Who Is The Greatest Video Game Character Of All Time

Who Is The Greatest Video Game Character Of All Time By Ron Fair Ron Fair is a very passionate writer and scholar whose strong and sometimes unconventional opinions have stirred controversy -- though his arguments and logic are often stronger than one might suspect. He is very active on MMOsite as an Associate Writer for the blogs (LordYanLiang) and moderator on the forums.

Once again, another ill-conceived contest put together by only a small collection of nerds and left open to the public under strange circumstances has attempted to answer a question that will invariably piss people off and ignite debate and even flame wars.

The writers of Empire magazine put their heads together to try to answer the question of which video game character was the greatest. Who knows how long they took, but it only took a day to ignite multiple flame wars on the article's comments. Considering Empire tried to answer something that is more or less completely subjective, or at least was very vague and flimsy on its grounds for determining the best video game character ever of all time, there is no surprise to the fact that a lot of people hated the results. Really, there was no way to make people happy with their decision, and trying to actually hash out a best video game character of all time from every possible great hero, dastardly villain, and iconic figure, and it’s easy to argue how bad of an idea it was to try to rank all of them. There is no right answer, and getting a right or even acceptable answer becomes harder when trying to rank fifty characters as the best. But that's exactly what Empire did.

Empire does deserve some credit, however, for they pulled characters from some of the most obscure places, and went to specific characters that most wouldn't associate for such a list. Characters from System Shock, Planescape Torment, and Baldur's Gate appear on the list, just to truly show the consideration the writers attempted to give in compiling the list. And naturally icons like Donkey Kong, Sonic, Solid Snake, and Mario appeared on the list, though many of these characters and their placements (particularly Snake and Mario) angered a lot of people.

Then there were choices that made very little sense. One of the characters named in the list was the announcer in Unreal Tournament, who wasn't a character so much as a voice. Of course, one can argue that his iconic phrases and delivery makes him a worthy addition to the list. But then what about Vault Boy, who was just a mascot for Fallout and not much more than a humorous image? Miner Willy from Manic Miner also appears on the list, which is a strange and rather illogical addition simply because he's only a gaming icon in England.