General Scales is one of the most disappointing villains in the entirety of Nintendo/Rare history. He was hyped up like crazy, but I assume he was originally meant to be the final boss of the Nintendo 64 version. However, with Star Fox added into the final GameCube release, he was dethroned as the ultimate villain by the surprise addition of Andross.

He doesn’t have a bad design, but he definitely comes across as a one-dimensional villain. He’s evil, has dinosaur thugs acting as terrorists, and wants to rule the planet. Which is a bit strange, because he isn’t even close to being the biggest dinosaur in the game. What makes him so special?

The boss battle against him was incredibly underwhelming. All I remember was attacking him a few times before he fell with ease. I expected much more out of him. Some early Zelda dungeon bosses had more epic clashes of good and evil than this.

And he isn’t even completely defeated by Fox McCloud. Andross secretly commands him to give Fox what he wants, so that Andross can be revived in a hidden plot, something General Scales is clearly reluctant to do.

Then Andross somehow manages to kill him remotely, which doesn’t make much sense. Yet he couldn’t do the same to his nemesis, Fox McCloud? That seems really unlikely.