all, though, The Witcher 2 doesn't settle for traditional video game conflicts; the subplots you experience throughout the game are all very, very human conflicts. Combat is involved as a matter of gameplay (and it always makes sense for that combat to happen), but it's very much an obstacle between you and solving some kind of social scenario rather than an end in itself.
For those who aren't going to play the game, here's a spoileriffic explanation of what happens at the end:
The end of the game is basically an optional boss. Letho, the man who (genuinely) accidentally framed you for killing Foltest, King of Temeria, is waiting in the main square of a ruined city after political discourse gets violent. He talks to you about why he's been going around killing kings, what he hopes to accomplish and how in fact he has accomplished most of it. But most of all, he talks about how he has no particular ill will against you and that he's even remorseful for what his actions cost you. Then you get the option -- fight him there in one final showdown, or let him go. The relevant point here is that your name has mostly been cleared, and most authorities no longer believe that you killed Foltest. Yet Letho has also caused you other problems, and your chasing him gets you embroiled in more than one military battle.
So what do you do? There's plenty of reason to fight him to the death -- he kidnapped someone close to you, killed your wealthiest benefactor, used the framing to avoid suspicion and has killed many relatively innocent people along the way. What's more is that he abused the trust and desperation of freedom fighters/terrorists and then began killing them from the inside -- all in collusion with a foreign power that offered his kind leniency. But he's a witcher, just like you. And why did he do it? Because said foreign power promised that witchers would remain unmolested under their rule, and that they would have lands and peace away from the discrimination that usually dogs their steps. Letho's actions will, ultimately, be beneficial to you and your kind. Perhaps the witchering order could even be rebuilt, and without all the fear and hatred.
The game gives you a genuinely morally complex scenario and asks you what to do with it, without any mechanical incentives one way or another. But most of all, neither option is entirely just or acceptable in respect to our modern views on morality. Many of us will naturally align with one of the two options, but that's appropriate for how personal the scale of the game is.
Bowser is not so much a character as a role.
He simply fits the role of "the dragon-like baddie who kidnaps the princess".
He's probably pissed that he keeps on having do that.
We all know the greatest villain of all time is the water temple.
you mean
the resident evil dog right
The greatest Resident Evil villain is the Code Veronica controls.
[Spoiler: ]What's more is that he abused the trust and desperation of freedom fighters/terrorists and then began killing them from the inside -- all in collusion with a foreign power that offered his kind leniency. But he's a witcher, just like you. And why did he do it? Because said foreign power promised that witchers would remain unmolested under their rule, and that they would have lands and peace away from the discrimination that usually dogs their steps. Letho's actions will, ultimately, be beneficial to you and your kind. Perhaps the witchering order could even be rebuilt, and without all the fear and hatred. [
Yeah, a foreign power that does stuff like this totally sounds trustworthy and liable to keep their word instead of just using Witchers as another convenient patsy down the line.
Depends; Foltest proved to be trustworthy, and most if not all kingdoms do similar things anyway. Which ultimately comes to a head in the third act of the game, where a number of Northern Kingdoms make amoral bids for power. I wouldn't necessarily describe the setting as overly dark (there's plenty of levity and genuinely heroic moments), but it's just that kind of political context. The kingdom that set Letho on this task is honestly no worse than any other. They're mostly the bad guys 'cause they're German expies and the author of the original books is Polish -- essentially the equivalent of an English author making expies of the French into bad guys. Which is pretty valid from a historical perspective.
Also, your post isn't spoilered properly.
Heh heh, nice of you to give us a warning first, heh eh heh heh, just in case we were going to be, heh heh, *SNORT!*, surprised.
Personally, I've always been SHODAN's insect.
edit: so it's now a discussion on Nilfgaard? If so, then Nilfgaard's consistently depicted as the iron-fisted regime where trains do run on time, because the law is draconian (in return for turning in the rest of the gang, a criminal can expect the sentence to be lowered to... hanging) and opposing the Emperor borders on suicidal. BTW, Geralt and a Nilf official have a discussion on it in the Saga. The Emperor's kinda a decent guy deep down, so he might be able to keep the promise, if you have done your part of the deal and he sees no harm to his rule in letting you live.
By the way, what kind of argument it is, they're X expies and the author is Y? Seriously, it's like saying Palpatine is all-around great guy, because Lucas believes in democracy.
Oh dammit, I'm trying to argue with Alex. Why I have to be that stupid...