• Top 10 Worst Video Game Heroes of All Time

  

  Written by Zeromage 64 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 hero’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 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.

  5. Guile

  The Street Fighter series had some of the best fighters in the whole fighting game market. Ryu, Honda, Blanca, and Sagat would all be remembered for their idiosyncratic abilities and their indigenous diction. The gamer was always over-joyed in using these characters whether they were in the arcade trying to beat the neighborhood bully or just in their bedrooms trying to prove their street fighter worth on their own. The one hero they would not use though was Guile and he rightfully because recognized as a character you don’t choose if you have any hopes of beating this great fighter. Guile was slow, had no agility, and had no worthwhile moves for himself. His roundhouse kick would never hit anyone even in close distance. His sonic boom projectile was a poor version of the much more forceful fireballs of Ryu and Ken. On top of this, these moves always proved to be too cumbersome to execute relative to the effect they would have on an opponent. His regular punches and kicks were too slow and weak compared to all the other characters in the Street Fighter series. The only heroic part of Guile was his storyline that was too aggrandized for how weak of a character he was.

  4. Kid Chameleon

  Kid Chameleon for the Sega Genesis was supposed to be a flagship game for the short lived system. Kid Chameleon himself was supposed to appeal to gamers the way that Sonic did by looking cool. Kid Chameleon could shape shift into plenty of different cool forms, but this didn’t keep this main character from being one of the worst video game heroes in gaming history. When Kid Chameleon was in his basic form, he was useless. There have been plenty of heroes in video game history that could switch to more favorable characters but still not lose their own strength as themselves. This was not so with Kid Chameleon. His regular form could barely climb buildings and had no real power. He sure tried to look cool with his J-Lo glasses but this was only a disguise for his utter lack in strength. His other forms fared just as bad. Some of their powers were just plain tacky. We will suffice going into the actual details of these powers and let the game player witness these weak aspects in Kid Chameleons permutations for themselves. The rest of the game was just as weak as its main character, proving that a video game protagonist and the video game itself go hand in hand in quality or lack there of.

  3. Tails

  Tails would become Sonic’s sidekick starting with Sonic 2 for the Sega Genesis. He would prove to be one of the more useless heroes a gamer could ever control in video game history. Most of the time, Tails wouldn’t even be on the same screen as Sonic making the gamer wonder why he was even included in the game in the first place. There was about two places in total that Tails could be used efficiently in the entire Sega series and those parts could be easily completed without him. On top of this, when Tails did have the motivation to be on the same screen as Sonic, he would do nothing but walk around. He would sometimes mimic Sonic trying to destroy enemies by jumping on them. This was superfluous though as he would jump in the same place as Sonic hurting no enemies because Sonic already took them out. Tails was basically put into the Sonic series to try to strengthen Sega’s best hope for a legacy in the video game market. Beyond the cutesy appeal of his cartoon character persona though, he would prove to be just another in long line of mistakes that the Sega enterprise made.

  2. Arthur (Ghosts n’ Goblins)

  For anyone who has played Ghosts and Goblins, it goes without saying why Arthur is one of the worst video game heroes of all time. One need only refer back to our most difficult games of all time list to understand why Arthur was an annoyingly poor hero. We will further elaborate though in this article. To recap, he had armor that didn’t work at all. He had a sword that had no length and looked like a fish. He had no fortitude himself when his useless armor was shaken off by the weakest of enemies. Here was a guy who bought his weapons and armor from the worst blacksmith in town and trained less than Apollo Creed when facing Ivan Drago. Arthur would continually suffer the same fate as Apollo when taking just a few steps in the first level. Just look at the front cover to Ghosts n’ Goblins and one will understand how weak of a character Arthur was. His beard was supposed to show his manliness but it was only a disguise for his poor thinking and poor ability in the battle field. Anyone who tells you that they enjoy using Arthur is just trying to make a point for the sake of making one. We are sure that everyone who has played Ghosts n’ Goblins can’t stand having to use this lame excuse for a hero.

  1. The Paperboy

  It is fairly well know that we don’t like Paperboy. In fact, we think its one of the worst games of all time. One of the reasons why we think that Paperboy is one of the worst games of all time is because of how lame a protagonist the paperboy was. This paperboy would be knocked down by the slightest of neighborhood trouble makers. He never got off his bike to fight the bastards who were trying to interfere with his route. He had no ability for precise accuracy in throwing his papers (maybe this is why the neighborhood hated him after all; because he kept breaking windows on their house). He couldn’t do anything on his bike other than fall down and throw poorly. You look at the front cover to paperboy though and you see a kid who’s willing to take on the world, at least his own delivery route. This is not so when one plays the game for more than five minutes. Speed up, speed down, always get knocked down is the mantra that would be inculcated in the gamers mind when playing Paperboy past five minutes. The gamer would be so angry at the Paperboy for not standing up for himself and not being able to deliver the route for the first day of the week. Having no attack ability and no defensive ability clearly adds to making the Paperboy the worst videogame hero of all time. That this game gets defended is beyond us here at Old-Wizard. We had never experienced a more irritating hero to control than the Paperboy. How could someone this weak and lacking in abilities even be considered a main protagonist for a video game?

64 Comments

1. #1 Avi says:
   March 17th, 2010 at 11:02 am

   I CANNOT BELIEVE MOST PEOPLE WOULD RATHER PLAY YO! NOID! THAN CONTRA!
2. #2 Anonymous says:
   March 17th, 2010 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:
   March 17th, 2010 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:
   March 17th, 2010 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:
   March 17th, 2010 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:
   March 17th, 2010 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
7. #7 Fabrizio Barrera says:
   March 17th, 2010 at 6:52 am

   ¿And Chuck rock? ¿The kids from Spinmaster?
   And Sonic is an epic character. This sucks.
8. #8 TashaKennedy says:
   March 17th, 2010 at 3:10 am

   i say cooper from grabbed by the ghoulies on xbox he a wimp on the game.he gets scared of everything and game he is on a bad xbox game