Summary
Nintendo, on the surface, is a family-friendly company promoting video games that almost everyone can enjoy. They have helped create characters that everyone loves as well, including Mario and all of those Pokemon. There are even villains that are easy to side with.
Then there are villains with seemingly no good spirit inside of them. Ganondorf fromThe Legend of Zeldaseries is a fine example. Except forHyrule Warriors, Ganondorf has never been good and, even then, he was in it to win it. Ganondorf aside, these Nintendo villains do deserve some credit. They have good qualities or at least did one act to help save the day.
Bowser has been Mario’s major rivalsinceSuper Mario Bros.began in 1985. He has bowed out occasionally, but most of the time he is a villain. There are some games where he is a hero, though, likeSuper Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. He’s one of the five playable characters in that game but he begins as a villain.
InLegend of the Seven Stars,Bowserteams up with Mario as an excuse to go after an even greater threat, but he does it in a pathetically obvious way. Even in games where he is a villain, likeSuper Mario Odyssey, Bowser has a softer side. He intends to marry Peach out of love and that’s worth a small amount of credit, even if kidnapping her is the wrong way about it.
Bowser Jr. alsodeserves a shoutout for his involvement inSuper Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. This was a Switch remaster of the Wii U game with a new mode starring Mario andBowser Jr. He thinks his father has gone a little too out of control, which is why Bowser Jr. joins Mario in this bite-sized adventure.
Overall, Bowser Jr. is just a kid who does whatever his dad says. Maybe he doesn’t want to be evil or maybe he just wants a mom, which is why Bowser kidnaps Peach all the time. The world may never know, but hopefully, this father-son duo can one day end this vicious cycle.
This one is a three-way tie betweenClaude of the Golden Deer, Dimitri of the Blue Lions, and Edelgard of the Black Eagles.Fire Emblem: Three Housesbegins with the protagonist, Byleth, attending an academy with those three representatives.
Eventually, players have to make a choice about who they want to follow, which then leads to a time skip. Whoever players don’t choose will become enemies, but all three have the potential to be good and do indeed do good things, although they can also become corrupt leaders, depending on player choice.
Claus is a character most Nintendo fans may not be familiar with asMother 3has never been officially localized. He is the brother of the protagonist, Lucas, who disappears one day. Throughout the game, a masked cyborg will appear, which is revealed to be Claus in the end.
Claus was turned into a cyborg and brainwashed by the Pigmask Army. In a moment of clarity in the final battle, Claus knowingly uses magic to reflect off of Lucas to kill himself. In death, Claus is free from evil and can rest easy knowing his brother is safe.
esse, James, and Meowth are allpart of Team Rocketin thePokemonanime. It may not be a game, but it is a Nintendo property and the three villains represent this idea well. The three are always trying to steal Pikachu from Ash and will seemingly do anything to get it.
There are many episodes where they help each other out, though, in dire situations, like the arc where all the villains and heroes get stuck on an island following a ship crash in season one. They also help Ash save the day inPokemon The Movie 2000, the second movie. Those are just a couple of examples, but there are many others as Team Rocket is just a lovable bunch of rogues.
King Dedede occupies a similar space intheKirbyuniverseas Bowser does in the Mario universe. In the early games, he was the main villain aiming to take over Dreamland, but as time went on, each game reduced his influence more and more to the point where he basically became a hero, albeit an apathetic one.
A big example can be seen inKirby’s Return To Dreamlandon the Wii. King Dedede is one of the four playable characters and the game itself is a 2D platformer. He may be slower than the others, but using that comically oversized hammer is always a blast.
Tom Nook is not really a villain in theAnimal Crossingseries, but there are undertones to his character. On paper, it always seems like he is doing the players a favor. They move into a new area, and he sets them up for a cushy life. However, Tom Nook also wrangles players into extreme debt.
It’s an entrapment situation where players don’t have a choice in the matter. He’s like a secret villain who does nice things on the surface but is secretly creating dastardly plans behind the scenes.
Wario is an antagonist to Mario in his portable Game Boy series, starting withSuper Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. After that, he takes over the Game Boy franchise as a treasure hunter only in it for himself. Money is always the goal andWario Land: Shake Itis perhaps the best example of the line that Wario draws morally.
The Shake King is the main villain who steals a magical sack that gives him infinite coins on top of usurping the throne from Queen Merelda of the Shake Dimension. Wario saves her and Queen Merelda’s people from certain doom but only to grab the coin sack for himself in the end. Wario will do good things if it means a big payout in the end.
