EarthBound. That cult favorite RPG that fans have implored for a re-release for years, and may never get, because of the Beatles. Yes, the Beatles. Though the game contains more than a few potential copyright violations that could lead to lawsuits from one of the most litigious music acts this side of Metallica, the game is equally well-known for its weird, whimsical characters, storyline, and world. And when the fate of that world partially depends on a socially inept mess with an apple for a haircut, you know that you’re in for something a little off the beaten path. This of course also holds true for the final boss; Giygas.

Giygas, whose name was, according to an old Nintendo Power article, at one point going to be localized as “The Geek” (we all dodged a bullet on that one), is a monstrosity of pure evil. Assisted by Ness’s portly asshole neighbor Pokey, it uses attacks that the game itself describes as being beyond comprehension. Its powers influence the evil in the hearts of people everywhere. Even supposedly peaceful new-age retro hippies are influenced to charge at our heroes and get beaten back by baseball bats and frying pans as a result.

Without the intervention of the heroes, Giygas will eventually conquer the world. We know this because a time-traveling bee with the ability to communicate with humans warns Ness of this danger. And if you can’t trust a time-traveling bee that can communicate with humans, who can you trust?

Now, as whimsical and nostalgic as EarthBound is, Giygas is an underbelly of pure darkness. Shigesato Itoi, the creator of the Mother series, took part of his inspiration for Giygas from a traumatic childhood experience. He wandered into a movie theater he hadn’t meant to enter and bore witness to a scene from a film entitled The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty. And if the title alone isn’t alarming enough, he happened to wander in during a rape scene. Or at least, what his young self perceived to be one.

Yikes.

But despite all of the struggles that the heroes endure to face off with Earth's fated conqueror, Giygas can’t be destroyed through normal means. Bats, frying pans, PP, bottle rockets; they alone are not enough to stop the manifestation of evil incarnate. No, in the end, when all is nearly lost, there is only one thing that can save the world. The power of prayer.

Now, this isn’t some crazy religious message that the game is espousing. That came earlier in the game with the appearance of a cult that worshiped the color blue. No, quite literally, the most damaging weapon in the party’s arsenal is prayer. Specifically, the party member Paula has a battle ability called “Pray.” Throughout 99.999% of the game, this ability is useless and does absolutely nothing. That is, unless you’re intent on wasting a turn. In which case, hey, good show, champ.

But if you want to stop Giygas and save the world, prayer is your only option. Only through repeated prayer, which gradually leads the rest of the world to pray for the party in turn, can provide the power to stop Giygas in his tracks. A demonstration of collective human will brings pure evil to a halt. It is a beautiful thing.

Also, it is a beautiful thing that players that pirated the game weren’t able to experience for themselves. The sneaky programmers that coded EarthBound put a trigger in the game that would go off if it detected that it was pirated. If the player managed to get all the way to Giygas, the game would freeze just before the final battle could begin. And while I’m sure that this trigger was eventually worked around, it had to be a huge kick in the junk for those that first encountered it. I don’t know who had the idea to implement this little feature, but to the dedicated sadist responsible, I salute you.

Henry. Alias: Sir Henry Motherfucker. Less a villain and more just an Irish-accented jerk and rival to No More Heroes protagonist Travis Touchdown, Henry actually doesn’t appear that often in the game. But when he does appear, he knows how to really make an entrance.

Henry’s first appearance comes roughly mid-way through the game as Travis is hunting down Letz Shake, a mysterious assassin that lures Travis out onto a highway in the desert countryside in order to do battle. Valiantly (or not), Travis charges forth, beam katana in hand, ready to cut Letz Shake and his giant brain-in-a-jar down to size.

And then Henry leaps in from out of nowhere and kills Letz Shake in one slice of his own beam sword.

Henry leaves just as quickly as he arrived, and he isn’t seen again unless the player manages to access the game’s true ending by acquiring all of the beam katana models in the game. Now that Travis has defeated his own half-sister and acquired the title of top-ranked assassin, he returns home to take a peaceful dump.

And then holy shit, Garcian Smith some dude that mysteriously looks and sounds like that one dude from Killer7 smashes through Travis’s bathroom door. Defenseless on the crapper, Travis is about to meet a humiliating end when he’s suddenly rescued by that mysterious Irish, kill-stealing jerk-off.

And then, after Henry insults Travis for letting his guard down while on the toilet, Travis pursues him outside, where they fight, man to man, laser sword to laser sword. Acrobatic, agile, and with blazing speed, Henry is seemingly an even match for our hero. And like some of the other bosses in the game, Henry is able to strike Travis down with an instant kill if he’s not careful.

That’s right. An instant kill. As in, no matter how much health you have left, you get hit by it, you die.

So protip. Don’t get hit by it.

But the crazier stuff doesn’t come until after Henry is bested in battle as he drops several ludicrous bombshells. First, he’s Travis’s twin brother (despite apparently being Irish). He’s also the husband of Sylvia, the woman that seduced Travis into this mess in the first place. Apparently, they’ve been married since college. Who knew? Also, who the hell reveals this kind of information when the game is just about to end? (The answer is Henry, of course.)

In short, Henry leaves a bag of loose ends for Travis to sort out, refusing to do any of the work himself because, in his own words, he’s not the protagonist. He’s just the cool, handsome foil who happens to be Travis’s twin brother. Unwilling to sort all of this insanity out, Travis continues his duel with Henry into a freeze-frame. The end.

Wait, what? What the hell is…oh forget it. There’s no way that I could possibly end this post in a way that could do the nature of Henry’s exit justice. So, toodles! So you tomorrow.

In Norse mythology, Loki is a trickster god. He causes no end of trouble for other members of the pantheon, and like other gods of Norse tradition, he is deeply involved in the events of Ragnarök, the war between gods that results in the end of the world. And while he’s been interpreted in countless ways over the years, I am here today to talk a little bit about his role in the game Valkyrie Profile.

Loki is actually one of two possible final bosses that the player may encounter. However, the story branches dramatically at a key point that separates Loki’s path, the true ending, from that of Surt’s, who’s really not worth talking about in the context of this discussion. Over the course of the game, the player takes on the role of Lenneth, a Valkyrie charged by Odin to recruit the souls of dead warriors as Einherjar to serve the Aesir in battle at Ragnarök. What Lenneth doesn’t know, however, is that she was for a time put to sleep and incarnated as a human girl who lived a very brief, traumatic life in which she had only one friend; a boy named Lucian. And when Lucian, as an adult, is killed, Lenneth recruits him as an Einherjar without realizing who he is or what he meant to her.

Lucian, however, can see the truth, and after being sent to Valhalla, wishes that he could see her again so that he might jog her memory. Enter Loki, who “helps” Lucian by escorting him to Odin’s private collection of treasures. While Lucian uses a magic mirror to make contact with Lenneth, Loki uses that opportunity to steal a powerful artifact called the Dragon Orb. He then pins the theft on Lucian, and kills the Einherjar to hide the trail.

It isn’t until later that Lenneth’s human memories finally return to her, and in that moment, she is betrayed by Odin and Freya; her supposed allies. For a brief time, Lenneth’s soul is torn from her Valkyrie body, and when a special necromantic ritual restores her, and once she’s managed to control her grief, she has only one thing on her mind. Kicking Loki’s ass.

Never mind that Loki, by this point, has managed to kill Odin and usurp control of Asgard. Lenneth is zeroed in on the trickster purely for what he had done to Lucian. But when the final confrontation comes, Loki’s got a trick up his sleeve. With the power of the Dragon Orb, he can make the world end.

And he does. He annihilates everything and everyone.

Why? For much the same reason as Kefka desired the world’s end; he’s a nihilistic psychopath. What he didn’t count on, however, was that the same ritual that restored Lenneth to her body also granted her powers. Super powers. Creation powers. In one fell swoop, Lenneth undoes all of the harm that Loki wrought, and it’s on.

Loki’s no push-over. If you’re not prepared, he can do serious damage, particularly when he pulls out FMV-tastic attacks such as invoking the power of the Dragon Orb. When I faced Loki for the first time, I was lucky, mainly in that I could set my party members to auto-heal with potions every turn, and everyone had just enough hit points to withstand his worst onslaughts. I whittled Loki’s health down bit by bit, mostly through liberal application of Lenneth’s Nibelung Valesti super attack.

Though, I used a very poorly thought-out strategy that only worked because the math was in my favor. Other people have taken much smarter approaches and have beaten him in far less time. (Because unlike me, they’re not stupid.)

In place of the normal Youtube video I've posted at this point in past entries of this feature, I'm providing two. The first is the English language version; unfortunately, the recorder edited out Loki's world destruction, but in return, you get a fantastic display of 90s era Pokemon-level voice acting. In the second video, presented in Japanese, the full battle and the game's ending.

But alas, poor Loki (actually, not so poor and mostly a douche), he dies at the hands of Lenneth, who gets her revenge. And thanks to her powers, Lucian’s return as well. So pretty much everything Loki had accomplished is undone by the one woman in the universe that he really shouldn’t have ticked off.

As a bonus, I should note just how difficult it is to actually earn that final showdown with Loki. In normal gameplay, it’s much more likely that the player will end up having to face Surt at the end, if they don’t go out of the way to get the bad ending, which requires the player’s Evaluation Rating (basically, how well Odin thinks Lenneth is doing her job) drops below fifty, or her Seal Rating bottoms out at zero. Actions performed during the game affect Lenneth’s Seal Rating, and in conjunction with performing specific in-game actions, this rating must be below thirty-seven at a specific point in the game. There is nothing in the game itself that informs you of this fact.

In short, the developers wanted players to really earn this ending. Or possibly buy a strategy guide. Because goddamn, it can be easy to miss. And when it’s missed, it’s a sad day, because none of the crazy stuff I talk about in the above paragraphs happens, and Loki’s role in the game is completely thrust aside.

Here we are, a full week into End Boss Month! But this is no time for me to start slacking. There's still a lot of the month left, and a lot of bosses to cover. So let's return to the era of the Super NES and pay a visit to an old nemesis.

By and large, King K. Rool, the villainous king of the Kremlings in Donkey Kong Country, is not exactly the most villainous villain to ever impart his villainy. I mean, let’s face it; his greatest criminal desire is the possession of a mountain of bananas. And to be clear, Kremlings are basically crocodiles, right?

So why in the hell would K. Rool want to steal bananas? Is he the one Kremling in existence that decided to take up veganism? Does he suffer from such a potassium deficiency to which only a gorilla’s banana hoard could possibly serve as the great equalizer? Or is he just an idiot that actually thinks that bananas are a form of currency?

Whatever the case, the Kremling King decided to abscond with the wrong gorilla’s bananas. The moment the theft was discovered, it was immediately on like Donkey Kong. (Please don’t sue me, Nintendo.)

And at the end of DK’s long journey, he and Diddy come face to face with King K. Rool. And well, for being king, K. Rool doesn’t exactly possess an imposing figure. His main method of attack is throwing his crown and charging forward.

I should repeat myself. He throws his crown and charges forward. He essentially begs for DK and Diddy to jump on his head. Granted, it’s not exactly hopping up and down on a bridge with a golden axe conveniently positioned behind him, but still. Though to be fair, he does mix things up with leaping out of the way as a series of cannon balls rain down, ready to squash our heroes if they’re not quick to dodge. Of course, then K. Rool goes right back to throwing his crown.

On the other hand, K. Rool deserves credit for at least incorporating one peculiar novelty into his repertoire. After taking his licks, he goes down, and the credits roll. Well, sort of. Before Donkey Kong Country, I can’t think of any game I had played in which the game threw joke credits at the player, but there they were. And when they had passed, K. Rool got up. And he was pissed.

Not that it really mattered, because he just went right back to throwing his crown, but not before exchanging running forward with hopping forward like a lunatic. Yeeeeah, no. Sorry, K. Rool. You mess with an ape’s bananas, you get…uh, well, I can’t think of a clever simian-related joke to end that sentence. But you probably get the picture.

K. Rool would go on to serve as the final boss of the rest of the Donkey Kong Country series. Though, for whatever reason, he wasn’t brought back for Donkey Kong Country Returns. Maybe he’s finally had enough banana thievery, but then again, it’s hard to come back from a defeat when you get your own butt handed to you by a baby. A baby gorilla, granted, but a baby.

Ah, Pious Augustus. Once, he was a Roman officer, loyal to the emperor. And then, one day, he got lost in a desert, teleported into some strange ruins, and took hold of a glowing, floating artifact. Seeing such an item might give anyone else pause, but no Pious. He boldly reached out, clutched the artifact with his hand, and...turned into an undead lich. A lich whose sole purpose is to serve the elder go—er, Ancient that the artifact represents. Life is certainly full of surprises and thinly veiled H.P. Lovecraft references.

But in any case, Pious spends roughly the next two millennia being a colossal dick to everyone that isn’t undead. He encases innocent people in a giant pillar to serve as a monument to his master, corrupts a French cathedral into a den of pure evil, plays the evil 1980s Nazi to the Indiana Jones of 1980, and generally revels in the suffering and madness that his brand of happy fun time tends to inflict on the minds of the sane.

And yet, his all-powerful master treats him no better than the office intern that’s forced to go on daily sandwich runs. Pious talks a big game, but he’s more or less Cthulhu’s toolbox. And, as his well-laid plans start to unravel in the twentieth century, he’s got some ‘splainin’ to do to his sanity-rending employer.

Of course, Pious pulls things together enough that he can make the final preparations for the ritual to summon his master into our physical realm. Unfortunately for him, he’s performing this ritual underneath a house occupied by a rather pissed off Alex Roivas, who has Pious to thank for a headless grandfather.

When Alex manages to make her way through the labyrinthine underground city and faces off with old bony, she finds herself on a small platform with him and a idol representation of his master that’s granting him power. What ensues is a looping figure-eight chase around the platform, but affter Alex whacks the idol a few times...

Wait, what? Why am I in the hall with the Tome of Eternal Darkness? Why am I controlling the ghost of Ellia, all of a sudden? What if I go over to where the tome is and…

Oh. Oh-ho! As the battle rages, not only does Alex fight Pious, but so do the ghosts all of the major figures that Pious had screwed over into insanity and/or death. One by one, they come out to wreck that idol, and when it’s finally destroyed, it’s on. Alex vs. Pious. Good versus evil. Woman versus lich.

Pious still has some power left, but without the direct aid of his dark, super evil master, he’s pretty much boned. (No pun intended.) Alex shoots, chops, and magicks her way to victory while Pious becomes a two-millennium-old chump. And in order for the player to get the best ending, he has to lose in three alternate universes, which means that he's once. Twice. Three times a chump. (There is no confirmation that he is also three times a lady.)

He coulda been a contenda, ladies and gentlemen. He coulda been a contenda.

It’s fitting that, for as dark as Persona 3 is, the final boss of the game is none other than an avatar of Nyx; a malevolent incarnation of the Greek goddess of the night, who, thanks to the heroes getting tricked into helping their unknown enemy for most of the year, end up putting the world in danger by making her arrival possible.

Oh, also, that doofy handsome kid that joined your class partway through the year? Nyx’s avatar given human form. The hows and whys are a bit too complex to really go into here, but suffice it to say, he’s none too happy about his situation once two and two are put together. He even offers the protagonist the chance to kill him without resistance; doing so would prevent Nyx’s arrival, at least for a while, but in the process, everyone would lose their memories of the past year and go on as though the end of the world weren’t the horrifying inevitability that it is.

Of course, that choice nets you the bad ending.

To get the good ending, the protagonist allows Ryoji to live long enough to become Nyx’s avatar. Then, on the night of the next full moon, shit goes down, and the party gathers to fight her. At least, I think it's a her? Ryoji is a guy, but Nyx is a girl, and...uh, hmm. Anyway, Nyx comes prepared, complete with fourteen different phases.

Fourteen. Different. Phases. Each one based on one of the tarot Arcana that are so central to the Social Links and Persona fusion.

And then, once you’ve managed to whittle your way through all fourteen phases (fourteen goddamn phases), Nyx, not the avatar, but the actual Nyx, decides to make an appearance and gets ready to wreck shit. At which point the protagonist says “Nope,” and pulls an Ultra Jesus Attack, sacrificing himself to seal Nyx away.

There’s a lot going on there, but what some Persona 3 fans might not know is that there’s even more to this battle than is truly expressed in this game. Namely, that Persona 3 is, in essence, a remake of the original Persona. Or rather, half of the original Persona.

Yep. Though it was cut from the North American release of the original PS1 version, the first Persona features the Snow Queen quest; an optional path that takes the player on a completely different track from the primary story route. In this route, events transpire that cause the party to become trapped in their high school, which has been transformed into an ice castle. To rescue their teacher, the students must enter three towers and defeat the guardians of each; students that wield the Personae Hypnos, Nemesis, and Thanatos, the mythological offspring of Nyx, and then use a restored mirror to free their teacher from the grasp of a possessed mask. A mask that contains none other than the Night Queen, who is Nyx in all but name.

The similarities don’t end there. Where Nyx in Persona 3 is said to be the harbinger of the Fall, in which everyone is screwed and becomes Shadows, the Night Queen wishes to summon forth an Eternal Night; she’ll freeze the world over, into a barren, icy wasteland in which humanity is exterminated. Heck, Nyx’s final phase in Persona 3 even has a particularly sadistic attack called "Night Queen" which can inflict nasty status effects like Charm.

Also, I should note that it really, really sucks to have a character like Yukari get charmed at that point, as she may turn around and heal Nyx back to full health. (Fuck you, Yukari Takeba. Fuck you. I will never forgive that transgression.)

But really, long story short and all desires of petty, vindictive revenge aside, what it comes down to is that the entirety of Persona 3 and particularly the battle with the Nyx Avatar, is more or less an elaborate remake of that optional quest from the original game. Just with more messianic attributions and a ridiculous number of boss forms.

King Ashnard of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is not known for his subtlety. He leads his army from Daein into the bordering nation of Crimea while riding a snarling black dragon, decked out in black armor with his soldiers and minions all dressed in similar fashion. The education system of his nation’s schools asks the children to embrace racism first and foremost. His goal is to spread war across the continent and unleash a dark god because hell, why not? Even when he smiles, his face is a portrait of leering villainy.

Seriously, the only thing he lacks is a Snidely Whiplash mustache that he can twirl while setting an orphanage on fire. It’s good, then, that he remains in the background for most of the game while a more nuanced (or at least more personality-diverse) cast takes center stage and he only shows up on occasion to radiate malevolence before returning to the background.

But to be fair to the guy, there is a method to his madness. He comes from the school that demands power over all else. Class and social standing don’t mean a thing to him. For Ashnard, survival of the fittest is the philosophy to live by. And he takes that mantra seriously, as he killed a rather lengthy list of relatives ahead of him in line for the throne so that he could take power himself. So yeah, Ashnard is a mass-murdering, war-mongering psychotic jerk, but at least he’s consistent.

As the game’s final boss, he doesn’t fight alone. Before you can even touch him, you have to fight through a pretty serious wave of soldiers, and there aren’t too many characters in your crew that can do significant damage to him. Though, he can do significant damage to everyone else. Pick up on those healing staves, quaff a vulnerary, and get ready to take a punch.

When it comes right down to it, Ashnard isn’t too difficult on his own, so long as you’re ready for him and you’re not playing on Hard Mode. In Easy and Normal, he’ll just chill out on his dragon mount, waiting for some dumb schmuck with more hit points than sense to come waltzing into his attack range. Hard Mode? Oh, he’ll sit around for awhile, but given enough turns, he’ll start flying around and become an aerial death machine. And when you do drop him, he’ll use the power of the Fire Emblem to restore his hit points and become even more powerful.

Man, villains and their ancient artifacts of pure evil. When will they ever learn?

It takes a special kind of bad guy to dedicate seemingly his entire life to being a colossal dick. Ashnard is that special kind and then some. When it comes to villainy, he goes all in. And he always bets on black.

Ah, yes. M. Bison. The final opponent in Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Street Fighter II, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, and…man, dude gets a lot of mileage out of one game. In any case, if you’re familiar with fighting games at all, you’re likely familiar with this man; the leader of the Shadaloo crime syndicate with dreams of being a magical Pol Pot. And who also did a bit of name swapping with a psychotic boxer and a narcissistic Spaniard.

Like a lot of people, Street Fighter II was my first introduction to the fighting genre. And it was hard; hard enough that even making it to Sagat was something of an accomplishment. The first time that I saw M. Bison’s portrait pop up on the versus screen, I had no idea what was in store for me. Oh, the naivety of youth.

What was in store for me was the beat down of a lifetime. Those crazy flipping kicks, that imposing stage music. That giant bell in the background. That PSYCHO CURASHA! When I finally beat him, it was an exhilarating moment. Bison stand as a monument to imposing, intimidating bosses in fighting games. And also to confusing backstories. I’m to this day still not sure how exactly Bison, Rose, and Cammy are all supposed to relate to one another.

No, really. What the hell, Capcom? What the hell is even going on here? Because I got totally lost somewhere around the third or fourth retcon of the series continuity.

Unfortunately, Bison is a character that’s lost his intimidating edge over the years. This is partially because he’s not really a boss anymore; he’s more or less just a standard fighter. His role of the big bad has been taken over by a technicolor Messiah-Adonis in a thong and by a robot with a yin-yang ball for a torso.

Of course, there was also the movie Street Fighter, and the USA animated series, and the memes that came with them.

Rest in peace, Raul Julia. Rest in peace.

Oh, Mr. Bison, how far you fell. And yet, no other final boss in a Street Fighter game has ever really been able to match your style or your ability to impose fear. Well, yes, Gill is a huge dick and can heal himself, but work with me here.

And, by the way. Just what does the M stand for, anyway?

Welcome back to End Boss Month. After taking a look at one of the most treasured (in a manner of speaking) villains of the Final Fantasy series, it's time to take a look at a boss that comes to use courtesy of Treasure.

Top-down shooters have come a long way since the days of Space Invaders. From early iterations like Galaga to the maddening bullet hell of Mushihime-sama Futari, these games have always presented challenges based on the concepts of memorization, pattern recognition, and avoiding wave after wave of bullets and foes that all want to kill you. And then, there’s Ikaruga.

Ikaruga stands out from most every other game in the genre that came before it because of one simple addition; a polarity shifting mechanic that asks the player to absorb bullets of the same polarity to build up energy for powerful attacks and to navigate through insidious obstacle courses constantly flowing with black and white bullets, energy bolts, and lasers. The game goes on for five full stages, the fifth concluding with what in any other game would have been a fantastic final boss; one that constantly flips polarity, hitting your ship, the Ikaruga, with a constant barrage of alternating black and white energy blasts that need to be sent back at it.

Before I go any further, here’s something to note. Believe it or not, Ikaruga actually does have a storyline. (Which Atari pulled out of the GameCube version. Those asshats. Am I bitter? What makes you ask that?) In it, the game’s villain, Tenro Horai, unearthed an object of limitless power, the Ubusunagami Okinokai (in English, “The Power of the Gods”) and used it to engage in world conquest. The player character, Shinra, the pilot of the Ikaruga, is determined to bring Horai down, even if it kills him.

So here we are at the end of the game. The huge yin-yang ball of death is toast. Horai is defeated, the world is saved, hey, maybe you even got a good grade on the stage, right? Well, no. Because right after the grade is presented, the game keeps going.

The Ubusunagami Okinokai itself goes into full-on attack mode. Also, your guns no longer work. You can’t fire. All you can hope to do is dodge and absorb everything that it throws at you for the next sixty seconds. It’s a minor change, yet one that goes against the mechanic at the very core of the genre. For a full minute, you have no Shoot button.

And then, at the very end, the Ikaruga’s cannon’s finally fire with such a powerful surge that it destroys itself a split-second before the beams destroy the Ubusunagami Okinokai. Shinra goes down, but he takes the giant god crystal with him.

Here, watch a master of the game at work through stage five:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is true bullet hell. The product of evolution, iteration and innovation on a genre that began with Space Invaders back in the 1970s that seems to rarely get the recognition it deserves. Even doing something just a little different can lead to big changes.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to End Boss Month. The month-long celebration of those final, powerful jerks that stand between you and a “Congraturation!” screen. The biggest and the baddest of the bad…and the not so much. Before I begin, you’ll notice that the title of this blog references the game the boss appears in, rather than the boss specifically. This is intentional, as I want to give fair warning to those concerned about spoilers regarding the bosses I’m here to talk about. Anyway, sit back, relax, and let me take you on a journey of reflection as we study the sources of our recent anguish, aghast amazement, and childhood traumas.

So, Kefka. If you know anything about Final Fantasy, you’ve probably heard of this clown. No, seriously. He runs around in clown make-up for the duration of the game while cackling maniacally about the various war crimes he commits, of which there is a litany. Where do I even start? Setting Figaro Castle on fire? Poisoning the water supply of Doma Castle (with his own troops inside, no less)? His ridiculous fashion sense?

Sure, these are all terrible crimes that would get the average war criminal stern looks and life’s ban hammer at the Hague. But Kefka takes his scheming up to eleven. He betrays his also-pretty-vile emperor and pushes three delicately placed statues completely out of alignment, throwing the entire world out of balance.

OK, so? That’s the point where our intrepid band of heroes beat the tar out of him and restore everything to normal, right?

Nope.

Unlike most of the villains we’ll be seeing this month, Kefka wins. Oh, he wins, all right. Not only does he pull this stunt halfway through the game, in the process, he gains PHENOMENAL. ESPER. POWER. And then constructs a giant tower out of random shit from which he can scorch any town on the map with a ray of light. And the heroes are scattered to the four winds for an entire year. By the time the team gets back together, the world has been unquestionably boned by a psychotic, nihilistic clown.

Why did he do all of this, you ask? I just told you; he’s a nihilist, and he follows that creed with a scorched-earth-and-everything-else policy.

And when you finally have that showdown with him at the end of the game? He’s transformed himself into what looks like an angel. No, not the one-winged kind, you Sephiroth fanatics. Kefka fancies himself a god, and he hits like one, too. On the other hand, Final Fantasy VI has an incredibly easy to abuse magic system, and so when it came time to finally face him atop the twisted, perverted remains of the goddess statues (the bosses before the final boss), I just used Ultima over and over and over until he died. He really wasn’t that difficult, all things considered.

But man, Kefka is a colossal dick. I would call him the king of dicks, but Mara would probably have a problem with that. Oh, and after you kill him? The world’s still in a rather boned state, with the added bonus of no more magic for anyone.

Oh, happy day. Kefka may be dead, but he still managed to wreck the natural order of the world. I tell you, never trust a clown. If they’re not spraying Joker Toxin in your face or threatening to eat you in your sleep, they’re committing casual genocide for shits and giggles.

(Shits not pictured.)