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Video game enemies - mine and yours

Torzelbaum

Torzelbaum

????? LV 13 HP 292/ 292
(he, him, his)
Video games throughout the years have been full of many different (and not so different) enemies for players to face. Now games would be a lot easier without any enemies but would be a lot less challenging, fun and interesting if that were the case.

A while back we all came together to determine our top 50 60 video game enemies but that really only covered the tip of the enemy iceberg*. So let's use this thread to talk about all of the other (non-boss) enemies that we love, hate, love to hate, find neat or interesting or whatever else makes them memorable or stand out.

* Has there ever been a game where one of the enemies was an iceberg?
 
I thought I would start by talking about some of the enemies I had picked for my top 25.

I'll start at the bottom with my #25 pick - the Killer Helm (キラーヘルム / Kiraaherumu) from Breath of Fire 1.

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This is one of those enemies that is just so dumb and silly it's hard not to love it. It's like the medieval version of the aftermath of a Super Dave Osborne sketch.
 
There's this one enemy in Street Fighter 2010 that's a huge pain in the ass. He stops in mid-air for a moment, moves straight in the direction that gets him closest to you for about a second, and repeats. How I hate this little annoyance, this space-gnat. You're short enough in the game that it can be tough to line up a shot with your short range attack, and the gnat's constant pausing will make you think you can get close and take him out safely, only to have him crash into you. So what ends up happening is that you find yourself as likely to be swarmed and killed by these bugs as more substantial enemies like bosses. They're the birds or bats of Street Fighter 2010.
 
One that's always stuck out for me, despite never really playing the games, is the Poo Snake from the Blue Dragon series:

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I just love that one series's go-to mook is just a classic Toriyama cartoon doodie topped with a menacing snake!
 
Fossicker from Chrono Cross. You go exploring some sandy caverns on an island and suddenly you encounter this thing:
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This weird, three-eyed, four-armed alien turd with explorer gear who can take a lot of damage the first time you can actually go fight them in-game. And if you don't break its pot, it throws out a cartoon bomb with a creepy smiley face that plays Hot Potato and can only be defeated after the rest of the enemy team is dead...and upon said defeat explodes all over the unlucky party member it's in front of.
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^ The cartoon bomb in question.

Seriously though, so much of Chrono Cross's enemy roster has amazing designs.
 
(It helps if you imagine the following lines in an Australian accent.)

Fossicker. Terminan for weird, prospecting, bomb-throwing, three-eyed turd tube monster. Fossicker.

(OK. You may stop with the Australian accent and go back to however you normally imagine my voice.)

Fossicker was #8 on my list of favorite monsters. Everything about it is just so absurd and bizarre and silly and video gamey. Even if you don't love it I still feel like you have to respect it. It's like some early 80s D&D Monster Manual level shit.

(Here's another pic of Fossicker.)
 
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Torzelbaum said:
Is anything really stopping you from doing that?
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That's a fair point, but to be honest yeah, I don't have the energy to do fan art of enemies I have no personal attachment or an obligation to draw. In a point in my life where I'm experiencing transitional shifts that I have to be patient on and it's draining to feel ready to move on but not sure how to accomplish that. Perhaps a little more real of an answer than expected but that's where I'm at atm.
 
WildcatJF said:
I don't have the energy
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I feel this down to my bones. Very much understandable.

Back on topic:

The Mighty Bear from Earthbound/Mother 2
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You could do an entire thread just on critters from the Earthbound/Mother series, but The Mighty Bear is probably my favorite based purely on the shy, apologetic expression it seems to have. Like you could almost hear it saying "Aw gee, kid, I really hate to do dis to ya." in a squeaky early-season-Flinstones Barney Rubble voice before just completely mauling your shit.

It kinda adds a level of eeriness to it that a more stereotypically menacing beastie wouldn't have.
 
My #24 enemy - Zombie Hands from Castlevania (specifically the ones from Castlevania II: Simon's Quest).

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In a series like Castlevania when you see an undead hand rising out of the ground you expect a zombie to coming bursting out after it. But that's not the case with this enemy. It's just a hand reaching up trying to grab at Simon's ankles. It is almost more of a stage hazard than an actual enemy. Of course there are other stationary enemies* in the series but some of them do have the ability to attack at range. But that's not the case with the hands.

Seeing them elicits a mix of emotions in me - incredulity, pity, amusement at the simple absurdity of it all but also a sort of begruding respect. Those hands have absolutely no chance to do anything other than threaten a very small area of space and barely pose any threat at all. But even despite that they are still giving it the old Castlevania Corpse College try and doing whatever they can (no matter how little) to try and impede Simon. I'd give them a hand but they have all that they need.

*The hands do seem to have a lot in common with the une weed/plant monster from the series.
 
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Whoa... It's been a long time since I last posted here. I'm going to continue listing my favorite video game enemies but I'm going to go way out of order because the game this enemy is from was recently mentioned by @Sarge.

Now, I'm sure you've fought wolfmen or werewolves in many different video games. And from time to time you've fought multi-headed wolves. But how often have you fought multi-headed wolfmen?

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That's my #7 favorite enemy - the Wolf from the NES port of Might and Magic Book One: Secret of the Inner Sanctum. It has a couple of different palette swaps but that is my favorite one. The White Wolf there can attack multiple times and has a chance to use frost breath.

Sarge discusses the game in the Beating Games thread starting with this post. Here's a relevant snippet:
Sarge said:
it looks better than its PC counterparts, with some excellent spritework all over the game, even if it reuses enemy sprites a bit too much (a flaw also in the PC versions).
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I was really impressed by many of the enemy designs. G-Amusements definitely went all out for this one. Most WRPG ports to NES just look bad, with iffy artwork and sludgy 3D maps, but they went all-out and made a version that looks better than all the PC versions, and in ways probably looks better than the PC Engine version as well. It's definitely the best-looking 8-bit version.
 
Video games often use fantasy settings. The final boss or big bad of games like that often have armies with many different types of troops. One of the most common types is the nasty, annoying (but still threatening) little assholes. So think of your kobolds, goblins, imps from Final Fantasy, etc.

My #13 favorite enemy is not only a perfect example of that type of enemy but also a perfectly named example of them. And that enemy is none other than the Giddy Goons from Dragon's Lair.

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My #20 enemy - Lethal / Deadly Sword from Lufia II : Rise of the Sinistrals

I'm not exactly sure why WildcatJF didn't reject this pick during the Top 50 since the concept of a possessed sword definitely existed before it appeared in Lufia 2. (And probably appeared in a computer/video game that was released even earlier.) But most possessed swords seem to just try to take control of the wielder instead of cutting out the middle man and moving around on their own. The Lethal Sword in Lufia II is one of the exceptions to that rule.

The Lufia 2 Lethal Swords roam around in dungeons (like every non-boss enemy in Lufia 2):
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And when you get into a battle with them they have a cool looking sprite of a sword wrapped in blue flames / cursed energy.
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And the monster can "drop" a cursed sword which can be uncursed and turned into a strong weapon (but not an overwhelmingly powerful one). Instead of being a drop I like to think of this as partially and then completely "taming" the sword.

The Lethal / Deadly thing comes from a naming/translation issue.The US version gave the same name, Deadly Sword, to both the monster and the weapon it can "drop". Other versions fixed that issue by renaming the monster to Lethal Sword.
 
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I don't remember particulars about what I considered acceptable options back then, but I think this didn't strike me as being a derivative choice. There's a lot of inspirations in enemy concepts from outside media, and looking at this, it's clear Lufia does its own thing with the idea.

I also didn't research every exact enemy people submitted, or it would have taken longer to get it going, haha.
 
I think these guys were in Secret of Mana a couple years earlier as the Evil Sword / Doom Sword.
 
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