Egg Thief – Spyro The Dragon
Spyro The Dragon is not an overly challenging game and the Egg Thief is not a particularly dangerous baddie. No, he is not a threat to our favourite purple dragon but a threat to your sanity. Perhaps I was just terrible at chasing these things down and beef with the Egg Thief is my own, personal vendetta but surely I am not the only person in the world who just wanted to reach into the screen and strangle the damn thing!
Egg Thieves would have a set route in which they speedily ran from you and taunted you with calls of “na-na-na-na-na!” (which made it all the more SATISFYING when he takes dragon horns to the back). What made the chase sometimes challenging was that if you messed up once, i.e bashed your head on something, you would usually have to run a full route again before being able to catch up.
This little baddie is the perfect “eggsample” of an enemy with one goal – annoy you.
Zingers – Donkey Kong Country
Donkey Kong Country provides the player with a plethora of dangerous obstacles and beasties to deal with. However the queen bees of the bunch are the deadly, strategically placed Zingers. If you have to take a risky jump, be it from a barrel or a tree top, it is likely there will be at least one Zinger present to add another dangerous dynamic to the move you are about to make.
Much like real wasps, Zingers hover around menacingly and do their utmost best to make you feel uncomfortable. They will show up at the most unwelcome times and threaten you with a nasty sting, for no reason other than wasps are Donkey-holes. Not to mention that some Zingers are red; which means they cannot be killed. That’s right, deal with it.
Rats – Fallout 1
I only recently played Fallout 1 for the first time, after falling head over heels in love with Fallout 3: New Vegas. I decided to travel back in time and play Fallout from the very beginning, with a craving for the endless wandering and chaotic adventures typical of New Vegas. I surrounded myself with cushions and assumed my best gaming position as Fallout 1 loaded up, made an excited Facebook status and giggled as I navigated through the retro-steampunk interface.
However this overwhelming enthusiasm was turn-by-turn nibbled to death by rats. Now, I had no idea where I was going and it took me a little while to figure out the game was turn based – I assumed my ancient relic of a laptop was lagging. After doing a long and pointless circle whilst being chewed at by unrelenting vermin, I died.
My death was a symbolic “noob owned by retro game” moment. I thought back to the times I laughed at my friends for being unable to fathom SNES games and hung my head in shame, still I couldn’t help but smile. Fallout had delivered what I wanted. I have since discovered that I am not alone in my Fallout-rat faux pax. They are relentless. You have to be some kind of saint to sit through 6-7 rats taking turns to either chase you or bite you!
Medusa Heads – Castlevania
Playing Castlevania can be compared to saying “Voldemort” out loud – you probably shouldn’t do it and your friends will gasp in horror, finding you both brave and perhaps a little stupid. Jokes aside, Castlevania is renowned for it’s difficulty, even as a child I concurred that this game out-stretch my capabilities as a gamer and realised that any attempt by me to complete it was futile.
What made this brutal game even harder was Medusa Heads. Flying at you in flocks of doom they will do their best to petrify and knock the player into pits – they will always be back, and in greater numbers.
Super Mario Brothers – Hammer Bros
I am sure most of us are familiar with the Super Mario series, and the enemies therein. It was a tough choice for me to pick one enemy for this list. Goombas came in at a close second, beaten down only by the fact that they are a basic (yet effective) enemy.
The Hammer Bros are, quite simply, a headache. They appear in many versions of the Super Mario Series, tossing spinning hammers that move rather erratically. The best way to deal with these little blighters, in my experience, is to run at them full force and pray to the gods of Nintendo that as you leap through the air, you are not caught by a hammer.
Although they can be tricky to deal with and downright annoying, the Super Mario series simply would not have been the same without the Hammer Bros. Goombas seemed like a more baseline enemy that could be placed anywhere and only really got to 1-UP you if you weren’t paying enough attention. The Hammer Bros however, were a beautiful and cruel feat of Nintendo Programming.
That completes our list of 5 retro baddies that stand out from the crowd for being particulary mean and annoying! Do you hold any grudges against enemies of old?
