FIGHTERS OF THE WORLD: BRITAIN

Sure, why not; let’s have another "Fighters of the World" article, where I take a look at a selection of fighting game characters that all hail from the same country and try to discern which crude stereotypes crop up most frequently. This time, I’ll be covering my own noble nation – the green and pleasant land of Great Britain!

Or maybe it's “England” - "England" in quotation marks because, as demonstrated by the above screenshot from the original Street Fighter, many games use the flag of the United Kingdom to denote England. England has its own flag, thank you very much, although it really only gets a lot of public display when the England football team are involved in a major tournament and it has thus (to me, anyway) become a symbol of disappointment and feeble capitulation. A lot of these fighters are described as being from England but appear under the British flag, so if you want to pretend some of these characters are Scottish or Welsh then go right ahead.

Cammy, Street Fighter

Any given nation’s most famous fighter usually appears in Capcom’s Street Fighter series, and Britain is no exception with Cammy. When she first appeared in Super Street Fighter II, she was a special agent working for the British intelligence agency MI6: later games revealed her to be a clone of the evil M. Bison, who brainwashed Cammy into working as an assassin. Now, far be it from me to criticise MI6’s hiring policies, but giving an espionage job to someone who was once under the mental control of the world’s most evil person seems like carries a certain amount of risk. I guess Cammy’s expertise in kicking people to death outweighed the risk that her “mindless slave under the thrall of the deadliest terrorist ever” persona would re-emerge.
As for being British, I suppose the main trait that Cammy shares with most British fighting game characters is that she’s blonde. Lots of British fighting game characters are blonde, although not as frequently as French fighting game characters. I don’t think that’s necessarily a “British” thing, though, it’s just that most of the characters on this list were designed by Japanese artists and they tend to give blonde hair to most non-Asian characters. Cammy also has one of the two main British videogame accents – the “posh” one, rather than the Dick van Dyke-inspired semi-Cockney one. That’s another of the countless reasons that I love Bloodborne so much: it’s one of the few games to feature a knife-wielding plague doctor with a Yorkshire accent.
Cammy doesn’t have much about her that marks her out as being from the UK, then, but I suppose that’s because she isn’t really from the UK, she’s from whatever country M. Bison’s cloning lab was based in. Maybe Capcom’ll release a game set after Street Fighter Alpha where Cammy undergoes a  My Fair Lady-type procedure to gain her accent. I’d play that.

Birdie, Street Fighter

Cammy wasn’t the first English character in the Street Fighter series, though. That honour goes to the hulking bruiser Birdie. I suppose it also applies to moustachioed stick-carrier Eagle, because both characters debuted in the first Street Fighter game. Birdie’s the more interesting of the two, though, with his mohawk and his leather-punk look. But you might be thinking “I’ve played other Street Fighter games where Birdie looks, erm, different,” and you’re not wrong.

Birdie received a makeover in the Street Fighter Alpha games. The most noticeable change is that he’s black now. I say “now,” Birdie was always black. We know this because one of his Street Fighter Alpha 3 win quotes reveals that he looked pale in the original game because he was ill. I have to commend Capcom’s front in saying “oh yeah, this is totally the same guy,” because why the hell not?
Other than the obvious, the biggest change to Birdie’s later designs is that he’s now even more cartoonishly “punk,” swinging metal chains around and advancing mohawk technology to never-before-seen heights by creating a hairdo with a hole right through the middle of it. I must admit, as a kid I spent more time than I probably should have trying to figure out the mechanics of Birdie’s hair. I came to the conclusion that it should be possible in the real world, and seeing Donald Trump’s hair has convinced me that there are people out there who can work such structural miracles. Of course, Birdie exists in the Street Fighter universe, so he can just get a can of whatever hairspray Guile uses and eliminate all the hard work.
Birdie got yet another revamp for Street Fighter V: he’s still a punk with a mohawk, but he’s become a comedy character who eats all the time and is now overweight. I like it. Street Fighter characters have generally had almost no development even after thirty years, so for Birdie to have had three separate “phases” honestly makes him a bit more interesting to me than some of the classic cast.

Dudley, Street Fighter

Finally for Street Fighter characters we’ve got Dudley, the gentleman boxer. So much of a gentleman and so good a boxer that he was knighted by Queen, even. I’m sure he threw some charity work in there too, that’ll always help to get you on the Honours list. Dudley is the kind of British character I was expecting to see a lot more of on this list: the aristocrat, the toff, the upper-crust type who has a butler and everything. Maybe it’s just a British thing to be obsessed with the class divide, but I’m surprised there weren’t more fighters like this, partly because you often hear that one thing other countries like about Britain is that we’re still clinging to something as “charmingly” outdated as a monarchy.
Of course, there’s a good chance Dudley takes some inspiration from real-life British boxer Chris Eubank, a man who used to get lumbered with the word “eccentric” more than probably anyone else in the British public eye. Eubank liked to dress in an exaggerated “aristocratic” manner, complete with monocle, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Dudley was indeed inspired by Eubank… but given Dudley’s moustache, his striped trousers and alternate Street Fighter IV costume and a couple of his poses, I think there’s also a fair amount of Freddie Mercury in Dudley’s design.

Narcis Prince, Super Punch-Out!!

Moving on to Nintendo’s puzzle-game-adjacent boxing series Punch-Out, a franchise where the character roster is almost entirely composed to crude national stereotypes. He’s where you’d think you’d find a boiled-down idea of how certain Japanese games developers imagine British people, but Narcis doesn’t really fit into any particular category. He’s blonde, of course, but other than that his gimmick is that he’s a pretty boy who hates being punched in his face. Turns out Narcis and I have more in common than I thought we would.
Looking at him, and remembering playing Super Punch-Out as a kid, I’d always assumed that Narcis was supposed to be another upper-class posho type, but that’s only because I never managed to complete the game back then. I couldn’t beat Hoy Quarlow, the cheating old bastard. If I had made it to the ending…

...I would have realised that Narcis is, in fact, common as muck. I’m surprised he’s not saying “cor blimey, guv, you’ve punched me right in me boat race and no mistake!” He’s Danny Dyer with a floppy haircut, that’s what he is.

Steve Fox, Tekken

Here’s another blonde boxer – it’s Steve from Tekken! This makes three boxers in a row (although Narcis Prince doesn’t really count because Punch-Out is a boxing game) and I wouldn’t have been surprised if boxing had emerged as a stronger theme amongst these British fighters. The Queensberry Rules did originate in Britain, after all, and for such a small country we’ve had a lot of successful boxers.
Like so many videogame boxers, Steve was a world champion who had to step out of the ring for one reason or another and enter the violent world of street fighting. Usually it’s for a reason beyond their control, because why else would you give up boxing for street fighting? The sweet science may be a brutal game, but at least there’s a referee there to protect you and you’re unlikely to have your head slammed into the cold asphalt of a dingy back alley by a giant Russian wearing tight briefs. In Steve’s case, he refused to throw a fight for the mafia and now they’re out to kill him. Being away from boxing gives Steve more time to explore the mysteries of his uncertain parentage, eventually discovering that his mother, fellow Tekken fighter Nina Williams, had her eggs harvested while she was in cryogenic suspension. As a result, Steve is about the same age as his own dear mum, so they can batter each other into unconsciousness without anyone raising an eyebrow. Fighting games, eh? What wonderful worlds they weave.

Ivy, Soul Calibur

Ivy’s English, huh? I don’t think I ever knew that. Then again, it took me a long time to realise that the initials of Ivy’s full name, Isabella Valentine, are IV and that’s presumably where "Ivy" comes from.
What can I say about Ivy’s design? I mean, what can I say about Ivy’s design that allows VGJunk to remain relatively family-friendly? Not much, that’s what. And the design pictured above (from Soul Calibur II) is one of Ivy’s more restrained looks, if you can believe it. Whichever designer at Namco keeps saying “no, make her sexier. Sexier!” with each passing game needs to settle down a little, maybe take a cold shower or fifty.
It’s probably pointless to look for any common themes of “Britishness” in Ivy’s design. “Busty 16th century dominatrix with a pirate ghost for a dad” is, if nothing else, a very unique concept. Not particularly British, mind you. Maybe if she spent the entire time she was fighting complaining about the weather, that’d make her feel more English. Mind you, in that outfit you’d probably complain about the weather wherever you’re from.

Arthur, Soul Calibur

Another British Soul Calibur fighter is Arthur. If you’re not a big follower of the franchise you might well be thinking “who the hell is Arthur? When I think of Soul Calibur characters, I think of possessed suits of armour, scuttling, knife-fisted gimps and Darth Vader.” That’s a fair reaction, because Arthur isn't really a “proper” character, although he is quite interesting. You see, one of the stars of the SC franchise is Mitsurugi, a very Japanese samurai. Namco wanted to release Soul Calibur in South Korea. This was a problem, because Korea had (and still does, to an extent) strict laws that banned the importation of culturally Japanese entertainment. Soul Calibur was released at a time when these laws were beginning to be rolled back, but either because they didn’t want to take the risk or because they were specifically told that Mitsurugi wouldn’t fly, Namco changed Mitsurugi from a Japanese samurai to a British, erm, samurai. Yeah, Arthur is just Mitsurugi with blonde hair and an eyepatch but hey – the reasons for his creation are interesting, and apparently his bio reveals he’s from Southampton, making him one of a very small number of British fighters who aren’t Cockney geezers born within earshot of Bow Bells.

Billy Kane, Fatal Fury / King of Fighters

The most famous British character from SNK’s fighting franchises is Billy Kane, right-hand-man to the villainous Geese Howard and you guessed it, he’s blonde. He’s also another “punk” character, what with his leather jacket that must chafe his unprotected nipples something fierce and his general nasty attitude. Billy’s a master of fighting with a staff, because his surname is Kane* and that’s what happens when you share a name with a kind of weapon. Perhaps he lays awake at night, cursing the misfortune of not being born to Mr. and Mrs. Uzi. Terry Bogard might have the Buster Wolf, but six hundred rounds of hot lead a minute might make him think twice about using it.
Personally I don’t think Billy seems especially British, but given Billy’s backstory (a British orphan raised in the USA) it makes sense that he’d lean more towards an American feel, which is what I get from him. That bandana looks far more like the Stars and Stripes – well, the stripes anyway – than the Union Jack, and there’s also Billy’s complete and utter hatred of smoking, to the point of battering anyone he catches having a crafty cig. That strikes me as a much more American reaction. In Britain, we’d just tut at then, maybe thrown in the occasional exaggerated cough.
*The Japanese spelling of Billy’s name implies his surname is pronounced “Kon” but that’s not enough to stop nominative determinism.

Axl Low, Guilty Gear

Guilty Gear’s Axl continues the rapidly-becoming-a-theme punk look, although that’s perhaps to be expected from Guilty Gear – a series where many of the characters take their names from rock and metal music, from Slayer to Freddie Mercury. Axl is obviously based on Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose, complete with his trademark bandana and, in later iterations, denim shorts. I must say, I didn’t expect to see so many bandanas when I was putting this article together. Top hats, maybe, or bearskins, but not bandanas. At least you’d have a chance of picking Axl out as a British character, what with his Union Jack shirt, although in the game’s story he’s a time-traveller, pulled into the future from the ancient time known as “the late Nineties”. This does nothing to explain the two enormous zippers hanging from his chest. Axl’s from the turn of the millennium, I could understand it if he had a wallet chain or ridiculously oversized jeans that made a sound like a ship unfurling its sails whenever you got up to take a leak, but those zippers? They just look like they’d be a liability in a fight. Maybe that’s why Axl fights using a long-range sickle-and-chain weapon, it keeps people away from his vulnerable nipple-handles.

Bridget, Guilty Gear

Bridget’s another Guilty Gear character, and one you probably already know something about: Bridget is actually a boy dressed as a girl. The reason for this is that Bridget was born as a twin in an English village where twins of the same sex were seen as a grave omen of misfortune, so one of the kids was sacrificed. Bridget’s parents understandably decided this was a load of horseshit, so they raised Bridget as a girl to protect him from the chopping block. Two points of interest are raised here: the first is that England has become a pretty strange place in Guilty Gear’s future timeline if murderous twin superstitions are making a comeback in remote villages. Secondly, I can’t imagine Bridget’s parents were the first to come up with this cunning ruse, so there must have been some very interesting wedding nights in the village.
With Guilty Gear’s character designs being so out-there, I don’t think there’s much British influence you can take from Bridget’s design. He’s blonde, so there’s that, and maybe the huge handcuff around his waist is a tribute to the pioneering police reforms of Sir Robert Peel.

Jack, World Heroes

I covered Jack a while ago in the article about Jack the Ripper, because Jack is Jack the Ripper as seen through the bonkers lens of the Japanese fighting game. Jack the Ripper had a knife and possible medical training? Well, our Jack is going to have four knives on each hand and we’ll replace his surgical knowledge with a bitchin’ mohawk. Oh, hey, I guess this Jack is another punk. I’m happy enough to have Britain associated with punk music. What’s the alternative, a slew of combat-ready Morris dancers?  Hang on, what am I saying, that’d be amazing. You could make a whole game out of warring Morris dancers: the fast, nimble handkerchief users, the mid-range stick-wielders, the slower but more powerful sword dancers of Yorkshire. But, erm, skip the troupes that wear blackface, yeah?

Jack, Power Stone

Again, Jack from Power Stone is also (even more loosely) based on Jack the Ripper and was covered a while back. However, I’ve learned a few things about Jack since then. He hails from “Manches,” which is presumably the Power Stone equivalent of Manchester and thus from now on I will imagine Jack shouting “all right, our kid?” as he hunts down his victims. Also, he’s fifteen years old. A teenager from Manchester who carries out robberies at knifepoint? I think Jack might have been invented by a Daily Mail journalist.

Lola, Dangerous Streets

We’re getting into really obscure territory with Dangerous Streets, a truly abysmal Amiga fighter that seemingly only exists to give Rise of the Robots some competition as the worst fighting game of the 16-bit era. The British contender in Dangerous Streets is Lola. Lola is supposedly a “top model,” so let’s go ahead and say that her outfit is down to the extravagances of haute couture rather than straight-up kink. And you though Ivy was going to have the most revealing costume on this list. Perhaps it’s not surprising that there are a couple of rather dominatrix-y characters here, though. I don’t know to what extent this is still true, but it certainly used to be the case that Britain had a reputation as the land of the masochist, especially where spanking is concerned. One can only imagine a game developer looking at the list of potential traits for a British character, their eyes darting between “punk rock” and “thoroughly enjoys a damned good thrashing.”

David, Battle Arena Toshinden

I didn’t play much Toshinden during the series’ heyday, because I was limited in what games I could get my hands on and Tekken seemed to be the clearly superior option when it came to 3D fighters. I haven’t played much Toshinden since its heyday, either. However, if I’d known one of the characters was a chap in a trenchcoat with a ridiculous chainsaw I might have given it more of a shot. This is David, he dresses like Rick Deckard, he has a gun in addition to his huge chainsaw and, oh yeah, he’s also fifteen years old. Did I miss the British coming-of-age ceremony where you’re given a deadly weapon on your fifteenth birthday or something? All I got were unlicensed X-Files companion books and socks.
David’s backstory is a dark one; he’s an orphan whose parents died in a fire, only to later discover that this was all the plan of an evil organisation. This causes David to black out and slice up a bunch of people with his chainsaw. On his fifteenth birthday, no less! He’s not the first British teenager to black out on his birthday, but David takes it a step further by getting involved in a fighting tournament. I’ve seen people suggest a chainsaw is a terrible weapon to fight with because it’s easily clogged with gore, it weighs a ton and it requires fuel, but these people overlook the psychological advantage you get with a chainsaw. To paraphrase a boxing maxim, everyone has a plan until a teenager in a flasher mac runs at them with a chainsaw.

Midknight, Eternal Champions

Another character I’ve covered before, Midknight was formerly Mitchell Middleton Knight: scientist, CIA operative and jeet kune do expert who accidentally turned himself into a vampire while developing a chemical weapon. As you do. Midknight then dedicated his life to finding a cure and also to not eating people, although obviously he took the time to workshop a few bad-ass vampire names because no-one’s going to take an undead martial arts master seriously if they’re called Mitchell.

Matlok, Fighter’s History

Appearing in Data East’s Fighter’s History series is yet another British punk. So punk, in fact, that his fighting style is apparently listed as “punks.” I’m not entirely sure what this fighting style would entail, but I assume there’d be lots of spitting and safety pins involved. Matlok’s punk credentials are further enhanced by him being supposedly named after Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock. Personally, whenever I see Matlok I can only think of Grandpa Simpson shouting “Maaaaatlock!” and that does little to cultivate the aura of danger and anarchy usually associated with punk music.

Hellstinger, Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer

Finally for today (although this is by no means an exhaustive list of British fighting game characters) is Hellstinger, who appeared in Technos’ Neo Geo game Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer.  Damn, that’s a heck of a title for a fighting game. Anyway, Hellstinger – whose “real” name is the no-less incredible Kash Gyustan – was born to a famous British composer but turned his back on the stuffy world of classical music and became a heavy metal star, complete with prop devil wings and the kind of stage presence that’d make a young Mick Jagger look like Gordon Brown. And then there’s all the fighting he does, for reasons I’m not entirely clear on but hey, he gets to fight using his magical guitar so who cares what the reasons are? These British characters seem to get quite a lot of fun weapons, actually. Killer yo-yos, chainsaws, what appears to be a purple Gibson Explorer, they’re all much more interesting than swords.

When looking at all these British fighters it’s clear that the two strongest themes are blondeness and punk rock, as though Billy Idol was somehow the single most evocative aspect of British culture. The music connection makes sense to me; I’d say that when it comes to world-famous music, Britain definitely punches above its weight. Beyond that, Britain seems to have more diversity in its fighters than some nations, unlike the carnival-beastmen of Brazil or the militaristic Germans. I imagine that’s partly down to the Anglocentric nature of much media and the fact that English is a common second language around the world – or maybe it’s just that the most common stereotypes about Britain don’t translate well into fighting game characters. If I was trying to create a British fighter that encapsulated the nation I know I’d struggle, because you can’t base a combat style around self-deprecation, stiff-upper-lipism and complaining about the weather. There is one type of fighter I’m surprised I didn’t see, and that’s a football-themed character. Then again, given that the first three footballers I thought of in relation to attacking people were Zinedine Zidane, Eric Cantona and Patrice Evra, maybe that character should be French.

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FIGHTING GAME VAMPIRES

You know what I've been thinking about recently? I've been thinking about vampires beating each other up. What? Don't look at me like that, my carer says it's perfectly fine as long as I don't start renting eveningwear and slapping passers-by, and I've already promised the courts that I'll never do that again. Instead, here's a quick look at some vampiric characters from fighting games throughout the ages. Let's see 'em prosecute me for this.

Demitri Maximoff, Darkstalkers

Where better to start than with the most Hallowe'eny fighting game series of them all, Capcom's Darkstalkers series? It gathers together each of the world's most famous monster types, from werewolves to Frankensteins to soulless bee-women who want to fill you full of their eggs, and then pits them against each other in hand-to-hand combat like a cross between Noah's Ark, a ghost train and the UFC. Representing the vampires is Demitri Maximoff, and he's got the full vampire works - aristocratic heritage, a castle in Eastern Europe, the confidence to wear formal attire at all times. Actually, let's take a closer look at what he's wearing:

That's some kind of skin-tight tuxedo, isn't it? Get James Bond on the phone, he'd love one of these - he could scuba-dive into the enemy's base and attend the luxurious party thrown by the mysterious businessman, all without changing his outfit. Demitri strikes me as the vain type, though, so I'd wager he chose the figure-hugging spandex eveningwear because a regular tuxedo doesn't show off his sweet guns.
I'll tell you now that Demitri is going to be the most vampire-ish vampire on this list. I know that seems unlikely given that he's essentially wearing body paint and riding boots and his special moves consist of fireballs and turning his cape into a flying drill, but at least he can drink his opponent's blood. He does this via a move called Midnight Bliss, (anyone thinking of starting a Goth band: there's a free name for you,) and the most interesting thing about that move is that Demitri won't bite the necks of any old peon you put in front of him. Oh no, first he has to use his dark powers change them into something a little more appetizing.

He turns them into girls, or more appealing girls if they're already female. These ones are from SNK vs. Capcom, and there are a couple of things I love about this. Firstly, Mai from King of Fighters is wearing a less revealing outfit than her usual one, which really says something about how she's normally portrayed (that is, like two water balloons hanging in a constantly jiggling sling). The other thing is that "sexy" Red Arremer at the bottom right. That one must have really tested the limits of Demitri's vampire powers.

Slayer, Guilty Gear

Once again, I'm not going to build any suspense and instead I'll tell you that Slayer is easily my favourite vampire on this list. In the Guilty Gear universe, with all its cataclysmic living weapons and time-travellers and whatnot, Slayer is the strongest of them all because in Guilty Gear-land the vampire's powers run a bit deeper than turning into bats and developing garlic allergies. Slayer is presented as a kindly, almost avuncular figure who likes to pop by every now and then to see how humanity is doing, never fighting at his maximum potential because to unleash his true power would destroy the cosmos or something equally daft.
It's just very difficult to dislike a pipe-smoking, monocle-wearing super-vampire who fights with his fists when all the other characters are carrying swords and giant anchors and, umm, pool cues. Actually, you'd think Slayer would be most worried about facing someone with a pool cue, it's only a quick whittling away from being a stake. Not that Slayer seems to go in for that kind of superstition - he's the only vampire on this list who is enough of a badass to wear a cross on his own chest, and even when he's beaten it only seems to make him mildly disgruntled.

See? Plus, he's named after thrash-metal legends Slayer, despite looking like the exact opposite of someone you'd see at a Slayer gig. He looks more like the kind of guy who listens to lots of obscure "world music" but isn't a pretentious dick about it. Compare this to Demitri, who probably listens to nothing but recordings of girls telling him he's handsome, and I think we can all agree that Slayer wins.

Raphael, Soul Calibur

The vampire from Namco's weapon-based fighting game series is an aristocratic, rapier-wielding ponce, but it wasn't always that way. I mean, he was always an aristocratic, rapier-wielding ponce, but when he was first introduced in Soul Calibur 2 was regular human. Then he ended up living on the streets, met a goth girl and was exposed to the malign influence of the evil sword Soul Edge and that somehow made him a vampire. I think. It's never really stated in-game that Raphael is definitely a vampire, but all the signs are there - he lives in a castle in Romania, he has nicknames like Lord of the Night, he's got moves named after vampires, but I think the big clue is that in Soul Calibur 4 he stole his outfit from Castlevania's Alucard.

That is not subtle, but then neither is Soul Calibur.
Really, though, Raphael isn't much of a vampire. I'd like to believe that Namco made this French nobleman a vampire to satirise the parasitic nature of the upper classes as they drain the life from the common people, but I think that's giving Namco too much credit and Raphael's conversion to undeadism was just a way for him to keep his good looks while the rest of the Soul Calibur cast age with each new installment. To me, though, Raph will always be that annoying bastard who keeps stabbing me in the foot while shouting "no escape" over and over again. I am not good at Soul Calibur.

Dracula, Castlevania Judgment

Speaking of Castlevania, wasn't there a Castlevania fighting game released for the Wii? No.
Oh, alright, so there was Castlevania Judgment. It was pretty bad. Yes, it had Dracula in and yes, he is a vampire.

He looks like something from a parallel universe where Gustav Klimt ended up designing monsters for Japanese RPGs. Look at those nozzles all over his chest. I have no idea what comes out of those nozzles, and for this I am thankful.
On the plus side - really the only plus side to Castlevania Judgment - it has a fantastic soundtrack.

I can't remember if there's a sound test mode in Castlevania Judgment, but if there is then that should be the only mode you ever use to play the game.

Midknight, Eternal Champions

Ah yes, Eternal Champions, the one-on-one fighting game that was supposed to be the Megadrive's answer to Street Fighter 2. Sadly the full question was "can you make a game as good as Street Fighter 2?" and the answer was a resounding "no," but Eternal Champions was still a decent brawler in its own right and definitely one of the best on the Megadrive.
The plot of the game revolved around a being known as the Eternal Champion plucking people from time at the moment of their death. These people were supposedly destined to be pivotal figures in the history of Mankind, so the Eternal Champion gathers them together and makes them fight to the death. Whoever wins gets to live again, all the rest die as they were supposed to no matter what good they would have done had they remained alive. If you ask me, the Eternal Champion has spent too long as an omnipotent figure existing beyond space and time, he's really lost touch with the common man.

Midknight was originally a scientist working on biological weapons. Long story short, he was infected with his own virus and turned into a vampire, which makes me wonder at the effectiveness of a biological weapon that turns your enemies into immortal creatures with enhanced speed and strength. It's not all good news for Midknight, though - as you can see, the virus also ruined his creamy complexion and left him with a small furnace where his intestines should be. Did I mention he was also a master of Jeet Kune Do, as biochemical scientists often are? That'll come in handy during the life-or-death gladiatorial tournament, then.

At least he's a nice change of pace from the cultured, aristocratic vampires that make up the bulk of the noggin-smashing Nosferatu. There's certainly nothing cultured about wearing a leather jacket with cycling shorts, and in fact Midknight's entire ensemble leaves me baffled. It's tattered and torn, which makes me think he was wearing it on the fateful day of his lab accident, but there's two problems with that - one, that becoming a science-vampire somehow left him unable to change his clothes, and secondly what kind of scientist wears an outfit like that to do virology research? In the end, we must assume that Midknight chose this outfit himself after becoming a vampire. It's no surprise someone jammed a stake through his heart.

Strahd, Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft

For the final vampire on this list, I've reached deep into the festering pit of barely-playable early 3D fighting games and come up with a real winner - Take 2's Iron and Blood, a sort-of-similar-to-Soul Blade fighter based on the Ravenloft expansions for Dungeons and Dragons. It's a deeply awful mess of a game, almost as bad as Killing Zone, with almost totally unusable controls, completely inappropriate music and gameplay that has all the graceful fluidity of walrus ballroom dancing with a concrete bollard. As it's a D&D title, it also has all kinds of warriors and clerics and skeletons, (including a dwarf called Torgo, for all you MST3K fans out there,) but for this list I'm only interested in one character: the evil vampire lord Strahd. He looks like this.

Ah ha ha ha. What could I possibly say that would make Strahd more sinister, more menacing, more soul-chillingly evil than he appears in this screenshot? Well, I could show you his in-game model.

The raw sexual magnetism of Strahd's vampiric power is so strong that this strange hooded man is being inexorably drawn, genitals-first, into Strahd's dark embrace. There is nothing he can do to escape, except maybe to kick Strahd in the feet - my favourite thing about this particular vampire is that despite the fact he's clearly hovering off half a foot off the floor, getting kicked in the feet causes him to fall over as though he was tripped. Actually, no, my favourite thing about Strahd is that he always has his nose thrust snootily into the air.

Scratch that last one, it was demoted to "second best Strahd feature" the moment I won a round. To gloat over his enemies, Strahd proclaims that "Your death has served a higher cause. Me!" and that's just so beautifully corny, so thoroughly dripping with cartoonish villainy, that I can't help but utterly adore it. Between that and the hook-handed demon from Zombie Raid telling me that I was for dinner, it's been a good week for that kind of line.
Just to reiterate, though: if you were thinking of playing Iron & Blood, don't. Just... don't, and if you do then I'm sorry for your pain.
I'll end with one final piece of gaming trivia involving Strahd and a much better series of games about vampires. As pointed out in this Tumblr post by NotableGameBox, the artwork for Castlevania II was - how can I say this politely - recycled from the original Ravenloft artwork.

So, Strahd and Dracula are the same vampire, in a way. The wheel of fate turns, the cycle of life goes on, and I come away from this article shocked that Castlevania Judgment wasn't the worst game I mentioned. Now that's spooky.

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QUEEN REFERENCES IN VIDEOGAMES

If the fact that I run a website that consists of me rambling on about them hasn't clued you in, I love videogames. I also love the music Britain's premier classic rock band, the incomparable Queen. And do you know who else loves videogames and Queen? The Japanese. Queen were pretty successful in Japan, and some of that success translated into the greatest compliment a band can receive: a reference or two in a videogame! So, here's a look at some of Queen's appearances in the wild world of digital entertainment.

Ogre Battle series

Quest's series of strategy RPGs goes all-out with the Queen reference, and names the entire series after the song of the same name from the album Queen II. That's fine by me, it's a great song. However, the designer of Ogre Battle, Yasumi Matsuno, obviously decided that he was such a big Queen fan that one reference in the title wasn't enough, so he gave it the subtitle The March of the Black Queen. "The March of the Black Queen" is another song on the Queen II album.

Matsuno wasn't done there, though: the next game in the series, the Final Fantasy Tactics­-style Tactics Ogre, it was given the subtitle "Let Us Cling Together". "Teo Torriatte" is a track from Queen's 1976 album A Day at the Races, and it's unusual for being partly sung in Japanese. "Teo Torriatte" was translated (rather wonderfully, if you ask me) as "Let us cling together". So there you have it: Queen and Ogre Battle, together in perfect harmony. There's even an area in Ogre Battle called the Rhyan Sea, named for the song "Seven Seas of Rhye".

Final Fantasy Tactics

One of my all-time favourite games, Final Fantasy Tactics gets a little extra sparkle from the fact that the fourth chapter of the game is entitled "Somebody to Love" in reference to the song of the same name that appears on the album A Day at the Races. You might be thinking "hey, the phrase 'somebody to love' is common enough that it isn't necessarily a Queen reference", and normally I'd agree with you; however, when you take into consideration the fact that FFT was directed by none other than Ogre Battle creator Yasumi Matsuno then, well, I think it's pretty much a definite.

Highlander

Not really an appearance by Queen as such, but the Highlander game that was produced for the home computers in 1986 featured a rather nice chiptune version of "A Kind of Magic" (well, the Commodore 64 version did, at least). Here, have a listen:

Was the game itself any good? Well, I've never played it, but by all accounts it's pretty terrible. Then again, it was a movie tie-in made by Ocean in the mid-eighties, so what did you expect?

Street Fighter series

First of all, that's boxing champion and all round classy English gentleman Dudley up there, sporting one of his alternate costumes from Super Street Fighter IV. It's quite clearly modelled on Freddie Mercury's iconic stage outfit from Queen's 1986 appearance at Wembley Stadium:

A great choice of Capcom's part, I must say. Still, that's not Street Fighter's only claim to a Queen connection. Here's Eagle, one of your opponents from the original Street Fighter.
He's a British bouncer and possible MI6 agent who (along with Birdie) is named after a golfing term. Originally, he seem to have been inspired by the bodyguard character from the Bruce Lee film Chinese Connection / Fist of Fury:

And then Eagle disappeared for fourteen years or so, until he reappeared as a playable character in Capcom vs SNK 2. However, he'd undergone a few changes, and he appeared to be turning into something of a Freddy Mercury impersonator. There are the physical aspects of his Mercury-dom, like his (admittedly not black) slicked-back hair and moustache. Then there's the fact that some of his win quotes, particularly in the Japanese version of CvS2, seem to imply that Eagle is gay - for example, after beating Cammy he tells her that he's "not interested in young ladies". Freddy Mercury was certainly bisexual (at least), so that's something else they have in common.

The real clincher is some of Eagle's in-battle voice clips. His taunt has him saying "No time for losers", which is a line from Queen's anthemic "We Are The Champions", and he also says "the show must go on" after winning. "The Show Must Go On" is a track from Queen's 1991 album Innuendo.

Guilty Gear series

Oh boy, we've hit the motherlode here. Guilty Gear is famous for being crammed full of nods to music in general and heavy metal in particular, with the name of pretty much every character and special move being a reference to some band or other. Queen is the big one, though: series creator Daisuke Ishiwatari is a huge Queen fan, and boy does it show. Pictured above is Sol Badguy, the main character of Guilty Gear and a walking bundle of Queen references. Sol's favourite activity, as listed on his character bio? Listening to Queen, particularly their Sheer Heart Attack album. His headband carries the phrase "Rock You", as in "We Will Rock You". His theme music is called "Keep Yourself Alive", which is the title of Queen's first ever single. His real name? Frederick, and his nickname is taken from Freddy Mercury's solo album Mr. Bad Guy.

Then there's vampire badass Slayer. He's named after the metal band of the same name, but most of his special moves - All Dead, Dead on Time, Under Pressure - share their name with Queen songs.
In fact, you could argue that all four members of Queen are represented in Guilty Gear. There's Sol "Frederick" Badguy for Freddie Mercury, May for Brian May (sorry, Dr. Brian May CBE), Johnny for John Deacon and Roger (Bridget's creepy teddybear thing) for Roger Taylor.

And that's Queen, in videogame form. Freddy might have sadly passed on, but it's nice to think that his spirit lives on in a giant dude with a fiery sword. I'm sure there's some little Queen-related videogame moments that I've missed, so if you can think of any that I've misses then please, drop me a note in the comments.