It’s a hard ask whittling the entire history of video games down to its 20 greatest characters. These are, after all, avatars for some of our greatest adventures. The bodies we’ve inhabited during some of our most daring moments. The entities that have kept us company in the small hours when our mantra is “just one more game, just one more go”. It’s an emotional task, with bonds between player and avatar forged after hour upon hour of gameplay. And it’s been a bloody, torrid task too. Behind this list is a wasteland of bits, bites and sprites, whereupon a bonfire size pile of unselected characters ache and moan at not being included. We’re sorry Dizzy, we just didn’t have space for you and your Fantastic Adventures. To which we say; so be it! To paraphrase Christopher Lambert in the classic 1986 fantasy epic flick Highlander , “There can only be 20!”
Clive through to see the 20 greatest video game characters, ever…
20 best video game charactersShow all 20 1 /2020 best video game characters
20 best video game characters 20. GLaDOS GLaDOS – that’s "Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System – is the central core of the Aperture Science computer-aided Enrichment Center, which forms the locale for Valve’s seminal puzzlers Portal [2007] and Portal 2 [2011]. And, y’know, despite being a twisted, genocidal, human hating robot, she’s rather good company and never short of a sassy put down – even when she’s being powered by a potato battery.
Valve
20 best video game characters 19. Marcus Fenix Delta Squad’s leader might resemble a grizzled lump of testosterone-soaked offal, but – like a perennially scowling, rancid onion – the further into the Gears of War series you play, the more layers the series principal protagonist reveals. Sure, at no point will you find Marcus sitting down to discuss the futility of war with any Locust or Lambent, but he’s a character that will grow alongside your experience of the series.
Microsoft Corporation
20 best video game characters 18. Nathan Drake When Nathan was much younger than he is today, he sat down with his career adviser and told them that when he grew up his goal was to be a professional treasure hunter. And he grew up to do just that, navigating all sorts of messy childhood stuff en route to helming Naughty Dog’s brilliant Uncharted series. Imagine Indiana Jones if Indiana Jones shopped at Topman and read GQ. That’s Nathan.
Naughty Dog
20 best video game characters 17. Big Daddy No, not the rotund, British professional wrestler of the Seventies, beloved by both your granny and the Queen. In 2007’s BioShock, the genetically enhanced diving-suit-clad humans have to protect Rapture’s population of Little Sisters. You’ll hear a Big Daddy before you see one; the thud of brass on marble or their anguished, whale-like howl is a sure sign one is coming. Big Daddies are somewhat adorable, and pathetic, and intimidating – all at the same time. And they are a highlight of one of gaming’s most ambitious titles.
2K Games
20 best video game characters 16. Leon Kennedy Many characters who’ve featured within Resident Evil storied history could have featured in this list – and while we’re here, let’s hear it for Barry “master of unlocking” Burton! – but we’re going with Leon for two main reasons. One, he features in the two best games in the series to date. Resident Evil 2 (1998) and the franchise reinventing Resident Evil 4 (2005). And the second reason? Well, he’s got such fabulous hair!
Capcom
20 best video game characters 15. Solid Snake Admit it. Most stealth games are pretty boring. Except, that is, Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima’s very cool, often very silly sneaky adventure series (you haven’t lived until you’ve infiltrated a nuclear missile launch site using little but a cardboard box). Much of the heavy lifting is done by the series protagonist, genetically enhanced special ops badass Solid Snake, who ever since 1987’s Metal Gear has been slithering into restricted areas and causing a right old fuss. A great hero for a great franchise.
Konami
20 best video game characters 14. Ryu Japanese-born Ryu isn’t the best character in Capcom’s much-beloved beat 'em up series Street Fighter, but he is arguably the face of the series, having endured from the very beginning – 1987’s Street Fighter – right until the present day. Based on the famous, real-world karate innovator Mas Oyama, Ryu – or his best-mate-cum-doppelganger Ken – is a character that’s great for fledgling players and hardened masters. Haaadouken!
Capcom
20 best video game characters 13. Donkey Kong A video game icon who first revealed himself to us via his eponymous 1981 arcade cabinet, this barrel-throwing primate is one of four video game characters (Mario, Sonic, Pac-Man and his banana guzzling-self) who you could show a picture of to almost anyone on the planet, and they’d nod knowingly to confirm they knew who he was. We strongly recommend you watch the amazing (and completely unhinged) 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters to understand just how famous Nintendo’s king monkey really is.
Nintendo
20 best video game characters 12. Ezio Auditore Ubisoft’s phenomenally successful action-adventure stealth series Assasins Creed typically reboots itself with each new release. New locale, new protagonists; 2018’s vast ancient Greek themed Assasins Creed Odyssey gave us the option of playing as one of two assassins (that would be "mistios") – Alexios or Kassandra, the latter being the coolest character introduced into the series yet. And yet it’s Ezio and his adventures during the Italian Renaissance that have come to define the series. That hood. That cloak. He’s a gaming icon.
Ubisoft
20 best video game characters 11. Gerald of Rivia The internet melted when Henry Cavill – in the run up to the airing of Netflix recent episodic adaptation – was announced in the role of The Witcher’s monster hunter for hire. It said less about the sometime-Superman’s suitability for the part and more about the expectations of this particularly rabid fandom. This was a character – the protagonist of the games and other media inspired by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski’s lush, nuanced fantasy series – that is truly beloved. In the end Cavill did pretty well; he’d done his homework and captured the White Wolf’s droll wit excellently.
20 best video game characters 10. Ellie 2013’s end of days epic The Last of Us is widely considered to be among the greatest stories that video game’s have ever told. Key to its brilliance is a character that the player controls – after spending hours with the gruff, physically strong Joel – for less than sixty minutes. In this briefest of plays, we experience the vulnerability of Ellie’s age and inexperience, while also being wowed by her tenacity and resolve. Ellie becomes our cool little sister. A beloved travelling companion. More importantly, the joy in which Ellie sees the game's tattered world reminds us that there’s always hope.
Naughty Dog
20 best video game characters 9. Samus Aran Nintendo’s Metroid series is as influential as games come, but the series cultural legacy goes much further than just inspiring a glut of other 2D shooters. Samus might not be the first female protagonist to feature in a videogame – Toby Masuyo (‘Kissy’) from Namco's Alien Sector (Baraduke) predates her by one year – but she’s certainly the most… surprising. When players toiled through the series 1986 debut, playing the part of a powerful bounty hunter, few would have guessed that in the games final moments the character would remove its suit to reveal that who was inside was – gasp! – a woman.
Nintendo
20 best video game characters 8. John Marston We’ll level with you; we almost plumped for Red Dead Redemption 2’s Arthur Morgan here. The story arc of the Van der Linde Gang’s second in command is, after all, brilliantly written and told with a cinematic flair unlike anything video games had seen before 2018 or after. But we’re going with the series OG, John Marston – protagonist in 2010’s Red Dead Redemption and secondary protagonist in the aforementioned sequel. Why? Because in 2010 John also battled zombies in Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. Sorry Arthur, but we think you’ll understand.
Rockstar Games
20 best video game characters 7. Kratos Since the God of War series debuted in 2005, Sony have shifted 155 million PlayStation 2’s, 87.4 million PlayStation 3’s and an ever-rising 108.0 million PlayStation 4’s. Much of the credit for such astonishing sales figures have to be placed at the door of Sparta’s biggest badass Kratos, who has long served as an unofficial mascot to Sony’s family of machines (sorry Sackboy, it’s true). 2018’s series reboot, also called God of War, showed us a different Kratos: older, slightly worn down, capable of love – if demonstrated in his own complicated way. It suggested that there’s still life in the old (war) dog, yet.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
20 best video game characters 6. Master Chief If Kratos is responsible for carrying the success of PlayStation on his heavily tattooed shoulders, then the series which bore Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 – the brilliant FPS Halo – should be credited for doing much the same for Microsoft’s Xbox. Master Chief, a biochemically and cybernetically-enhanced supersoldier, is a man of few words. This is intentional says developer Bungie's Frank O'Connor. “[The character]” is so quiet and so invisible, literally, that the player gets to pretend they're the Chief. The player gets to inhabit those shoes [and] apply their own personality.”
Bungie
20 best video game characters 5. Lara Croft Debuting in 1996 on PC, the original PlayStation and *wipes tear from eye* the Sega Saturn, the first true superstar of video games spent much of the Nineties on the cover of magazines. We don’t specifically mean video game mags. Sure, she graced them too, but we mean Loaded. We mean The Face. For a time – and there’s little exaggeration to this statement – the very posh, very agile, cave-loving adventurer was the most famous woman in Britain. Lara, more than any videogame character ever, did the most to convince adults that games weren’t just something their kids played.
Square Enix
20 best video game characters 4. Link You star in over 19 instalments of what’s largely considered the greatest RPG series of all time. In your own animated TV series. Your own manga. Your own board game (three of those actually). Not only that, but one of your last rides out – 2017’s Breath of yhe Wild – is frequently discussed in the conversation entitled, "What’s the Greatest Video Game Ever?" And after all this? You’re not only not Nintendo’s most famous character – you don’t even get your name in the title of the franchise you’ve helmed since 1986! The Legend of Link perhaps doesn’t have the same ring to it, but it’s the little green one who runs this manor, not Zelda.
Nintendo
20 best video game characters 3. Pac-man Speaking of superstars… It’s remarkable really that a character that essentially amounts to little more than a yellow circle, who does little more than eat smaller yellow circles, who – and we’re not taking the 1983 Hanna-Barbera TV series as cannon here – says little more than “glug glug glug”, became the global icon he was, is and undoubtably always will be. Now 41 years old, Namco’s creation was initially called Puck Man, only undergoing a name change after arcade owners feared their machines would be defaced with obscenities!
Namco
20 best video game characters 2. Sonic the Hedgehog The story goes thus: in 1990, Sega president Hayao Nakayama decided his company needed a mascot to compete with arch rival Nintendo's Mario series. Ninty had just released Super Mario Bros 3, then the bestselling video game ever. Sega had a mascot – sort of – in Alex Kidd. He was deemed too similar to Mario. Sega needed something to set them apart, to keep them competitive in the console wars that defined the Nineties, to show off the impressive tech present in their forthcoming Sega Genesis console. What better way to showcase new tech than speed? Of course, few would argue that Sonic – and Sega, which stepped away from the console making business after 18 years in 2001 – came second in said war. But with profits of over $9bn stemming from the blue blur’s creation, nobody really lost. Except Alex Kidd.
Sega
20 best video game characters 1. Mario Was there any doubt? Nintendo’s diminutive plumber has starred in over 200 releases – and grossed over 600 million sales – since his debut as "Jumpman" in 1981’s Donkey Kong (Mario wouldn’t command his own game for another four years, with Super Mario Bros arriving in 1985). In 1990, a poll of American school children suggested Mario was more recognisable to them than Mickey Mouse! He’s even got his own day where fans celebrate the mustachioed one’s existence: March 10th, the reason being its resemblance to the name MARIO when typed MAR 10. Oh, and check this out: this year, just in time for Japan’s hosting of the 2020 Olympics, Mario’s own theme park – in which you can race real life Mario Karts! – is opening. Omnipresent almost as long as the medium of video games have existed, Mario is as much a friend as an avatar to play as.
Nintendo
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