Ridley (Metroid)
Ridley returns in his Meta form once again in "", where he, along with the Space Pirate legion under his command, are corrupted by Dark Samus. He encounters and battles Samus on Norion, a Galactic Federation-occupied world, and the two fight while free-falling down an air shaft. Ridley is later supercharged with Phazon, becoming "Omega Ridley", and is charged with guarding the Leviathan Seed on the Space Pirate homeworld. He is confronted once again by Samus, and despite being defeated, he survives the fight and is later cured of his corruption after Dark Samus' defeat later on. Between the "Prime" trilogy and "", the Space Pirates reorganize on Zebes and hatch another plan to clone and weaponize the Metroids, while Ridley gradually begins to regenerate from his past injuries, gradually shedding his cybernetics. In the remake of the second game, "", Ridley, in his semi-regenerated form of "Proteus Ridley", attacks Samus on SR388 to steal the last remaining Metroid. Samus and the baby Metroid work together to defeat Ridley.
Dr. Wily
"Computerworld" named Wily as one of gaming's "baddest villains", praising his persistence despite his failure at the conclusion of each "Mega Man" game. 1UP.com editor Jeremy Parish shared the sentiment, stating "the fact that his schemes ultimately boil down to creating eight themed robots with a fatal weakness to one another's powers casts his 'genius' descriptor into doubt. Still, you have to admire his persistence." GameDaily named him one of their favorite older characters in video games and one of the "Top 25 Evil Masterminds of All Time", ranking him second on their list while stating "using good robots to do bad things is sheer genius." They additionally cited his rivalry with Mega Man as one of the ten greatest in video games, describing it as one "still going strong to this day." In a later article, they listed the "evil mastermind" as one of their top 25 video game archetypes, using Wily as an example. IGN listed him as the 13th Best Video Game Villain, calling him one of the most "hopelessly persistent" video game villains.