I downloaded the demo of ‘Splosion Man for the Xbox 360 last night and gave it a spin.  The game itself seems quite solid, with frenetic platforming and an overall sense of high-energy.  For those who have not played it yet, let me explain that one of the primary activities you undertake as the titular hero is detonating scientists that you come across and reducing them to meat.  Literally.  Showers of steaks, hams, and various other cuts of meat spring forth every time you kill one.

As I ran about, murdering these men of science, my wife asked the perfectly reasonable question “Why are you killing all these innocent people?”  This, I assured her, was because “they are evil scientists.” Now, ‘Splosion Man is not particularly heavy on backstory – you are a man who explodes, and you are in some sort of lab. From this, there is very little to support my assertion about these scientists and their moral alignment, but it was just something I knew in my gut.  Clearly, they had made ‘Splosion Man into what he was, and he was simply seeking vengeance.  Of course, it’s equally as likely that ‘Splosion Man is simply insane and thirsts for the meat of all he comes across. So why would I immediately leap to the evil scientist answer?

When posing this question to Jeff, he simply replied, “Besides Dr. Light, have you ever met a non-evil scientist in a video game?”

Good question!

YOU ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR FIRST

I can recall quite clearly my first encounter with an evil video game scientist, and I’d wager that it’s probably the same one as for many of you reading this.

When Dr. Wily first appeared on my screen when playing through the original Mega Man, there was absolutely no question that you were dealing with a quintessential mad scientist.  The hair, the mustache, the background music – this was not a man dealing with a full deck of cards.  While the source of his insanity was never quite clear to me (I vaguely remember reading something about a lab accident in one of the old manuals), it really didn’t matter.  What mattered here was that he was out to take over the world with his robot army, and it was up to me to stop him.

Dr. Wily also had the persistence required of any great arch-villain, in that no matter how many times you knocked him down, blew him up, or launched tiny robotic snakes to chase after him, he always came back.  And every time he came back, he was ready with a fresh new batch of diabolical robots to unleash upon the world.  Now, as we all know, his creativity started to wane a bit as he aged, but as the guys at the Megaman Panel noted, that might not have been entirely his fault.

GREEN HILLS AND GOLDEN RINGS

Nintendo, of course, did not have a monopoly on evil robot-themed scientists.  Dr. Robotnik of the Sonic series of games was right there to challenge him.  Now, I’ve never been a particular fan of any of the Sonic games, but something about Dr. Robotnik always grabbed my attention.  Perhaps it was his stylish mustache, or perhaps it was his penchant for turning woodland creatures into hideous robot foes, but he always struck me as just the kind of mad scientist you could really love to hate.

Over the years, Robotnik (now Eggman on both sides of the Pacific) has, admittedly, gotten a lot more character development than Dr. Wily ever has.  Over the course of the many, many Sonic-related titles that have come out, he’s developed a somewhat complex personality, as well as even teamed up with the good guys on several occasions.  Also, he’s the only video game villain I know with a potential macrocycle inhibitor named after him.  That has to be worth something, right?

Sadly, as the Sonic series continued on with its ever-steady decline, my interests in the exploits of the good doctor declined as well.  I know he’s still out there, doing whatever it is he does, but to me, it just doesn’t seem to matter as much as it used to.

PUT HAMSTER IN MICROWAVE

It takes a very special evil scientist to kidnap your girlfriend, unleash hideous tentacle beasts on the world, and still somehow get you to like him when everything is said and done.  Dr. Fred (Dr. Fred Edison, if you’re feeling proper), is just that sort of guy.

When you first meet Dr. Fred in Maniac Mansion, he is in the middle of getting ready to do something clearly nefarious to your girlfriend Sandy.  Yet, the more time you spend poking around the Edison household, meeting its strange inhabitants and exploring its dark nooks and crannies, the more you realize that, just maybe, Dr. Fred isn’t such a bad guy.  He just might be a little misunderstood, right?  I mean, he’s got a hamster-obsessed nutcase of a son, a sex-fiend of a wife, a strange alien meteor that crashed in his backyard (through no fault of his own), and a friggin’ nuclear reactor in his pool.  That can’t be good for anyone’s mental health, right?  Don’t even get me started on the fact that his dear cousin Ted has passed on and the family lacks the funds to give him a proper burial.  Dr. Fred’s life is full of problems.

When we next encounter Dr. Fred in Day of the Tentacle, it’s clear that things have settled down since the whole meteor mess.  Sure, now there’s a whole slew of new problems on account of Purple Tentacle, but Dr. Fred is ready to help.  And sure, maybe he’s not exactly great at helping, but at least his heart is in the right place.  Can you ask for more than that?

NOT ME! THEM!

As you might notice, most of the evil scientists we’ve looked back on so far have fallen pretty solidly into the “bumbling” category.  Sure, they try and do evil things, but they certainly give the player ample opportunity to laugh at their failures.  When Dr. Lugae, in Final Fantasy IV first appears on the scene, he sets himself up right off the bat to end up on that same list.  Dancing around like a child with his latest toy, he merrily sends his robot defender Balnab to crush you.  Balnab, like all good comedy villains, attacks the wrong people and explodes if he doesn’t get oil.  If you don’t handle the Lugae fight correctly, you get a hint of what’s to come, as he transforms into a rather tough monster.

Once defeated, most players simply write off Dr. Lugae as a minor bump in the road.  It’s not until later, however, that his true evil shines through.  Upon reaching the top of the tower, the party comes across two twisted, grotesque monsters.  Ready, as always, to slay them, the ninja Edge quickly realizes that these aren’t monsters at all, but are actually his parents.  Unwilling or unable to listen to his words, the two attack, and the party is forced to battle.  The fight rages on, and ultimately the two regain their senses.  Though Lugae twisted their bodies and their minds, they break through the madness long enough to give a final message of love to their son before finally bringing their shattered lives to an end.

When I first played through that sequence so many years ago, it was a powerful experience.  Here, for the first time, was the supposedly comedic mad scientist who had actually done something evil; the parents of one of my party members, of one of my team, were dead because of him.  Suddenly, he seemed a lot less amusing.

BIOSHOCKING!

Sometimes the worst villains are the ones you never meet.  In Bioshock, as you travel through the fallen city of Rapture, you find a variety of personal journals from the cities former residents that help shed some light on your current situation.  As you quickly discover, most of the people involved with Rapture were cut from less than the finest moral cloth.

One man, in particular, played a huge role setting up the events that transpire during your journeys underseas: Dr. Yi Suchong.  Ryan’s chief geneticist and scientist in charge of plasmid development, Dr. Suchong was a man consumed by a desire to tinker with the pieces of life itself, with little regard for the effects it might have.  Beyond that, working for both Fontaine and Ryan at the same time, Suchong was more than happy to perform any illicit experiment asked of him so long as he was given the freedom to do what he pleased.  Helping create the player’s character himself, as well as programming him with the mental controls that prove so dangerous, Suchong also helped create the Big Daddies to serve as protectors of the Little Sisters (whom he also instilled with a thirst for ADAM).

Ultimately, Suchong’s experiments turned out even more successful than he realized, and also proved to be his undoing: striking a Little Sister in anger, Suchong is torn apart by his own creations.  So while the only time you ever see Yi Suchong is as a bloody, rotting corpse drilled to a table, the effects of his actions play into almost everything that occurs in this undersea nightmare.

YOUR MAJESTY…

Dear Prof. Science Adviser from Civilization II,

As a man of science, I know that you are wise.  As you are my adviser, you know I have faith in you.  So please understand, I’ve given you the maximum budget for research that I can, please stop asking for more.  YOU’LL TAKE WHAT I GIVE YOU AND YOU’LL LIKE IT.

Love,
The Emperor.

THEY CAN’T ALL BE BAD

So, as you can see, scientists have certainly had a pretty bum wrap over the years in the world of videogames.  Whether they be comically evil, or just plain evil evil, they tend to end up on the wrong side of good.  There is, however, one man who always leaps to mind as the shining example of what a scientist can truly be: Gordon Freeman, PhD.

Gordon, hero of the Half-Life series, is not a man of many words.  He speaks through his actions, and his actions are pretty damn awesome for a guy with a degree in theoretical physics.  Gordon is not out to be a hero, but when he finds himself thrust into the middle of disaster, he stands up and does what needs to be done, whether it be crowbar-related or not.

Gordon shows us that men of science need not be mustachioed maniacs, and that great knowledge can indeed be paired with great responsibility. Gordon is such an inspiration to scientists, in fact, that when the world goes to hell in a handbasket, his fellow Black Mesa scientists (the living ones, anyway) take after his example and work to the best of their abilities to free Earth from tyranny, one crackpot idea at a time.

So, let us look to the light of the One Free Man and hope that he can inspire a new generation of video game men of science to turn from the path of darkness to the path of light.  Maybe, just maybe, as the years go by, we’ll notice less and less

There are, I suspect, a few of you who might ask why I did not include Prof. Oak and his ilk from the Pokemon series.  To you I say: have you ever seen any of those guys do any actual science?  No, I don’t think you have.  They make you do it for them, the lazy bastards.

Jerk