This weekend I’ll be going to see a new movie in theaters. I’m a big fan of clay animation, so the movie I’ll be seeing is Aardman’s The Pirates! Band of Misfits. So because of this, lately I’ve been in a slight ‘piratey’ mood, and I’ve been thinking about video games that have pirate characters that I like. So here’s a blog featuring my favorites!

First about the pirate movie, I’m not sure why I like clay animation so much. Maybe it’s because I was raised on commercials like the California Raisins and The Noid (did you know the same ad agency that did those also do the modern day M&M ones?). But my favorite clay animation studio is Aardman, mainly because of Wallace & Gromit. They also did Creature Comforts, which was pretty good, too. I also like how Shaun the Sheep, from Wallace & Gromit, got his own TV show. And then, one of the characters from that show, little Timmy the sheep, got his own preschool show called Timmy Time! And I thought only Mega Man was successful enough to have spinoffs from spinoffs! I also liked Aardman’s Chicken Run movie a lot, but I wasn’t so impressed with their CG outings like Flushed Away (I never even bothered with Arthur Christmas). So I’m glad their newest movie goes back to clay animation. Maybe after I see it I’ll tell you all what I think.

Did you know that in college I took a clay animation class? So I have a lot of respect for these people who make whole movies out of them! The class I took wasn’t a semester long class or anything; it was a day-long class I took just for fun. But it took us all that time to make less than ten seconds of really crappy clay animation! There were three people in the class, me, a lady, and another guy. We each made a character to animate. The lady wanted to make a creepy gory film, but I convinced her we shouldn’t do that since my little brothers would be seeing it. The other guy agreed to operate the camera, so his clay character was just a snowman so he wouldn’t have to animate it much. The girl made a little boy character and I made a snake! In the film, the little boy was making a snowman, when a snake came out of the ice and bit off the snowman’s carrot nose! Then he went back down into the ice, and then the snowman’s coal smile turned into a frown and the boy fell over. And that was our clay film! I created the illusion of the snake coming out of the ice by cutting him up into pieces and stacking them up for each frame of animation, then took them away when he went back down. I have a video tape of that animation somewhere, but I don’t know where exactly. It’s too bad, though, I’d love to show it to you all.

Honorable Mentions

Anyway, sorry to go off topic there. Now we’ll talk about pirate characters in video games. Before I get to my top five, here are some honorable mentions that I thought of. The LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean game was a fun take on the movies as well as piratey stuff in general. I’ve purposely stayed away from the long-running online game Puzzle Pirates, because I know I’d get addicted to it! One time, a friend of mine came over to play Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo with me all day so he could ‘train’ and get good at the swashbuckling puzzle game in Puzzle Pirates, which is nearly the same kind of game.

And speaking of Pirates of the Caribbean, when Pac-Man World came out on the PSOne, I got to know the team who made it really well. They said that on their breaks, they liked to go to Disneyland, so they based a lot of the worlds in the game on their favorite attractions at the park. So you can tell the space world was based off Space Mountain, the last world was like the Haunted Mansion, and the first world was based on Pirates of the Caribbean. Pac-Man World wasn’t the best game out there, but I think that basing the worlds on Disney attractions brought out some charm in the game at least.

Fighting games have a lot of cool pirate characters, too. B. Jenet from Fatal Fury is cool because, well, you know. I also like May from Guilty Gear because she fights with a giant anchor. She must be really strong! Finally, another group of pirates I like aren’t from a video game, but they should be. VeggieTales’ silly song The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything is hilarious (look it up). I love VeggieTales. If I had kids, I’d have them watch VeggieTales all the time. OK, now let’s look at my top five favorite video game pirate characters!

5. Guybrush Threepwood

When thinking of pirates, any gamer worth his or her salt should automatically think of the Monkey Island games. So I put the main character from that series here. I actually met the guy who does the voice for Guybrush once; he doesn’t look a thing like his character! Believe it or not, I was a little late to the party with Monkey Island games. Even though I loved PC point and click adventures as a kid, by the time the Monkey Island games came out, my computer wasn’t good enough to play them. Plus I was more into NES and SNES games then. Luckily I got to review the Tales of Monkey Island games that TellTale made a couple of years ago, and I downloaded the first two Monkey Island games on Xbox LIVE and tried those. If you like pirate stuff, you have got to play at least one of the Monkey Island games!

4. Ridley

He may not have an eye patch, a boat, and say “Arrr,” but Ridley is the leader of the Space Pirates so I guess he counts, right? The boss fights with Ridley are always so awesome. Even in Metroid: Other M, the worst in the series (you suck, Team Ninja), fighting Ridley was cool. I especially liked it when Ridley would pick up Samus and scrape her along the walls as he flew along. After fighting Ridley in a Metroid game, don’t you just want to tromp around the house yelling, “RAAAAARRR! I’M RIDLEY!!!” Yeah, you do, you just don’t want to admit it.

3. Zack & Wiki

Zack was a little pirate dude and Wiki was his magical golden flying monkey pal. Zack & Wiki was one of the few really good third party Wii games, and it came out pretty early in the Wii lifecycle, too! The game is kind of hard to describe, but it’s like a point and click adventure with motion controls that work AND are fun, which doesn’t happen often on the Wii. I would recommend this game to Wii owners, but I hear it’s very hard to find now. So if you do see a copy of it somewhere, GET IT! I kind of wish that Capcom would’ve included Zack & Wiki in their Vs. fighting games, as I think they’d go well together with other short characters like Roll and Viewtiful Joe.

Zack & Wiki was also one of the last games that truly felt like a classic Capcom title. Some of the treasures you found were sprites and icons from old Capcom games, and there were hidden music mini-games with tunes from Ghosts N Goblins, Mega Man 2, and more! The other reason why this felt like an old Capcom game was that it was really H-H-H-HARD! You’d die, a lot. Anyone who played this remember the last ‘main’ level? Wasn’t that a doozy? Zack & Wiki was one of the hardest games that I actually managed to beat. And please don’t tell me you thought the game was easy, you’ll just break my heart.

2. Tron Bonne

Capcom does it again with pirates! Tron Bonne is the little sister in a family of pirates that gives Mega Man a hard time in the Legends series of Mega Man games. But like most Japanese anime antagonists, Tron Bonne ends up helping the heroes out in the end to stop a greater evil. Tron Bonne is a great character because unlike other Capcom females, Tron isn’t fan service. She’s just a young girl at that awkward age who happens to build the cutest little robot army you’ve ever seen (I’m referring to the Servebots). The rest of Tron’s family is pretty cool, too, especially her older brother Teisel. Tron Bonne was so likeable that she even starred in her own game: The Misadventures of Tron Bonne (which is my favorite in the Mega Man Legends series). I’m sad that Capcom cancelled Mega Man Legends 3, because we’ll never get to see more of Tron’s antics. But I’m glad that Capcom still puts Tron in some of their fighting games. And you can see Servebots pop up in all sorts of Capcom titles, like Dead Rising and even Street Fighter X Tekken!

1. Captain Syrup

She’s the antagonist in some of the Wario platformers. You didn’t see her much in the first Wario Land game, but she was the leader of the pirates who stole Wario’s treasure, and in the last boss fight she rides on the shoulders of the genie you must fight. She was featured more prominently in Wario Land 2, one of my favorite platformers ever. She was MIA after that for a long time. I’m glad they brought her back in Wario Land: Shake It, and it was especially funny how she bested Wario in the end! Captain Syrup must be really smart, too, and a wiz with mechanical things because in many of her boss fights in Wario Land 2, she’s piloting some sort of robot, Dr.Wily style. I just wish Nintendo would include her more in Mario’s various spinoff outings. Let her play tennis or golf with the rest of the gang, or maybe even let her fight in Smash Bros. Nintendo has a lot of female video game characters, but not very many of them are villains. So I’d like to see Syrup in more games (maybe she’s too sassy and sexy for Nintendo?). But regardless, she’s smart and cool, and my favorite video game pirate character!

In the comments section, let me know who YOUR favorite video game pirate characters are, and your favorite pirate games in general! Do it or Captain Syrup will make you walk the plank! Arrr! –Cary

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