Game villains are busy guys.  Have you ever tried to kidnap the Moon or blow up a plumber's girlfriend or whatever while also micromanaging your legions of dough-headed minions?  Game villains do that shit all day, and that doesn't leave much time for studying architectural aesthetics.  Which might explain how these frightful, frequently fatal abominations came to be.

#5. Dracula's Castle (Castlevania )

Let's start things off by stating that the last thing we want to imply is a lack of respect for Dracula's sense of style.  The man knows how to put together a damn fine presentation of Victorian Gothic-influenced architecture and decoration, and his efforts are made all the more convincing by the hordes of undead and demonic monstrosities wandering his halls.  What we are questioning, however, is Dracula's common sense.

And his dress sense.  There's a boundary known as "too gay," and Dracula sashayed over that line two frilly sleeves and a cravat ago.

One of Dracula's favorite hobbies appears to be providing his would-be assassins with unconditional aid and support.  It wasn't all that bad back in the original Castlevania , where all the help players could count on was a knife or some holy water barely concealed behind an easily-whipped candle here and there.  Those items were spread out enough so as to seem accidentally left behind.  In later games (starting with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night ,) Dracula's helpful attitude seems to have been replaced by a full-on death wish.

Almost everywhere you look, there's an item that can make you double-jump, or a focus for summoning a familiar.  And let's not forget the multitude of ruinous spells the slayers can cast, the components for which Dracula is good enough to hand over to his weakest cohorts.  Making this even weirder is the fact that this happens to Dracula literally every few years.  Dude, we get that constantly being killed and resurrected must be disorienting, but would it really take that much effort to walk around your home and throw out everything that could potentially kill you?

#4. The Humans' House (Katamari Damacy )

First off, a word to anyone who doubts that the humans were the villains of the popular "rolling things up into a ball" simulator: try watching while some cunthole in a hatchback knocks three lengths of fence from your meticulously-assembled katamari and then talk to us about who the villain is.  There's a reason we're sending these people off to die in space, you know.

KISS YOUR HOUSE GOODBYE, MOTHERFUCKER HA HA HA

But back to the subject of The House.  To the untrained eye, the scurrying mice and eerily well-coordinated snails might suggest nothing more than common, everyday squalor.  But even as we roll our absurd little sticky ball around the rooms, something more sinister suggests itself.  A helixical tower of erasers stands next to two carousels of cassette tapes that rotate with no visible means of propulsion.  A trail of rice crackers has been balanced painstakingly on their edges.  Even the aforementioned mice seem engrossed in their endless, obsessive-compulsive pushing of mandarin oranges.

What's going on here?  Are the residents of the house powerful wizards?  Mad scientists?  Powerful mad wizard-scientists using an unholy hybrid of magic and technology to unleash some crazy shit upon an unsuspecting Japanese populace?

Probably.

#3. Palgaea Shrine (Soul Calibur II )

For all you cats who are too busy having sex with girls to memorize all the stage names from a moderately popular fighting game, Palgaea Shrine was the base of some generic dark cult who apparently had a big hard-on for acid and mold.  It was also the hangout of Astaroth, a big ol' axe-wielding golem that would have looked like a total freak if Voldo hadn't been around to grab everyone's attention.

Bless you, creepy bondage-mummy-man.

The reason we've singled out Palgaea Shrine isn't because it's a precariously-located stage overlooking a fatal drop.  On the contrary; Soul Calibur II is a game built upon the high probability of hurling your opponents to their instant, frustrating demise.  What caught our eye was that Palgaea Shrine's former occupants appear to have made an effort at alleviating the falling hazard, albeit by filling in the chasm with acid. 

We'd like to think that the next step in their redecorating plan was to dump in a whole load of baking soda but they were wiped out by a rival cult before they could see their schemes to fruition.

#2. Organization XIII's Conference Room (Kingdom Hearts II )

When you're a shadowy, mystic conglomerate, you gotta have a secret lair where you meet with your cronies and make vague statements concerning your goodly adversaries.  That goes without saying.  However, there's also an unspoken obligation for you to make said hideout at least a little menacing, and KH2 's Organization XIII seem to have missed the memo on that one; their baker's dozen of ridiculously oversized high chairs doesn't suggest "nefarious plotting" so much as it does "vertigo and possible adult-baby fetish."

"Please, try to conduct yourself with dignity atop your comically elevated throne."

This furniture decision raises some pressing questions - could none of the members agree on the chair height?  Why isn't there a similarly oversized coffee table?  What about the symbol on the back of the chairs; was it meant to look like the world's most dangerous penis?

This was the first result when we Googled "dangerous penis."  With SafeSearch off.

These questions might seem baffling at first, but it's worth considering a little bit of Organization XIII's backstory and motivations: they're a group of thirteen powerful soulless beings who are attempting to gain souls by manipulating differently soulless beings into unlocking the souls of popular Disney locations , thus creating a gateway to Kingdom Hearts, where apparently free souls are handed out .  (We'd have put a spoiler warning in front of that, but hopefully you'll agree that it makes zero sense both in and out of context.)

With a history like that, it's easy to see how a group of otherwise level-headed villains might start going a little crazy with the high-chairs.

#1. Bowser's Castle (Super Mario Brothers )

Ah, Bowser.  King of the Koopas, Duke of Douchebaggery, and Undisputed Master of Overkill.  We'll say this for Bowser; if it were anyone else snatching our hot ladyfriend and imprisoning her inside a castle that must have been built on top of Mount Goddamn Vesuvius for all the lava it contained, we'd swear he was overcompensating.  But since it's Bowser - the original insane, megalomaniacal spiky-shelled turtle-dragon - we don't really have a choice but to buy it.

Honestly though, we don't think that the castle's design is so much a product of Bowser's bad taste so much as his management philosophy.  The man's a "hands-on" kind of boss; whenever there's a cosmic, continuity-shattering smackdown, Bowser's putting his dukes up.  Go-kart race to be won?  It's Bowser behind the wheel.  Hirsute Italian to be dueled upon a drawbridge overlooking a pool of lava?  You get the idea.

A rare moment of "Bowser Time."

It's not hard to see how this management style might extend to his preferences in evil lair accoutrements.  If you show a fire-breathing chelo-draconian monarch a half-acre of domestically-zoned land, do you think he's going to break out the Ikea catalogue and start comparing color swatches?  Fuck no!  He's going to start digging the lava holes and installing the spinning flame wheels with his own damn hands because that is just how Bowser fucking does things.

When not critiquing the decor, Malcolm writes for The Last Gaffe.

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