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Happy Lunar New Year! Our Favourite Snakes In Video Games
Snakes; one of nature’s unique creations and evolutions, are either loved or hated. Beautiful, mysterious, scaly, slithery, usually a symbol of deceit and mistrust, but also symbols of health and renewal.
In the Chinese Zodiac, the Snake represents wisdom, patience, and mystery. The snake’s strategic and introspective nature is complemented by the element of wood, which fosters growth, balance, and connection with nature.
That last sentence is taken from online somewhere; I’m no diviner. But I am a video games expert & archivist. And I do know that man’s most divisive reptile has seen tons of representation in video games. Far too many, in fact.
With Chinese New Year coming soon, let’s celebrate our favourite snakes in video games, actual slithery beings or otherwise.
Transcript
We start off with last year’s Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a stellar Metroidvania featuring Ubisoft’s Montpellier team at their peak. Among all the epic Zorostroa-influenced bosses and enemies our hero Sargon fights, one of them features a giant cobra who shoots lasers out of its mouth.
Azhdaha is a helluva big bad, offering a tough fight along with a tough-to-navigate home base he resides in to give our hero a heckuva challenge. But taking him down after all you endured is just satisfying.
Kukulkan, Serpent of the Nine Winds, hails from the Mayan pantheon of gods and is a terrifying winged serpent. Basically the Mayan version of winged serpent god Quetzacoatl.
In the MOBA game Smite, he’s a mage class who is best at clearing minion waves and slowing enemies down. Kukulkan has limited movement, so his group better help him with his jungling shenanigans if they hope to level up.
There are many, many snakes in GameFreak’s cash cow cockfighting series Pokemon. Heck, there’s even one called Snake backwards. And one called Cobra backwards, but with a K.
While these are novel, none of them comes close to the rock-hard tougher-than-even-diamond power of Generation 2 powerhouse Steelix.
Steelix is basically a better and more aggressive-looking version of Onix. Just like some snakes, Steelix is vain and bullies others smaller than it.
It’s on this auspicious list because it looks darn cool and has a neat design. In practical terms, players love this built boa because of its defense stats and powers. And we haven’t even brought up the Mega version of this tougher-than-nails POkemon.
Elden Ring has a slew of snake enemies and bosses, but none come close to how badass this entry is. We’re talking about the guy on the cover art of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC: Messmer the Impaler.
When you get this penultimate boss down to 50% health, he enters his true form: a base serpent that’s big, fast, elusive, and just menacing to look at. He also comes with crazy snake attacks that are hard to punish.
However, this new power does make him a bigger target when you do find windows for counterattacks. Easier said than done of course; thanks From Software from putting the fear of snakes into us back again. [INDIANA JONES VS SNAKES CLIP]
Yeah, Rykard was the first Elden Ring snake boss, but Messmer’s just the better pick because of his status and relevance to the main Elden Ring plot.
What is it with From Software and giant snakes as setpieces & boss fights?
As a shinobi named Wolf, you have to fight waves of mythical monsters and super ninjas in the game Sekiro. You also need to deal with a giant white snake called the Great Serpent who hinders your progress as you explore the castle you’re infiltrating.
This white-as-heck snake makes multiple appearances in dealing with Wolf, serving as a blockade to your progress. However, if you do things in a certain order you’ll get your chance to deal with the Great Serpent once and for all.
Cute animal mascots with platforming prowess are no strangers to the gaming realm. But one comes to mind all the way from Nintendo. Specifically in the jungles where Donkey Kong and his proverbial Country resides.
Rattly the Rattlesnake is a boon in the menagerie of animal assists in the Donkey Kong Country universe. He jumps super-high and uses the power of his spring-like body and flexibility to do so.
Also, he doesn’t slither; when he moves horizontally, he does short hops. While his stages are arguably tough to play, he has the added benefit of stomping ANYTHING with its bare feet…no wait, bare tail. Zingers, canon balls; he does not take damage from almost anything he jumps on.
In a world where reptiles and saurians moonlighting as pirates and mad scientists are always harassing you and stealing your banana treasure trove, it’s good to know that there’s at least one cold-blooded snake on your side. Thanks, Rattly!
In Skaldic poems, Jormungandr is the mythical midgard giant-as-heck serpent that is destined to kill Thor in Ragnarok.
In the God of War 2018 sequel and its follow-up Ragnarok, Jormungandr is a lovely-looking setpiece meant to show off the power of the PlayStation and its studio’s craft, this being Santa Monica Studio.
After being awakened by father-son tag-team duo Kratos and Atreus, Jormungandr becomes an ally, answering tough questions from the two and also assisting them as muscle.
Brains and huge-and-lengthy-brawn; a perfect combo for this entry.
In Chinese mythology, Nuwa is a goddess of creation who help made humanity and is usually associated with marriages.
In Shin Megami Tensei V and its Vengeance counterpart, Nuwa is a badass demon and a major character who can help shape the world they’re in alongside her partner Shohei Yakumo. You will fight her at the start of the game in her Serpent form -she’s a tough one and comes right after other snake-boss Hydra. And if you pick a particular pathway in the game, you fight her in her godly serpent form.
This being a demon summoning and recruiting game ala Pokemon, you can also add Nuwa to your team, both in her human and her Serpent form. And her Serpent form just eats up most of the opposition like an actual snake would to field mice and prey smaller than them. Nuwa is a tough boss to beat but also a formidable ally to benefit your demon team with hard-hitting Wind attacks & crazy buffs: truly an intoxicating combination like taipan venom.
If you were a 90s kid and had a mainstream handphone, chances are you’ve played this default game on your monochrome screen.
However, the original “Snake” game wasn’t called Snake. It was called Blockade back in 1976 and was the pioneer of the “outlast opponent by being a longer & bigger on-screen avatar” genre. This was followed suit by a segment in the Tron game back in 1982, in the Light Cycle segment.
Snake made a resurgence in 1998 thanks to the then-popular phone company Nokia. And it pretty much paved the way for many clones to pop up either as their standalone titles, or minigames in other bigger titles.
It’s basic now, but this Snake in video games is the most influential one in its culture, as it became a default app that made mobile gaming relevant.
To cap off this list, we’re adding in an actual humanoid hero who embodies the traits of a sneaky snake, and a name that goes along with it. Solid Snake.
Made by the mind of one Hideo Kojima, who is clearly a fan of Kurt Russel and John Carpenter, Solid Snake is a super agent born out of a network of subterfuge and experiments stemming from classified world events.
He not only manages to take down the best operatives and state enemies with just his CQC, ingenuity, and smarts but also gets in and out of hairy situations, slithering his way out of trouble like a snake would. While doing that, he also finds the time to blow up giant tanks with legs. Four of them, in fact.
How can you not put in a guy with Snake in his name into a list like this? That would be a travesty.
Honorable Mentions: Lamia (Shin Megami Tensei series), Snivey (Pokemon series), Ekans (Pokemon series), Arbok (Pokemon series), Rhykard (Elden Ring), Karnath (Battletoads), Jafar’s snake form (Aladdin for Sega Megadrive), Yamata no Orochi (Okami), Slitherfang (Horizon series), Sea Serpent (Valheim), African Rock Python (Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey).
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