Weekend Slowdown: Our top 10 (mecha) gaming villains!

The world video gaming is chock-full of memorables, from myths to personalities. Now, for this segment of our Top ten, we’ll be looking at some of the more memorable mecha villains we’ve encountered from past gaming experience. Needless to say, this is more an opinion list than an official review (bias alert!), so readers who beg to differ are most welcome to post their two cents. With that said, we move on to the list:

Metal Gear Rex (Metal Gear Solid)
Shame on you if you haven’t figured out who this is. Rex is the final boss of Metal Gear Solid, the first of Kojima’s Metal Gear franchise entering into the PlayStation scene. Much of MGS‘ story revolved around you (Snake) trying to disable this (walking) nuclear artillery platform, alongside unveiling the complex personalities that consisted of the game’s mix of allies and enemies – Psycho Mantis, anyone?

Rex will also go down in gaming notoriety for two other things: As being one of the most memorable boss battles in the franchise (Ray from MGS2 was too easy!), and for grinding Grey Fox into the ground during a famed cutscene, like so much spaghetti sauce.

Anubis(Zone of the Enders)
For the guys not too well-versed in mythology, Anubis is the name of Egyptian god of the underworld…and the name of the central villain in Hideo Kojima’s Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner game for the PS2. Designed alongside Jehuty as a proverbial nemesis, we’ll remember Anubis for (among other things) introducing the player to the Zero-Shift ability…and for skewering the said player with a steel girder. First impressions aside, Nohman’s megalomaniacal outlook only made Anubis look or the more sinister.

More mecha, Full Article!

 

The world video gaming is chock-full of memorables, from myths to personalities. Now, for this segment of our Top ten, we’ll be looking at some of the more memorable mecha villains we’ve encountered from past gaming experience. Needless to say, this is more an opinion list than an official review (bias alert!), so readers who beg to differ are most welcome to post their two cents. With that said, we move on to the list:

Metal Gear Rex (Metal Gear Solid)
Shame on you if you haven’t figured out who this is. Rex is the final boss of Metal Gear Solid, the first of Kojima’s Metal Gear franchise entering into the PlayStation scene. Much of MGS‘ story revolved around you (Snake) trying to disable this (walking) nuclear artillery platform, alongside unveiling the complex personalities that consisted of the game’s mix of allies and enemies – Psycho Mantis, anyone?

Rex will also go down in gaming notoriety for two other things: As being one of the most memorable boss battles in the franchise (Ray from MGS2 was too easy!), and for grinding Grey Fox into the ground during a famed cutscene, like so much spaghetti sauce.

Anubis(Zone of the Enders)
For the guys not too well-versed in mythology, Anubis is the name of Egyptian god of the underworld…and the name of the central villain in Hideo Kojima’s Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner game for the PS2. Designed alongside Jehuty as a proverbial nemesis, we’ll remember Anubis for (among other things) introducing the player to the Zero-Shift ability…and for skewering the said player with a steel girder. First impressions aside, Nohman’s megalomaniacal outlook only made Anubis look or the more sinister.

Astranagant (Super Robot Taisen)
Ingram’s custom mech from the Super Robot Wars series. While SRW has a reputation for churning out some near-impossible-to-kill bosses in past games, the Astranagant is a strange mix. On one hand, it’s one of the franchise’s more aesthetic machines – Ingram Prisken’s bishie looks combined with the Astranagant’s devilishly sleek, black frame made for eye-candy that no fan was going to forget.

That, and the fact that the Astranagant was more a demi-God than mech (story-wise), just makes it even more memorable. On the other hand, the Astranagant, for all its assumed power, appeared in SRW Alpha – widely considered to be one of the more manageable games in the series. Take note we said manageable, not easy. See a video below to see this villain in action.

Sentinel
Found in X-men: Children of the Atom, Marvel vs. Capcom 2. This variant of Marvel’s mutant-hunting automatons gains notoriety for its mix of powerful long and short-range attacks, ranging from far-reaching rocket punches, to the short-ranged, but electrifying (no pun intended) Plasma Storm. Sure, it was slow as hell, and made a bigger target than even the Hulk, but the Sentinel’s a player favorite for its assist moves, and its even-more-annoying spammable combos. And of course, it’s a mech.

Nine-Ball (Armored Core)
While the Armored Core series has had its share of eccentrics like Stinger, Jack-O, or Genobee, none of them hold a candle to the game’s more memorable enemy/wild card: Nine Ball. First making his appearance in Master of Arena (PSOne), Nine-Ball is widely considered to be (within game lore) one of the most powerful ravens to date, and has had the privilege of being a boss in at least three of the game franchises. On the aesthetics side, Nine Ball’s appearance is an AC trademark, being on the pack cover for Nine Breaker.

Jaguarandi (Virtual On)
If there was one mecha mid-boss we simultaneously loved and hated, it would be this guy. A secret mid-boss in Sega‘s Virtual -On arcade and Saturn title, players who had the (mis)fortune of fighting it would soon realize two things: One, its complement of Raiden-esque missiles and lasers could easily kill them in one shot. Two, it looked cool. On a strange off-topic note, VO‘s weakest virtuaroid (Bal Bas Bow) seemed to have the easiest time blowing this behemoth to smithereens.

Sigma
If the original Mega Man series was synonymous with Dr. Wily, then the same parallelism can be said of Sigma for Mega Man X. This ex-Maverick hunter turned-maverick signifies the matured take Capcom decided to blend into the Mega Man franchise, and as such takes on a more sinister outlook as compared to the Mega Man’s traditional mad scientist villain. Did we fail to mentioned he’s bald as a coot?

Sigma is best know for reappearing in just about every “X” game that’s been out (not always directly, though, like in X6 or X8), which gives him plus points for consistency. Special merit goes to Zero, who infected Sigma with the original Wily virus (No place goes to Vile, who’s way too much a Boba Fett ripoff for our taste).

Kehei 0
More commonly known as Lukav Minaev’s final wanzer from Front Mission 3. While the pilot (Lukav) is certainly on everybody’s hate list, the Kehei 0 gets plus points for being just as painful – its onboard P (Particle)-gun had a nasty habit of vaporizing arms and legs off its targets, while its auxiliary 92mm Gun provided for cover as it recharged.

Sure, FM vets will shrug this bad boy off, stating that they’ve tackled meaner mechs in FM1 and #@%!15

11#@%!. But given that FM3’s the first in the series to see a North America release, we imagine first-timers won’t have the benefit of this said combat experience, and probably spent hours trying to figure out how to kill this wanzer. Body Smash, anyone?

Goldibus(Tech Romancer)
The Tech Romancer last boss. In a fighting game best described as a mish-mash of anime mecha stereotypes (courtesy of mecha designer Shoji Kawamori), Goldibus is the stuff of nightmares – an amalgamation of every diabolically evil mecha we’ve seen on television and manga.

And much like these stereotypes, Goldibus has two forms: A traditional, sword-wielding Mazinger Z villain lookalike clad in black armor; and a (powered-up) second, mutated bio-mechanical form with a big, gaping mouth for an abdomen. If it’s any consolation, it looks all the better when you finish Goldibus off with your mech’s final attack, that is, if you can kill him.

Zaku II (Mobile Suit Gundam)
We know what you’re thinking – what’s a mook mech doing in this pantheon of overpowered mecha juggernauts? It’s generic cannon-fodder – the Gundam equivalent of the Imperial Storm Trooper. And that’s exactly why it’s in the list. Starting its debut in Gundam 0079, the venerable Zaku-II has been in almost every Gundam-related game to date, be it Banpresto’s long-running Super Robot Wars franchise, or Bandai Namco’s recently released Gundam Musou title for the PS3.

If anything, we’d draw comparisons between this and Germany’s Messerschmitt Bf 109, or Japan’s Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters from World War II – it may be old and outclassed, but through the years, it’s proven to be a steadfast workhorse that did the job. Sieg Zion!