One of the most beloved video game pastimes is simply mashing the buttons and watching the bad guys fall. 🌸 Who doesn't love the feeling of stomping on Goombas or straight-up hacking away some goblins or orcs with your sharp object of choice But the more we play, the more we noti🐎ce something. We've seen these guys before.
This is probably no surprise, but there is a lot of overlap when it comes to video game enemies. Those thugs in Final Fight look a lot like the street gangs in Streets of Rage, don't they? How many more enemies have been reused/recycled? Have a look a🗹t our list and find out.
10 Spiders
They might be mutated, they might be giant, or they might be your average eight-legged freak, but you can't deny spiders have been a common video game enemy since the Atari days. From minor annoyances in Centipede to your introductory monster in , spiders can be found in dozens of games.
Some might be small and easily squashed 𝔍with the press of a button, others might require a shot to the belly with a properly aimed arrow, and some might be full-on boss fights that absorb your ammunition like a sponge. Either way, you're definitely going to encounter one at some point.
9 Rats
Rats, skeevers, vermin, whatever you want to call these rodents, chances are that if you play any basic RPG or fantasy-based game, you're going to have to earn your stripes bashing a few rats with a blunt object ✱sometimes on your quest or adventure. They seem to be particularly present in any of your average dungeon crawlers or basic horror-themed titles.
From Gauntlet to Zelda to Fallout, whether they're natural or mutated, some of your favorite adventure games require a little pest-control before you're ready to take on whatever evil wizard/dragon/empire stands in your way. The best way to lear♏n is to start small, after all.
8 Slimes
Good gravy, we could compose an entire list of the most repetitive slime-based enemies alone. They're probably not the strongest enemy on our list by any means, but they're definitely the most used. If you're a Dragon Quest fan, you already know how versatile, numerous, and even cuteౠ these things ca🧔n be.
They can be as minor as puddles of poisonous goo in Diablo's dungeons or as massive as King Slimes in the previously-mentioned Dragon Quest series. They might not be the most advanced form of enem🤪y, but we know we can expect to see them in countless ti🐭tles.
7 ൩ Plant Monst🏅ers
Now we're starting to get out of the fantasy-title stigmꦇa with our next entry. Definitely more versatile than slime monsters, and certainly a bigger threat, these botanical baddies can appear in just about every form of video game imaginable. Whether you've got a basic platformer or a 4k sci-fi shooter, mother nature certainly knows how to dish it out.
Whether they're minor obstacles to jump over like Mario's Piranha Plant, or massive and murderous boss-fights like 's Cagney Carnation, it's rarely a good idea to stop and smell the roses, unless you're in Yoshi's Island of course.
6 Ghosts
Now we're going to take a dive into the realm of the supernatural to summon the spirits from many of our favorite video games. Ghosts are sometimes the simplest of enemies, but can also be vengeful spirits out for blood, s൩ouls, coins, or whatever the player-character might have on them at the time.
Everyone's familiar with the multi-colored apparitions of Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde, who are arguably more mischievous than malicious. But what about the likes of Phantom Ganon or the various Castlevania specters? Somedays it takes a Power Pellet, other days it ta🐻kes a sword and some holy water.
5 🥃 Alien Invaders
The only enemy-type that could possibly beat out the slime mon🍎sters for most-used has to be the various forms of space invaders that conquered dozens of games from the arcade cabinets to the home consoles. They can come in 8-bit spaceships, be 16-bit space-pirate sprites, or they can be fully rendered monstrosities with massive weapons and a desire to conquer earth.
The repetitive use of space creatures is particularly noticeable in most early arcade games like Galaga, Galaxian, and Space Invaders, but shoot-em-ups like Gradius and Lifeforce are also at fault. And do we even have to mention the Doom clones? We think not.
4 𝄹 Goblins/Orcs/Grunts
This one is more of a gray area, but we'll do our be🍎st to include everybody. How many hack-and-slash titles have your player-character take up some sharp object and just absolutely go to town on hordes of goblins, orcs, or other fantasy-raced grunts? It never gets old mind you, but it happens in a majority of the genre.
The Grunts (actual name) in Gauntlet led to Moblins of the Zelda series, which led to a plethora of other similar species for us to slice, dice, and serve on rice. It doesn't matter if it's Breath of the Wild or Darksiders, so lon🍷g as there are s📖words to swing, there will be monsters to mutilate.
3 �ܫ� Gunmen/Henchmen
Sometimes we want to fight massive monsters, sometimes we want to blast aliens out of the sky, but sometimes it's the humans൩ who are the real monsters. Philosophical points aside, there are countless games where your main miss꧃ion is to take out the costumed thugs or gun-toting henchmen to save the day.
We've already mentioned the repetitive use of street-gangs in titles like Streets of Rage but also think about the armed soldiers in titles like Contra or Shinobi, not to mention the various enemies in FPS titles like Call of Duty. Actඣion games just seem more🐼 fun with bad guys to bash, don't they?
2 Skeletons
Since most living organisms have one, it's hard not to find a video game title that doesn't feature an enemy with a skeleton motif. Everyone is familiar with the reanimated bones in games like and Ghosts and Goblins, but not evenﷺ the friendly face of Mario is immune from some spooky skeletal turtles. Dry Bow𝓀ser, anyone?
Platformers, RPGs, and even FPS games have featured some variation on the skeleton-typ🥂e enemy. Maybe it's because they're easier to render, they're fun to watch fall to pieces, or simply because they're an easy target for our weapons ♉of choice. Either way, they're not nearly as fun to mow down as our number one pick.
1 Zombies
Zombi♐es, Walkers, Infected, or just plain undead, whatever you want to call these shambling corpses, you can't deny the𝓡 feeling of absolute pleasure that comes from bashing in some undead-heads. Though they are probably some of the most reused and recycled enemies in gaming, taking them out never gets old.
They might come in different strengths and levels, but sometimes they're just the same undead bullet fodder just painted a different color. We're looking at you, Resident Evil. From Castlevania to Dead Island, we don't think zombies will be leaving our g💮ames of ch🧜oice any time soon.