Joke Characters are rather infamous in gaming. We often laugh at joke characters because they are so easy to beat. We find beating them badly comical. As funny as they are joke characters do actually have a purpose in gaming in my opinion.

In my opinion, Joke characters main purpose is to ease the player into the game and get the player used to the game play and controls. I have played several games over the years. I have decided to make a list of Joke Characters in games that I have played.

Whispy Woods-Kirby Games. If you have played a Kirby game usually the first boss is Whispy Woods. Whispy Woods is the Kirby's game joke character due to how easy he is. In most games you can eat his apples and throw them back at him. Other times you can just use special copy abilities to knock him out. Whispy does not move except for in one game I played. In that game Whispy is more threatening as he can move and chase the player. When I first played Kirby's Adventure I laughed at how easy he was. When I got older I realized that even though he was a joke character he has his purpose. His purpose is mainly to ease the player into Kirby Games. In addition, I think his purpose is to let the player use several copy abilities trying them out to beat bosses.

Toad Man Mega Man 4- Toad Man is a joke character although his stage is not a joke. His stage deals with wind driven rain. Toad Man is such a joke character in the Mega Man Franchise. He mainly just jumps around. The player can shoot him, slide and shoot him. If you want you can hit with charged shots. He goes down real quickly. He doesn't even use his special weapon that much. Its easy to quickly defeat him. Toad Man's purpose seems to be to ease the player into Mega Man 4. Its easy to see why he was intended to be the first boss in the game. I think he is also to keep gamers from getting frustrated, more on that in a bit. Imagine if all the robot masters where like Pharaoh Man gamers would get frustrated and not want to play the game.

Gabby Jay from Punch Out- Okay Punch Out has given us some comical characters. He is the first boxer the player fights in Super Punch Out. He is the game's joke character. In fact, the game makes no bones about it that he is the joke character. His record is 1-99. His only win was against his student who is Glass Joe. Gabby's punches do not really do that much damage. In addition, his punches are easily blocked, and he can easily be knocked out. It is comical when fighting him. The only thing is the bosses after him are more difficult. His purpose is to get the player used to blocking and throwing punches. His purpose is also to let the player become super to throw knock out punches.

Speaking of joke characters Glass Joe is the regular joke character in Punch OUt. His record is 1-99 he only has one win. His punches do not really do that much damage. He can easily be blocked and knocked out. His role is to ease the player into the game. The rest of the characters are anything but easy. In fact it gets difficult after Glass Joe. It is easy to see why he is usually the first fighter in Punch Out games.

Dan Hibiki- Moving to another fighting game. Dan Hibiki is the joke character of Street Fighter. He is a knock off of Ryu. Normally you would expect him to be a tough opponent but he is not. He is easily blocked and can easily be defeated. In the game's story line he runs a school, but a lot of his students have gone on to rank high in street fighting tournaments. In games he has appeared in he is usually the first fighter. I don't know if that is just random or if he really is meant to be first. His purpose is to get the player used to attacks. He is more of a practice character for the gamer to learn special moves on.

Bashful Burt- He is the first boss in Yoshi's Island for SNES. In other Yoshi's Island games he is also the first boss. He is like a joke character so that is why I have included him in my article. The game gives you places to hide while he is jumping around. He also leaves himself open for you to throw eggs at him. Its really hard to make a mistake while fighting him. His purpose seems to be to get the player used to defeating bosses by throwing eggs.

Giant Walker-Battle Toads. Ah Battle Toads one of the hardest games out there. The first boss is a Giant Walker enemy that fires bullets and boulders at you. You throw the boulders back at it. While the bullets are intimidating they are easily dodged. This boss purpose is to build confidence. The rest of the game is very difficult.

Indeed, joke characters do have a purpose mainly to ease the player into the game, and get the player used to the controls. I also think joke characters can be used to build the gamers confidence. After you beat a joke character you probably think "Yes I can do this game or I'm doing good". It makes you want to continue the game. Imagine if you had to face a boss like Pharaoh Man in Mega Man 4. Pharaoh Man is Mega Man 4's more difficult boss. If you faced a boss like that chances are you would get frustrated. Moreover, you probably would think the game is too difficult. One would probably not want to play the game.

In conclusion, Joke characters are funny and we laugh at them. However, they do have their purpose in gaming. They do play an important part of gaming. So yeah, laugh at the joke characters and easily defeat them. Just remember they do have a role in the game.

I’m saying this in a fighting genre mind set, not in generalization, though didn’t know whispy woods was more of a joke character… makes sense though. Anyways, fighting mind set from here on out.

Though I do agree with some statements about the importance of joke characters and how they are often used in gaming, they’re not much as relevant as they were back in the days due to companies focusing more of game play and usability rather than “so bad it’s fun”. Competitive gaming, over the years, have made this niche dwindle down and whenever there is a “joke” character, they do have some components that make them usable for competitive play. Like you stated for one, Dan Hibiki. He was one of the worst characters in the street fighter series, even today he still is but he has changed over the years. From reading dev notes from the past (since I did used to play the games somewhat competitively, not like pro level but in a serious manner.) All his normal hits are completely safe but with the trade off with his special moves have a slow start up, making them unsafe. Plus he was a jab at Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia of Final Fight series from SNK back in the 90s, even referenced in the Snk vs Capcom : Chaos game where some opponents called him Robert (mainly the SNK side) .

Another example of a dwindling niche, Pichu from Smash bros. Pichu wasn’t good but wasn’t bad but being a bad clone of pikachu, you can see how some refer it as a joke character. Super Smash ultimate made Pichu more usable with its speed and better offense but still is pretty easy to knock out due to its weight and size. What was once low tier in melee, Pichu is more upper mid these days.

Though I do like having some fun characters that are bad in fighting games, I don’t believe there would be as relevant as they were back in the days, due to companies and developers wanting to generate revenue and characters need some viability to be usable in gaming (mostly fighting games). It’s a good article nonetheless, and we can’t stress out how bad glass joe is lmao

becerra95: Excellent point. I'm not very familiar with new games unless they are a classic franchise. Most of the games I play are from the 80's and 90's. Joke Characters where different then compared to now. I think it reflects how gaming is changing and maybe that is why some of the characters are changing in modern games.

I would say Sylvester from Looney Toons in Tweety's High Flying Adventure I finished the game recently and I defeated him in two seconds

classgame: I forgot to list this character but speaking of Loony Tunes. Daffy Duck in Bugs Birthday Birthday Blowout is a joke character. For one he does not even attack bugs. He just walks back and forth. All you have to do is just dodge him and get to the large carrot that takes you to the next level. When I first played the game I was hoping they would have Daffy throw things at you or act crazy like he did in the cartoons. I guess maybe they could not do that due to the game space. The other characters in the game attack you and try to throw things at you.

I agree that joke characters in the past did serve a purpose. The scaling of the game's difficulty back then was the main reason to have them as the first bosses, just so players could challenge their skills and learn what future bosses could be like as well as using the main character the best way they could.

Some others were there as plain jokes, like Dan Hibiki in decades past as has been mentioned, with even its character design being meant to joke about other characters as well. They were meant as fun characters to use, and evolved to be included in games because the fanbase liked them (and probably because of this they also got "fixed" to be acceptable in competitive gaming).

There are also occasions in which joke characters are merely added as filler. Goburimon in Digimon Digital Card Battle is the best example, plays with a deck that can be beaten with extreme ease despite him appearing in the latter part of the game. These cases are the worst, it almost feels like developers couldn't come up with any good idea and kind of ruins the reputation of joke characters.

However, like bec has pointed out before, joke characters are no longer there to be ridiculed. Not sure if they appear as bosses anymore, but unless they appear as filler which I also ignore, joke characters have evolved to just have the title of joke character due to their past or how they were introduced into the lore.

A branching of this article would be the purpose of joke artifacts/objects in games. I greatly remember in Soul Calibur II how each character had a joke weapon at their disposal, trading their swords for bug-catching nests (Link), oars (Nightmare) or even tambourines (Voldo). It went on to become a niche, as subsequent games also included them, but they were never something usable and to a certain extent were just a mean to use in-game credits, so I'm certain there could be more examples out there.