What really interests me is when a game, or another piece of media, portrays a character as "the good guy" even when they clearly aren't. Watch Jurassic Park 2, for example, where all of the "protagonists" blunder into the middle of an up-until-that-point successful military campaign, getting a massive amount of the (generally less unlikeable) military bods killed in the process. They're incompetent, they're annoying, they constantly f--k everything up and they show zero remorse for or recognition of the consequences of their own idiotic actions. And these are the guys we're supposed to be rooting for. Yay.
But JP2 was a BAD movie. What about - say - a really good game? What about "Wonderboy 3" on the Sega Master System, in which the hero (so we're told) has to take on six horrific tyrants in the form of dragons? Tyrants that are so horricic, in fact, that EVERY SINGLE CREATURE in the kingdom - and some of the plant life too - rallies to their defence? And what does Wonderboy do to these poor oppressed victims? HE SLAUGHTERS THEM, STEALS THEIR LOOT, AND EATS THEIR HEARTS. Seriously. He even massacres the weather systems (yes, this game has "evil" clouds. Think of that the next time you're out in a thunderstorm.)
So since Wonderboy literally slaughters every single inhabitant of Monster Land that he comes across, who exactly lives in this kingdom that he's supposed to be "liberating"? Well apparently... there's a shopkeeper guy (pirate with an eye-patch. Because eye-patches are always a mark of a character who has no evil tendencies whatsoever.) And a buxom nurse that resembles Darryl Hannah in "Kill Bill". So Wonderboy, the strongest warrior in the land, is liberating it for... those three people? And nobody else? Hmmmmmm. All of a sudden, I am less certain of his intentions.
The moral of the story is you don't have to play GTA or Kane and Lynch to get your fill of evil. If you don't mind it coming in the guise of a cute little anime guy with a sword and a smile, you can get it easily elsewhere.
(Oh, and talking of retro games with unfortunately evil implications, in the game "Urban Strike" on the Genesis you can crash a helicopter into the World Trade Centre to blow it up. Seriously.)