Hitlerama: Nein Games Where You Get to Fight Hitler

Wolfenstein: The New Order was released this week, and while I had thought shooting Nazis in a video game was a trope that's totally been played out... I'm absolutely loving this game. I guess there will always be something inherently satisfying about killing a Nazi, which is why countless games have used them as bullet sponges. There's one Nazi that's particularly more satisfying to kill than any other, the Nazi of all Nazis- Adolf Hitler... although the Giant Nazi Zombie Fetus in South Park Stick of Truth was pretty close second. Just how many times have we faced Hitler in a game though? I can tell you for sure it is more times than we've seen George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Gandhi combined.

Wolfenstein was actually one of the earliest video games to have Hitler appear in it- having you plant a bomb outside of Hitler's door in the 1984 Apple II game Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. While Hitler is a little hard to recognize and doesn't share a unique voice from all the other Nazi guards, they did at least put him on the box cover.

Of course this crude pixel fuhrer pales in comparison to one of the most memorable final bosses in any video game- Mecha Hitler from Wolfenstein 3D. The game that birthed the first person shooter genre and put id Software on the map also happened to have Hitler in a giant mech suit with 4 chainguns. Killing him is also one of the more satisfying Hitler deaths, with him melting into a pool of blood and bone.



I didn't get to play Wolfenstein 3D until I was much older, for me the first time I encountered Hitler in a game was on the NES called Bionic Commando. Of course I only knew him as Master-D at the time, but there was something so amazing about fighting your way through a difficult game and the final boss' head explodes. I had found out later in a magazine that the Japanese version of Bionic Commando was called Hitler no Fukkatsu: Top Secret and for the first time in my young life learned who Hitler and the Nazi's are. Nintendo had censored the US version, but kept in Hitler's likeness for Master-D.



Around the same time we were running and gunning in Bionic Commando on the NES, the adventure game genre was flourishing on PC. Lucas Arts (or Lucasfilm Games at the time) had already developed some great titles like Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken, but had been restricted from making games based on any of Lucas' films. That all changed when Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure was developed and released simultaneously with the movie. Not only was it one of the first movie games to not suck, it also let you punch Hitler in the face... even if doing so would result in your death.



Trying to explain the plot of Persona 2: Innocent Sin is something I'm not going to try to tackle in this article... let's just say in the game when people spread rumors about something, crazy things happen. One of those crazy things just happens to be a bunch of Japanese high school students battling Hitler, who is wielding the spear that killed Jesus Christ.



Persona wasn't the only Japanese RPG to have Hitler as an enemy, he was the main enemy in the Xbox 360 Strategy RPG Operation Darkness. The game wasn't regarded very highly because of below average graphics, but I personally really enjoyed a crazy Japanese alternate reality World War II with werewolves, vampires, magic snipers, and dragons. Operation Darkness has been receiving slightly higher regard these days since it was the first game developed partly by Silicon Studio, whose latest game was the critically acclaimed Bravely Default. Similar to Persona 2, Hitler has occult powers and uses the spear of destiny.



Hitler's most recent video game appearance was in a DLC release for Sniper Elite 2 called Assassinate the Fuhrer. The objective is to intercept Hitler's convoy and assassinate him before he can reach a train. Pretty straight forward stuff... but sniping Hitler with a slow motion replay and x-ray to show the path of your bullet through his body is still a thing of beauty.
 


Now what if you took the sniping elements of Sniper Elite, and mix them with the odd not-safe-for-USA approach of Bionic Commando? That would give you Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode. Very similar to Bionic Commando, the story has Hitler's brain that's making cybernetic clones and trying to revive the Nazis. The USA version of the game changes Hitler's name to Smirk, and Nazis to Drek... however they did leave in some references to the Third Reich and a swastika. Graphically it is harder to make out the likeness to Hitler, especially during the chaotic final boss fight. I imagine the late 1980's would have been an interesting time to be a censor at Nintendo of America, with two Japanese games featuring Nazi's being revived by Hitler's head and a game that would let you microwave a hampster... thankfully hacked roms of these games exist if you wish to play them in their originally intended form.



Hitler has appeared in quite a few other games in much smaller roles and often not even by name. Strangely enough, he has never appeared officially in Medal of Honor or Call of Duty, two series that were heavily based in World War II for many years. Other series like Assassin's Creed and Command & Conquer: Red Alert have Hitler play a part in the storyline, but he is never actually a character that appears actively in the game. For Hitler appearance number nein, I chose a memorable quarter munching moment from my youth that saw you fighting a giant Hitler head, followed by entering a pleasure dome with some bikini models.

Smash T.V. was an incredible ultra-violent twinstick arcade shooter in the 90's that spawned a lesser known sequel called Total Carnage. The main enemy and final boss is a guy named General Ahkboob (voiced by Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon) and for really no reason turns into Hitler at one point during the final boss fight. There's really never been an explanation if Ahkboob was Hitler all along or what lead the designers to making this choice.



There's also a few Japan only games like Time Twist or straight up obscure games like Stalin vs Martians that also feature Hitler... but I'd say these are his nine most memorable video game appearances (and deaths). Meanwhile we still haven't had any good games where we get to kill Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, for any developers out there that are stumped on who to put in as a final boss.