10 Video Game Villains Created Out Of Spite

Tag-team fighting game NeoGeo Battle Coliseum doesn't have much in the way of a nuanced narrative, but its threadbare story involves the titular tournament being organised by the shadowy WAREZ Conglomerate, which has designs to take control of NeoGeo World for its own malevolent bidding.

This prompts the federal government to dispatch agents to defeat WAREZ and bring harmony back to NeoGeo World.

Hilariously, though, "WAREZ" isn't some random acronym the developers came with but a reference to warez, the term used in computer culture to describe pirate software.

You see, several years prior to NeoGeo Battle Coliseum's release, publisher SNK went bankrupt, blaming piracy for their inability to turn a profit.

SNK was relaunched as SNK Playmore shortly thereafter, and a few years later when NeoGeo Battle Coliseum was in development, they seemingly still had a massive chip on their shoulder over profits allegedly being funnelled away by piracy/warez.

However, NeoGeo Battle Coliseum failed to move the needle much critically or commercially itself, and so any wider point it was trying to make about the impact of piracy - without a scrap of subtlety, mind - was largely ignored.