• Top 10 Worst Video Game Heroes of All Time

  

  Written by Zeromage 62 Comments
  Last Updated:: May 18, 2008

  The video game world has prided itself on it’s inordinate wealth of protagonists. Gamers would become attached to games solely on the personality of the protagonists. Somewhere along the line though, video game makers started creating heroes that were less than desirable for the game player to control. The gamer was confused on how these “heroes” were even able to make it past the designer’s desk.

  What could possibly make a protagonist a failure? Many things go along to making the worst video game heroes of all time. Sometimes these heroes look so dull that its hard to convince yourself that you’re playing with a special character. Another aspect contributing to some of the worst video game heroes of all time is the heroe’s lack of skill. For instance, having a Yo Yo and newspapers hardly qualify as special weapons. Using these “weapons” would get boring quickly. What made these heroes even worse was how easily they could be beaten. The slightest touch could knock down some of these ostensible powerhouses, making you feel disparaged at having to play the game further. These aspects and many others will be included within the descriptions of the next characters that epitomize the worst video game heroes of all time for us.

  10. Johnny Cage

  Not only did the Mortal Kombat player have to endure the gut wrenching battles when playing with Johnny Cage, but also had to endure the poor acting of Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat the movie. In both instances, he was weak, flamboyant and the biggest push over in fighting game history. More interested in the way he looked than how he would fight his opponents, Johnny Cage would lose most of his matches and never make it past the early tournament rounds in the Mortal Kombat series. When placed next to the likes of Sub Zero, Raiden, and Scorpion, he was small in statue and even smaller in spirit. It was curious that he even made the rooster of Mortal Kombat good guys considering his haughty demeanor. Yet, he continued to make it through the Mortal Kombat catalogue of players you could choose from. When one recognized that Cage was supposed to be a hero from watching the movie, one was dismayed knowing that their ideals of herodom had come crashing down if Cage was to be understood as one. Play Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 with Johnny Cage and then play those games with all the characters that you could choose from. Johnny Cage will appear as the worst character of them all, let alone any type of hero.

  9. Sonic

  Sonic looked cool. He had cool hair. He always looked like he was the hero that no one would ever mess around with. Hit him once though and his coins (er…we mean rings) would go flying out of him, leaving him with nothing but his own skin, which was supposed to be more protective for a hedgehog. This outer skin though was as weak as Arthur’s armor (Arthur from Ghosts n’ Goblins). Sure Sonic could do spinning roller coasters on hills that were specially built for his ability, but beyond the eye candy, there was much to be desired from this so-called video game hero. Sonic couldn’t throw anything. He had no magic. All he could do was jump on enemies which mimicked the ability of a much more astute hero included on our top 10 videogame heroes of all time list. Sonic never said anything humorous, nor made the game player feel anything special towards him. Sonic was fun to use for the first couple days of buying a game of his but the coolness factor would soon wear off and you were left with something that just looked the part rather than played the part. Sonic would continue with these lacking qualities throughout the series even to the 3D versions of the game for later Sega systems, which were some of the more abominable games ever made. Sonic just needed more than his illustration to be as a great of a character as he was hyped to be. This he never had.

  8. The Noid

  The Noid was a hero for the NES where he became the worst bad guy to turn to a good guy in video game history. He was given his famous yo yo to try to save New York City. As anyone can who has ever played this game can obviously understand, this was an almost impossible task. The Noid was weak beyond comprehension. His energy level would go down quickly, his jumping power was below average, and looked like a moron trying to attack enemies. It would have been a better idea to make the Noid a measly enemy in the first level of a game rather than the superhero for the entirety of the game. He didn’t even deserve to be a boss in a video game. What could of helped the Noid was the power of his actual yo yo. This was no magic yo yo though. The yo yo that the Noid was equipped with was as weak for beating up people as a regular yo yo that one would buy at Target. He used a yo yo that you would actually play with to try to knock people down with. Imagine having to save New York City with a bunch of demons with a toy yo yo from Target. This was the task put to the already weak Noid in Yo! Noid for the NES. It’s understandable why this game was not successful in the least bit. No one wanted to be the Noid. Everyone just wanted to destroy the Noid from looking so shitty on their TV screen. Five minutes into using him, one would be amazed by how shitty of a hero he was.

  7. Uncle Fester

  Talk about the wrong man for the job. If your neighborhood was being invaded by aliens, who would be the first person/persons that you would call to save you and your loved ones? The US military? Maybe the airforce? Or perhaps even the local police? All of these would be good choices, but Uncle Fester? This short, stocky bald man is the same guy who once went fishing with a stick of dynamite. This is the guy who is supposed to save the world from an alien invasion? Common sense not withstanding, this isn’t even the Uncle Fester we all know and love. The Uncle Fester of Fester’s Quest carries around a gun (I think it’s a gun anyway) which as far as I can tell shoots cheese puffs. Does Uncle Fester ever carry a gun around in any of the Adam’s Family episodes? Does he ever battle aliens for that matter? I think not. For these reasons Uncle Fester makes it onto our list of the worst video game heroes of all time.

  6. Toad

  Mario 2 for the Nintendo has been criticized to no end by video game purists who only saw Mario one certain way. Even though Mario 2 was a copy of an older game never released in the US, it was still full of quality game play that would keep the gamer entertained for hours on end. On top of this, you could choose between four different characters to use, from Mario, to Luigi, to the Princess and to Toad. Each had their own abilities that made them better than the other characters. Toad did not have this luxury though as there was not much he could do from losing lives even at the easiest of levels. He has no jumping power. He couldn’t float. He wasn’t especially fast. The gamer choose Toad when he had mastered Mario 2 to such a level that he was bored beating the game with the other three characters. But to the player who first started the game and played with all the players, they asked themselves why Toad was even included as an a playable character? Once the gamer saw the power of the Princess or Luigi in being able to traverse levels with relative ease, Toad was appropriately left to the scrap heap of inconsequential video game heroes. Toad would prove to have more of an impact in the later Mario games, but for Mario 2 he would only be remembered as the character not to use throughout the game.

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62 Comments

1. #1 Avi says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:02 am

   I CANNOT BELIEVE MOST PEOPLE WOULD RATHER PLAY YO! NOID! THAN CONTRA!
2. #2 Anonymous says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 9:44 pm

   Ok, I can see Tails being on this list, but SONIC??? He is a video game icon!
3. #3 John says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 4:27 am

   Actually, in SMB 2 Toad could lift up objects faster than the other three choices. This may sound useless, but I’ve found it very helpful when I’m facing a boss (I’ve lost many times because it takes an eternity for everyone else to pick something up
4. #4 Jason says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 2:26 pm

   Toad does not only pick up objects quick, he runs faster if you run with him holding an object.
5. #5 casey says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

   what,sonic is in the list,what are you talking about
   ,I mean mario can’t do anything more than jump,
   sonic can be super sonic,one of strongest character of all time
6. #6 grimm says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 2:49 am

   You shouldn’t have sonic on this list because the super sonic thing was cool as hell, but to have paperboy as number 1 is kinda dumb what about the guy from altered beast