Dark Queen (Battletoads)

The Dark Queen is a fictional character in the Battletoads video game series by Rare introduced in the original Battletoads in 1991. She is a mysterious ruler of evil and the supreme commander of a renegade space army consisting primarily of anthropomorphic pigs and rats, who is bent on galactic conquest. She has received considerable attention due to her sex appeal, particularly during the early years of video gaming, as well as for being one of the first major female villains in video games.

In video games
The Dark Queen is the ultimate enemy to the Battletoads, as she has repeatedly attempted to eliminate the 'Toads and Professor T. Bird in order to stop them from hindering her evil plans. Throughout the series she usually appears to taunt the 'Toads during the cutscenes, before being confronted as the game's final boss. Despite her royal stature, she prefers to be no more cultured than the Battletoads themselves, due to the crude nature of her speech which consists primarily of surfer slang and offensive puns (such as calling them "cattle-loads" and "wartfeatures").

The Dark Queen is introduced in the first Battletoads game, following her defeat by the Galactic Corporation at the battle of Canis Major, as she and her remaining forces escaped to hide in the planet Ragnarok's World "in dark spaces between the stars". As Professor T. Bird and the Battletoads - Rash, Zitz and Pimple - are escorting the Princess Angelica, daughter of the Terran Emperor, the Dark Queen strikes and captures the Princess along with Pimple. The other two Battletoads go to the Ragnarok's World and manage to rescue the captives and defeat the Dark Queen at her Tower of Shadows, but she escapes and plots revenge. In the Game Boy game, the Dark Queen pretends to be a Thallian Thorax Dancer to capture Rash and Pimple and take them away in the enormous spaceship Gargantua to the planet Armagedda.

In Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, she has partnered with the vengeful technician Silas Volkmire to kidnap Zitz and Michiko Tashoku, the daughter of the President of the Psicone Corporation, creators of the computer-generated portal Gamescape, intending to transform the entire world into Gamescape Kingdom over which they would rule together. The other two 'Toads defeat the Dark Queen again, this time at her Dark Tower, and the she flees again to "to the outer reaches of the Universe", vowing revenge. In the crossover game Battletoads & Double Dragon, the Dark Queen teams up with the Shadow Boss. Together, they use a mysterious energy beam from outer space to render Earth's military might powerless and use a giant spaceship called the Colossus to take over the Earth. The Battletoads join up with Billy and Jimmy Lee, otherwise known as the Double Dragons, and once again foil her plans.

Character design
The Dark Queen is a sultry woman with black big hair and skin-tight skimpy black (or dark blue) outfit with matching long gloves and above-knee high boots. Throughout the games there have been several inconsistencies regarding her actual size: although her height is stated to be 6-feet tall on her profile screen in the arcade game Super Battletoads (which would mean she's actually smaller than the Battletoads), she normally appears to be of a tremendous size in the games, usually roughly four times the height of the 'Toads (it can be presumed that she has the magical ability to change her size). In Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, she is also wearing a red cape and wielding a snake-themed staff (with "more hex appeal than ever", according to GamePro ). In Super Battletoads, she was "sexed up a bit for the allegedly more mature arcade crowd", which meant erect nipples visible through her outfit and a breast bounce effect; an in-game portrait also shows her hair spread out in a fashion much like Medusa's.

Gameplay
The Dark Queen is usually fought as the end boss of the game. In the original Battletoads, she only has one special move besides basic kicks, spinning until turning into a tornado and then attempting to hit the player (how much damage is done to the player is based on how fast she is spinning). In Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, she instead teleports and attacks the players with magical projectiles from staff. In Battletoads & Double Dragon, she is capable of transforming into a flame and moving across the floor, remaining untouchable by doing so; she will also attack by emerging from the flame and throwing fireballs. The Dark Queen does not appear as a boss character in either the Game Boy game nor the Arcade game (in which she only appears as a holographic projection in the third stage, watching the boss fight between the 'Toads and Scuzz's Robo-Rat).

Reception
The Dark Queen was well received by critics upon her introduction, having been twice nominated by Nintendo Power for the Nintendo Power Awards in the category villain of the year for 1991 and 1993.

In 2008, UGO.com included her on their list of the top 50 evil women in all media, also commenting that the Battletoads series is "notorious for its insanely high difficulty, juvenile sense of humor and big-boobed antagonist" and adding that "the anger we felt at losing was only compounded by how hot and unattainable the Dark Queen was." In 2011, Complex ranked her as 10th on the list of "most diabolical video game she-villains", calling her "as hot as Jessica Rabbit" and commenting that "where the TMNT had April O'Neil to flirt with, the most bodacious chick in the Battletoad universe is ironically the final boss who wants them all dead." That same year, Universo Online ranked her ninth on the list of ten most beautiful and deadly game villainesses.

In addition, Seanbaby called her the sexiest NES game character, Gawker commented on the short-lived Battletoads cartoon how "Shredder had nothing on the Toads' sexy nemesis, The Dark Queen," and Jason F.C. Clarke of Topless Robot said the Dark Queen "rivals Sins Elexis Sinclaire and Soulcaliburs Ivy for sheer cleavage." GamesRadar featured her in a 2011 retrosective article featuring the sexy video game women of the sprite era, also noting her to be "hot looking for a 2D sprite." Gaming Nexus' Cyril Lachel wrote, "Forget reviving the Battletoads, all I want is a game based on the Dark Queen!" Sean Velasco from WayForward Technologies, lead designer of Double Dragon Neon, said: "I wanna high five Zitz and punch the Dark Queen in the gut!"