Kid Icarus released on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986 and introduced the world to a magical Ancient Greek world, terrifying monsters, and a unique platforming experience. It’s an incredibly fun game that was great enough to spawn a sequel on the Game Boy and another one decades later on the 3DS. It also, however, gave us one of the most obnoxious enemies to face in video game history. The Eggplant Wizard may seem like a chump, but he can completely ruin anyone’s playthrough of the classic platformer. 

Of all the terrifying monsters and demons that Pit battles throughout Kid Icarus, like eyeball-tentacle creatures, flying skulls, and the Grim Reaper, the Eggplant Wizard manages to be the most threatening. He may just be an anthropomorphic eggplant with an eggplant staff that shoots eggplants (he really sticks to the theme), but he’s one brutal enemy to cross paths with. Not only does the Eggplant Wizard damage you with his eggplant projectiles (and if you bump into his large body), but he magically transforms all who oppose him into walking eggplants. 

This may not seem like the worst ailment, but any gamer who’s received the eggplant curse understands how truly terrible it is. After becoming an eggplant, there is no way for you to deal damage to any enemy you see, but those enemies can certainly harm you. 

The only way for you to break the eggplant curse is to visit the nurse in the dungeon, who remedies you for free. That wouldn’t be too bad if the levels the Eggplant Wizard appears in weren’t dungeons that are literal mazes. It’s incredibly difficult to find the one nurse in the massive labyrinth. Plus, having to dodge the same enemies again and again as you backtrack and get lost as an eggplant looking for said nurse is true pain. Usually, by the time you get to the nurse, you’ve taken a massive beating from the foes that you aren’t able to fight. 

It would be better to just simply die and respawn at the start half the time. The prolonged death, or at least the mad scramble to barely survive, may be a goofy time, but it’s also pure torture. These jerks make your life miserable as they prevent you from progressing. If you think you’ll just run past every threat to the end of the dungeon, then you’ll be in for a rude awakening to discover that you need to defeat the boss to move on. Pro tip: eggplants aren’t great at defeating bosses that they can’t damage. 

This menace behaves the same way in the sequel Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, so you’re not even done with him if you decide to stick with the series after completing the first game. He’s thankfully less of a threat in Kid Icarus: Uprising since Palutena, the Goddess of Light and one of the central characters of the series, can cure the curse pretty easily. The Eggplant Wizard is so infamous and remembered for being the jerkface that he is that he was used as the Kid Icarus villain in the Captain N: the Game Master cartoon instead of Medusa, who is the primary antagonist of the game. Captain N: the Game Master gave him a silly voice and wacky mannerisms to make younger viewers laugh, but those of us familiar with his video game origin know he’s not actually fun to deal with. 

There are countless dangers throughout Kid Icarus, but none compare to the nuisance that is the Eggplant Wizard. Damaging you from afar, transforming you into a helpless fruit that cannot do damage, and leaving you trapped like that until you die or find the nurse is much more infuriating than simply killing you like every other video game baddy out there. Every time you face off against the Eggplant Wizard feels like another burst forehead vein. It’s safe to say that the Eggplant Wizard is still one of the most hated video game enemies decades later.