Top 5 Wimpiest NES Heroes: #1: Swamp Thing

In the famed Alan Moore-written comics, Swamp Thing is a being of unimaginable power, an earth elemental who draws his strength directly from the planet. That's what we're assuming anyway; we never actually got around to reading the issues that explained it all.

As is sadly too often the case, the NES version of the character does not measure up to the real-life version. The game takes place entirely within a swamp. What luck, right? That's Swamp Thing's home turf! Surely he'll be at an advantage! Fighting Swamp Thing in a swamp is like fighting Aquaman at the bottom of the ocean or fighting the Blob in donut shop: they should be basically unstoppable.

Alas, it seems that Swamp Thing is easily injured by extremely normal swamp creatures like snakes and fish. And plants. Shouldn't he be in perfect harmony with these creatures and be able to use them as his minions and sidekicks? At the very least, he shouldn't be injured by plants. He's made of plants.

Swamp Thing is stymied by Plant Thing

Here's the deal: even if he's not an earth elemental, Swamp Thing is still a guy who got mutated into a giant hulking plant beast by an evil industrialist who was after his wife. Look at the ham hocks on him in that screenshot above. He's got the tools to fight. This isn't a guy who should be beaten up by nature.

But then again, if Swamp Thing doesn't want to get the crap kicked out of him, maybe he should learn how to attack at any height higher or lower than exactly six feet and at a horizontal distance greater than six inches.

You can have him.