Everybody likes villains! Talk about the villains you like. Any genre will do.

I'll talk about my top three. I notice they all kind of beat up/steal the power of gods, which I suppose is peculiar. But I'll handle them once in each post because each one is pretty cool and deserves to be talked about a bit. Also I am very lazy.

1. Kratos, God of War Series

I like Kratos as a villain because a lot of people think that he's a tragic hero, but he really isn't - he might be a tragic hero if he had lost. Tragic heroes don't win. Villains do. And as a villain, he functions magnificently: pressured from all sides by forces seemingly beyond his power, he rises up and takes the reins of his own destiny. No one is safe from his wrath or his judgment, not Persephone, not Ares, not Zeus, not anybody. He's a nihilist who has decided that he is unable to impress any meaning upon the world, seeing it too sick to continue existing as it does, and therefore sees it appropriate to destroy it.

The really interesting part about this is that he's out to plunge creation back into chaos and everyone is cheering for him. Wow. That's just a seriously good villain, if only because most people seem to operate off the idea that his actions are justified, either by his own torment or by the fact that the world that he's in isn't nearly as cool as the ass-whoopings that he's going to deal as he destroys it.

Who are some of your favorite villains?

Hmmm.. My first thought was Count Bleck :P

Probably Ganondorf but he isn't that great.. I think Nintendo games don't have enough of the villain.. except Mario.. I think they do Bowser perfectly there.. So maybe Bowser instead..

Oh wow, there are lots.

Ridley comes to mind, that guy is really fun.

But as for more involved villains, I love both Ganon(dorf) and Dracula. Liquid Snake intrigued me in the first MGS too, and who can ignore M. Bison? Well, I like many villains. If I had to choose one, though, it'd be either Ganon or Dracula. They're both too awesome to choose between though.

The G-Man from Half Life
We don't actually know enough about him or the ongoing plot to clearly pigeonhole him as a villain, but that is the common perception, basically because he opposes and manipulates "the Freeman".
He's basically a deus-ex-machina made flesh, or at least suit and tie, and his greatest accomplishment is to make the players self-conscious of their ignorance. Thus he is not a villain because he helps the Combine who conquered the world and kept earthlings from having sex, but because he undermines our immersion into the Freeman persona that is the whole point of Half Life's narrative.
He menaces us as gamers and not as characters, the stuttering bastard :)

I wished Vaati was made into an epic console Zelda villian, working behind the scenes and using Gannon as part of his scheme (smokescreen). It would be a huge surprise and since he deals in dark magic could be the darkest and scariest Zelda ever. *sigh* It wouldn't happen.

I would hate to see Vaati use Ganon. The other way around would fit way better, imho.

While definitely not the best my personal favorite is Knightmare via Soul Calibur II

Bowser.

M. Bison.

A few of the bosses in RE4.

Level 8 in Contra. Don't remember the name of the main boss. I just remember shooting the hell out of it's head and then it's heart.

Seymore FFX.

In before someone mentioned Sephiroth. :)
My vote goes to Kefka. Followed by Bowser.