Today, for the first and only time in my planned schedule, we’ll jump into the realm of PC gaming. Back in time to an age when sci-fi horror didn’t mean Dead Space, and when Ken Levine worked on a shock of a different sort. System Shock 2, to be precise, and its antagonist SHODAN.

For what it’s worth, SHODAN was also the villain, or rather, villainess, in the original System Shock, but I personally am more familiar with the sequel. Mostly because it’s the one that I played, and it scared the utter shit out of me. You haven’t known fear until you’ve screamed at the top of your lungs while flailing in the darkness with a wrench. And SHODAN is the cause of it all.

What is SHODAN? Well, she’s an evil artificial intelligence hell-bent on murdering the worthless sacks of meat she considers humanity. Imagine GLaDOS, but replace her dark sense of humor and cake recipes with an acute, genocidal psychosis and the desire to turn people into cybernetic zombies to serve as her unwilling murder puppets. Both AIs toy with their subjects, whether it’s your space marine character in System Shock 2 or Chell in Portal.

But rather than lead you through a series of test chambers with the promise of cake at the end, SHODAN’s plot is far more sinister. After being forcibly awakened from his sleep chamber on board the Von Braun, the player character quickly learns that everything has gone to hell. His only help is Dr. Janice Polito, who communicates with him and directs him through the ship. He makes his way through the Von Braun, hoping to make contact with Janice and hopefully find a way out of this mess. But when he finally finds her, she’s dead, and has been dead for quite some time. She had committed suicide before he even woke up.

So who was this Janice helping the player through the whole game? Why, SHODAN, of course. The entire time, she had been tricking you into helping her assume control of the ship. And when she starts using the Von Braun’s faster-than-light drive to start warping reality, you have to shut her down. And by shut her down, I mean run around a chamber, hacking terminals to shut them off as a physical avatar of SHODAN chases you around and makes you piss your pants, your skirts, your jorts, and your kilts.

And, like all horror villains that just refuse to stay dead, SHODAN finds a way to live on, even after her defeat. She takes possession of a woman, one of the few survivors of that managed to find the safety of an escape pod, and becomes SHODAN in actual physical form. Yeesh.

Unfortunately, Looking Glass Studios shut down after System Shock 2 was released, and with the rights to the series being held in the purgatory that is the EA back catalogue, it’s unlikely that we’ll see her villainy rise again. Which is unfortunate, because her antics could teach necromorphs a thing or three.

Show of hands. Who here subscribed to Nintendo Power back in the day when the magazine offered a free copy of Dragon Warrior with each subscription? Well, like some of you (assuming any of you reading this actually did accept that offer), I too received a subscription through this promotion thanks to my mom. Technically, the subscription and the game were shared between me and my brother. But regardless of where the game came from, Dragon Warrior was my first taste of the RPG genre.

And man, what a taste. It’s simple and kind of a slog to play now, but without it, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. But for me and my brother, the Dragonlord will forever remain our white whale.

I’ll get to why in a moment. But first, it’s important to know who this Dragonlord guy is. Well, he’s a princess-kidnapping bag of dicks. I know that a bag of greasy Dick’s is a delight (seriously, if you're ever in the Seattle area, try them out). But not this guy. He kidnaps Princess Gwaelin and uses his power to threaten Alefgard. The only way to stop him is to rebuild the rainbow bridge to his castle, march on over there, and take him on.

This is a process that can take an exceedingly long time. Particularly if you’re nine years old and have never played an RPG before in your life. The learning curve is steep, the number of steps that require getting to the end is long. But once you’re ready, it’s time to face that evil sorcerer and beat him down.

Only wait! He’s actually a dragon. And the battle suddenly becomes a lot more difficult. I hope you’ve found Erdrick’s Sword, because you’re going to need it.

Unfortunately, neither my brother nor I ever beat the game. My brother actually got to the end first. He could get to the Dragonlord’s dragon form, but then he’d die. So he just needed to level up some more. I figured I’d catch up to him on my own save file.

It was around this time that some family friends came to visit. They have a son that’s about our age, and we let him try the game. All was cool. And then, after he left, my brother went to resume his own game. But…oh.

Oh.

Said family friend had saved over my brother’s file.

That, folks, is more soul-shattering than any number of beatdowns courtesy of the Dragonlord himself. The loss of save data after countless hours of questing, level grinding and slime slaying. My brother never did beat the game, and well, neither did I. I mean, it wasn’t my save data, but it was a punch in the dick all the same. Regardless, my brother never touched another console RPG after that. I think the last game in the genre of any sort that he played was Diablo II, and that’s a considerably different game altogether.

But this I swear; one day, I will hunt the Dragonlord down and kill him for the honor of my brother. From hell’s heart I stab at thee.

As we officially cross over into the second half of End Boss Month, I’d like to take a look at the final boss from one of the RPGs of the current hardware generation nearest and dearest to my heart; a game that came about at just the right moment in my life. Today, I speak of the final boss of Eternal Sonata. A game in which the final boss proved to be a legitimate surprise, and not the unpleasant kind like Final Fantasy IX’s Necron.

Eternal Sonata is a fantasy centered on the dreams of the nineteenth century Polish composer Frederic Francois Chopin. The game takes place in the final hours of his life, soon to be claimed by tuberculosis. As he sleeps, he dreams of a world inspired by his music, as well as some cues from other aspects of his life. It is a world in which those that are terminally ill gain magical powers. He accompanies a girl named Polka, also sick, and inspired by Chopin’s real-life sister Emilia, who died of the same disease at fourteen. He accompanies her on a journey through this world, and in the process encounters new friends and enemies along the way.

But in the very end, he turns on the party. Convinced that he must confront the others so that his soul might finally find rest and to stop the destruction of the dream world, he challenges Polka and the others to a final battle. A battle in which he fights more or less as a powered up version of his standard playable form. His normal battle taunts of his enemies being "soulless creatures" suddenly becoming chilling when directed at the other party members.

He of course goes down in the end. In the real world, he dies, and his spirit is able to rest. Eternal Sonata is not really otherwise known for its plot, which is simple, save for a convoluted ending with extensive philosophical chatter. It also layers on the melodrama quite thick, with one character taking several minutes to die as she monologues away. So the game will never win any awards for its story, but it is incredibly respectful toward Chopin, taking breaks at points to expound on specific periods of the composer’s actual life. It’s an unusual approach to an unusual subject of an RPG, and I forgive its narrative faults for that.

That still gives me chills.

I said before that this is a game that came along at the right time in my life, and I am not exaggerating. On the day of its release, I was actually put through the most painful humiliation of my professional life; one in which I will not go into details to describe here. But I will say that Chopin’s journey toward his own death proved to be soothing in its own way. The idea of death is not something that’s always at the forefront of the game, but with two terminally ill characters, it’s something that’s always on the player’s mind regardless. And yet, strangely, I came away from the game feeling happier than I had been when I started playing it. Chopin’s role as both the instigator and the end of the journey is a major reason why.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are on the fifteenth day of End Boss Month. And as we reach the halfway point of this thirty-day examination of final bosses, I think it’s only fair that we take this time to look at one such adversary that holds a special place in the heart of long-time Giant Bomb visitors. I speak of the final boss of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4. Izanami.

It has been my observation on the forums that, in general, a lot of people tend to view Izanami as something of a let-down. After the unveiling of the serial killer and the defeat of Ameno-sagiri, the malevolent source of fog encroaching on Inaba, the last-minute unveiling of Izanami comes as a bit of a surprise; one that’s actually easy to miss, given the very specific requirements that are necessary to unveil her. Then, with one final trip into the TV, the Investigation Team climbs Yomotsu Hirasaka and learns the whole truth before facing her down.

In more literary terms, Izanami is the goddess behind the curtain controlling the visage of the wizard that was Ameno-sagiri. And when taken at that level of value, it’s easy to understand why some might be underwhelmed. But there’s another level of depth here, just as there was in the casting of the Nyx Avatar as the final boss of Persona 3.

Some of you will probably recall the school trip to Tatsumi Port Island. And while it’s a sequence that’s mostly remembered for several characters inexplicably getting drunk off non-alcoholic beverages, and for the Persona 3 players, some bonus fan service, there’s one sequence that sometimes gets overlooked. Heck, even the anime adaptation skimmed over the scene in favor of getting to the part where everyone gets smashed. The scene I’m referring to is Mr. Edogawa’s special lecture to the class, in which he discusses the tale of Izanagi and Izanami; the ancient Japanese creation myth.

This scene is the first and only time that Izanami is ever brought up during the plot prior to the big reveal near the game’s end. But for those that don’t know their Japanese mythology or only have a fleeting interest in it (which I’m guessing is the majority of the game’s western audience), Edogawa’s lecture is a pretty big deal, as it presents a major hint of events to come.

A couple of other things to note; one is that both the protagonist and the killer, Adachi, share the same default Persona in Izanagi, though Adachi’s incarnation is a twisted version. It would not be far off to assume that, had Taro Namatame not gone off the deep end and had the chance to awaken to his own Persona, it too would have been a form of Izanagi. Further, the other prominent Personae of the central cast, such as Konohana Sakuya are figures that are also derived from either ancient Japanese myth, or from ancient Japanese history, such as Tomoe Gozen. Some of these figures are also directly involved in stories of Izanagi and Izanami.

And then there’s the confrontation with Izanami herself, who in the ancient myths got the short end of the stick. She was scorched to death giving birth to Kagutsuchi. And before Izanagi ventured into Yomi to retrieve her from the underworld, she ate the food of Yomi, causing her appearance to rot horridly and also trapping her in the realm. Izanagi, upon seeing her rotted appearance, ran away out of fear and blocked the entrance to prevent pursuit.

As you can imagine, this turn of events left Izanami incredibly bitter.

And yet, when Izanami chooses to awaken powers in three individuals that represent aspects she’s looking for, at least two of those she selects have a Persona that represents her former love. In essence, she chooses to use Izanagi as the bar by which to measure humanity’s worth. And she wasn’t ever intending to be found out. But when cornered, she challenges her most successful “Izanagi” to a final battle.

And what a final battle it is. After flailing at Izanami ineffectively, unable to defeat her, the protagonist uses the Orb of Sight, an item crafted by Igor by the power of the Social Links, to unveil Izanami’s true, hideous form, much in the same way the light of a torch revealed what she had become to Izanagi.

And while the battle’s grand finale takes its design cues from Persona 3, in pitting the protagonist alone against the boss in order to deliver the final blow, it’s fitting that it occurs as it does. Through his Social Links, the protagonist is given the power of Izanagi-no-Okami, and defeats her through the use of the skill Myriad Truths. He literally defeats her with truth itself.

And what does Izanami do when she’s thwarted? She congratulates him and the others. No spite, no petty diatribes. She takes her defeat graciously, which is really more than can be said for most villains in video games. That she so willingly accepts her defeat at the hands of a metaphysical representation of the god that spurned her and left her trapped in Yomi is even more impressive.

There’s more that could possibly be read into this, but it’s probably best to leave the discussion here. However, hopefully this gives at least some of you a new perspective on a boss that some in the forums found superfluous. Till next time!

P.S.: Oh, and in case you didn't know, her English voice is performed by the same actress that voices Nanako. Wrap your head around that one, while you're at it.

Welcome to a very special entry, ladies and gentlemen! For this, our fourteenth day of End Boss Month, we’ll be taking a look at not one, but two of Mario’s lesser nemeses. For one game each, they stepped up and filled in for Bowser as the final boss. And of course, both were sent packing, because that’s what happens to villains that confront the portly, mustachioed man in the red cap.

And though they never stood a chance (because, once again, Mario), Wart and Tatanga are still noteworthy foes. One is a monster that threatens Sub-Con, while the other wreaks havoc throughout Sarasaland and kidnaps its princess.

Wart’s case, as the final boss of Super Mario Bros. 2, is a little special. As a lot of you probably already know, the second Super Mario Bros. game released in North America was not originally a Mario game. It was a crazy game designed as a tie-in to a TV network’s promotional event, and then converted and enhanced to become a Mario game for Americans that didn’t want to put up with the insane bullshit of the original sequel.

Regardless of opinions on its qualities as a Mario game, one of the aspects that Super Mario Bros. 2 shares with Doki Doki Panic is Wart. And though the games’ stories are different, Wart is pretty much the same. A big green asshole that refuses to eat his vegetables. So of course, it makes perfect sense for him to reside in a room that also just happens to have a device capable of launching vegetables that can be easily collected and thrown down is gullet.

And that’s not the most embarrassing part. Not only can he be beaten by Mario, Luigi, or Peach. He can be beaten by Toad. Yes, a mushroom retainer. One of those guys that were always happy to thank you before informing you of the obvious regarding the whereabouts of the princess. Getting beaten by Toad is basically the equivalent of getting beaten by one of the useless NPCs you sometimes see wandering around an RPG town. It does nothing but bruise the ego.

But then, oh wait! It was all a dream, and when Mario wakes up, the whole adventure, Wart and all, vanishes into the ether.

It just sucks to be Wart.

On the other hand, we have Tatanga of Super Mario Land, an alien from outer space that takes a page out of Bowser’s playbook and kidnaps a princess. In this case, Princess Daisy. The specific identity of the damsel-in-distress aside, Tatanga’s plot hinges on one thing; not getting his ass kicked by Mario.

But to Tatanga’s credit, he does throw a wrench into Mario’s usual running and stomping. He flies in a personal spacecraft, forcing Mario to take to the air in order to defeat him. In a bizarre twist, Super Mario Land is the only Mario game that has ever ended in the form of a side-scrolling aerial shooter. Not that this really helps Tatanga in any way, because he still gets blown out of the sky.

To be fair, however, Tatanga did return for a second go around in Super Mario Land 2. But it still sucked for him because once again, he was a boss in a Mario game. Furthermore, he wasn’t even the final boss the second time around. Demoted to the duty of serving as the boss of Space Zone, Tatanga has had to live with Wario stealing the glory and going on to greater and greedier heights.

And even if Tatanga were to return to his old form of Super Mario Land, well, good luck to him. Daisy isn’t exactly a wallflower anymore. She’d probably punch his teeth in.

So let us pour one out for Wart and Tatanga, the Mario villains that, while vile, could never live up to the legacy of a fire-breathing, skirt-chasing turtle or a greedy, garlic-breathed man in purple overalls.

Fucking overalls, man.

From yesterday’s recounting of Liquid Snake’s epic battle against his brother, we now march onward to another villain with martial prowess and a powerful superweapon at his disposal. However, the game and boss in question aren’t nearly as well regarded as our previous subject. Today, I speak of Dauragon C. Mikado, the lead antagonist and final boss of the early PS2 brawler The Bouncer.

Before I begin, while The Bouncer isn’t exactly held in high regard by many, I never really had a problem with the game. I think it’s fun, entertaining, and a good way to blow away the occasional afternoon. But enough editorializing on the game’s quality. I’m here to talk about the boss.

Dauragon is not the most original when it comes to his villainy. His backstory is fairly simple. As a boy, he and his younger sister were orphans. When Dauragon’s sister became ill, he tried to take her to a hospital, but was denied entrance at the door and turned away. Fortunately, the passenger of a passing limousine happened to see the kids and offered his help. This man was the leader of the Mikado Group.

While the generous efforts were not enough to save Dauragon’s sister, Mikado took Dauragon into his home to raise as his heir. The only stipulation being that the boy strive hard to excel in all walks of life so that he might become a man worthy enough to take the reins of the Mikado Group. Do well in school, strive to hone his body and mind, and his path in life would be secure.

Seems fair, right? Dauragon strives to prove himself to a man that, up to that point, had already been more than generous to him, and he inherits a powerful corporation while living a life of luxury. And it’s evident that, based on the very fact that he’s now in charge of the Mikado Group, Dauragon lived up to his end of the bargain. It should be a happy ending.

Except not. Because Dauragon is a bitter, petulant troll of a man. He resents Mikado for asking him to endure stringent academic education and martial training. And he uses his vast wealth to construct a powerful satellite that secretly doubles as an orbital death ray. An orbital death ray that he tests out on the hospital that denied his sister care when they were children.

Not only is it apparently impossible for Dauragon to feel thankful for anything, he has a vindictive streak the size of the Pacific Ocean. One can only imagine the terrors he’d inflict on a barista for serving his coffee a few degrees too hot.

So at the end of the game, Dauragon is confronted by the three heroes, Sion, Kou, and Volt, in the control room of his doomsday weapon. The first time he’s fought, he goes down fairly easily. But things get tougher on subsequent playthroughs.

That is, tougher, and weirder. The second time the game is played, the fight is extended, and Dauragon reveals his second form, in which he removes his shirt/jacket thing and reveals…

…that he’s wearing a pair of designer overalls.

Allow me to repeat myself. Designer overalls. And there’s not even a shirt underneath them. He basically goes from supervillain to Backyard Wrestling in one fell swoop. But if you play through the game a third time, Dauragon goes even further, unfastening the overall straps to reveal the tattoo inked across his back. A tattoo that would look significantly more badass if it weren’t for the fact that he otherwise resembles a hillbilly at the county fair.

No matter how many times I play The Bouncer, I’ll never be able to get over that. I know that Dauragon is the villain in a game with Tetsuya Nomura character designs, and so I should be thankful that he’s not covered from head to toe in zippers and belts, but really. Overalls. Fucking overalls, man.

I just, I…

Sigh.

Hopefully, tomorrow’s entrant into End Boss Month will come with a better sense of fashion. I'll give Dauragon one solid point excellence in one aspect, though. His wardrobe guarantees that I will never forget him.

The idea of the evil twin has been done to death, but not often has it been done in quite the same way as Metal Gear Solid. Liquid Snake, born through laboratory experimentation like his brother Solid Snake, bears a very close resemblance to his protagonist sibling. The only real differences are his coloration and his voice, making him something of an Aryan Mutant Ninja Terrorist. He is also a very bitter, bitter man.

Why is he so cranked? As it turns out, he has an inferiority complex. Led to believe that the Les Enfants Terribles project left him with Big Boss’s recessive genetics while Solid Snake got the dominant end of the stick, he’d like nothing more than to best his brother and prove who Big Boss’s superior progeny really is. And also hijack a Metal Gear and a base filled with genetically enhanced soldiers while he’s at it.

Although Liquid tries to take Snake out with a Hind D helicopter, it doesn’t work out in his favor. So of course, at the end of the game, he ups the ante by confronting his brother with Metal Gear REX, which, despite the cramped quarters of the hanger, has an array of weapons in its arsenal more than fit for the task. He’s got things covered.

Well, aside from the fact that REX’s otaku designer intentionally gave it a weakness straight out of the Cobra Commander playbook. When Snake takes out the dish mounted on its shoulder, Liquid is forced to fight with the cockpit open. And when your opponent has access to weapons such as grenades and a rocket launcher, that’s not typically considered a good thing.

REX, of course, goes down, but in the chaos that follows, Liquid regains the upper hand and pulls an unconscious Snake on top of the wreckage. After yet another monologue (Liquid so does love to talk), he and Snake go at it one more time, man to man, fist to fist. But in this exchange of powerful punches and roundhouse kicks, Liquid once again gets his ass handed to him and falls from the top of REX.

Now that Liquid is surely defeated, Snake and either Meryl (if Snake was manly under the threat of torture) or Otacon (if Snake’s manliness is less than adequate) make their way to a jeep and begin their escape from the facility, which is under threat of a direct nuclear strike. But wait. Surprise! Liquid’s back, and he’s pissed off. He pursues Snake through the tunnels in a jeep of his own and tries one again to finish his brother. Snake, however, fends off his assault, and all parties make it out of the tunnel.

Through it all, Liquid just refuses to die. That is, until the very end, when the FOXDIE that Snake had infected him with demonstrates an impeccable sense of dramatic timing. Liquid keels over as a heart attack finally claims his life. He put everything he had into besting Snake, but his best just wasn’t good enough.

Still, when it takes a special disease engineered to kill him and him specifically in order to finally bring him down, you have to admit that Liquid is pretty badass. Maybe not when Ocelot is parading around with one of his arms grafted on and pretending to be Liquid himself, but badass.

In Final Fight, Metro City is a tough place to live. Gang members of all shapes and sizes, from a Japanophile that takes his obsession to eleven to a beauty of indeterminate gender, terrorize the local population. The city’s police force does such a poor job that, when the mayor’s daughter is kidnapped and held hostage by the gang’s leader, the mayor himself has to take off his shirt and go to town.

The gang in question? Mad Gear. And their leader? Belger. (Or, Horace Belger, in Final Fight: Streetwise, but we’ll not speak of that game again.) What man could be so devious, so conniving and brutish, that he’d send his goons to kidnap Jessica Haggar?

My goodness, what a dapper looking fellow. He certainly has the brawn underneath that bulging dress shirt. But what is up with that motorized chair? Do you arrive in Belger’s inner sanctum with the intent of pounding a disabled man?

Well, no. Because once the chair is destroyed, it’s very obvious that despite his age, Belger is one spry bastard. He jumps around the room, firing his crossbow as wave after wave of goons come surging for the assist.

Wait, what? A crossbow? Oh, come on, man. That isn’t fair. I know you’re the final boss, but this is a brawler. You should be demonstrating your might by using your glorious forearm strength to fight Cody, Haggar, and Guy man to man to…

Uh, actually, that’s probably more than enough for one guy to handle. Crossbow? Sure, carry on!

As the fight nears its conclusion, Belger adopts a battle strategy that proves to be extraordinarily foolish. He leaves back and forth in front of a giant office window that’s just begging to get smashed. And it does get smashed. By Belger.

He plummets to his doom. The word “defenestration” can’t be used when describing the fates of many bosses, but for Belger, it fits even better than that amazing shirt. But don’t feel too bad for him. After all, he did come back as the final boss of Final Fight Revenge. In which he can be defeated by his own former minions. Also, he’s a zombie. And he performs part of the Thriller dance during the end credits.

Actually, on second thought, openly weep for this man. For his only source of remaining pride is his sweet beard.

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.