A rotting pile of gaming's cutest undead
Skeleton Bee (Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins)
Another fantastic example of how something that’s cute when alive can be even more charming when undead, the skeleton bee brings it with delightful body patterns and a very fashionable skull face. Like his landbound counterpart Dry Bones, Bee isn’t about to let some fat Italian stop him from delivering his death pollen - a simple stomping isn’t enough to slow down this harbinger of cutemageddon.
Cutest features: Turns being originally rendered in black and white from a liability into an asset
Endearing flaws: Yes he’s a stinging insect, but he just wants to sting you with love.
Cuter than:
Mummified Cats (Tomb Raider)
We would be fired from the internet if we wrote an entire article about cute things and didn’t include at least one kitten on our list. Thankfully, Lara Croft and her bizarre bestiary are here to save our ridiculous “jobs” by way of mummy kitties, hands down the cutest thing on the planet that’s been wrapped in bandages and had its brain liquefied. Cats that play the keyboard or lol a lot are fine we suppose, but we prefer our felines a little more ferocious, and in this case, considerably more dead.
Cutest features: Who needs soft kitty fur when you’ve got desiccated bandages occasionally moistened by cat/adventurer blood?
Endearing flaws: Minor attitude problem, but you’d be ornery too if you couldn’t see anything and had to watch your brain trickle out of your nostrils in smoothie form.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Cuter than: Imagine a picture of your cat with some band-aids on its face here.
Count von Count (Sesame Street: Countdown)
Oh, come the fuck on. A vampire muppet that wants to teach children/animals how to count and is called Count von Count? He’s married to a lady muppet named Countess von Backwards? He vants to suck your fruit juice? Where slipping razor fanged corpses into children’s media is concerned (and being ridiculously adorable in the process), nobody beats the Street.
Cutest features: As obsessions go, arithmomania’s gotta be the cutest. The Count once stopped Ernie from answering the phone because he wanted to count the rings. Swoon.
Endearing flaws: Any of his flaws are apparently too endearing for us to notice. Never change, Count.
Cuter than:
Mar 8, 2011
Don't be fooled by these cunningly disguised creepzillas
From flickering to first-person suicide, we examine gaming’s insatiable death wish
Cute game worlds that would actually be hell to live in
On the surface they look like paradise. Beneath it, they’re a living nightmare
Alan Bradley was once a Hardware Writer for GamesRadar and PC Gamer, specialising in PC hardware. But, Alan is now a freelance journalist. He has bylines at Rolling Stone, Gamasutra, Variety, and more.