We’ve come to an impasse: New Year and Valentine’s Day have clashed together in the weekend. Thus, I had to choose one or the other as a topic in this week’s Friday Fives. If I were to do one, I’ll have to do another based on the leftover holiday for next week, and that would make said leftover feel stale in comparison to the one that came first.

So I say “f*** it?” and why not toss in a bonus Friday Fives in addition to a main Friday Fives?

Let’s start with the CNY one.  Since it’s the Year of The Tiger, it seems appropriate to put in the top five tigers in videogaming history. Tigers are badass and must present themselves as dominating, so this list criteria is determined by how useful the nominees are in showing off tiger-like qualities.

5) T’ai Fu (from T’ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger)

Dreamworks Interactive had a pretty nifty and sleek-looking concept: have a badass anthropomorphic tiger kicking all kinds of ass using Tiger Style kung-fu in mythical China. If we’re talking popularity ranking, however, he ranks pretty low. He stars in just one above-average PS1 beat-em-up. Still, you have to dig his posture on the game’s cover, and the fact that the game, at the time, looked pretty sweet.

4) Black Tiger (from Black Tiger)

Talk about delving into the obscure; I haven’t seen this game for a while. It’s a 2D side-scrolling platformer starring a barbarian named Black Tiger. It’s also needlessly hard, but the same can be said for all arcade games which were created for the sole purpose of gobbling up your tokens because you were delusional into thinking that you could beat those games within a single sitting.

So Black Tiger’s pretty bad-ass: he’s given the one-man task of defeating three legendary dragons, has knives coming out from three different directions from his large axe-slash-ball-chain, and doesn’t take s*** from anyone (assuming you had a lot of tokens). Except from money-grubbing old men whose hides you saved that have the gall to charge exorbitant prices for items you need to make your quest easier.

3) Ty (from Ty The Tasmanian Tiger)

This list doesn’t necessarily have to have tigers of the “big cat” kind. Tasmanian tigers are also ferocious beasts (though extinct), and Ty helps fill in that niche of snarky mascots that plagued the 90s. In 2002. A little too late, yes, but he’s a teeth-bearing tasmanian tiger who masters the art of throwing magma-infused boomerangs starring in a game filled with mythical beings of Aboriginal culture. An average human being can’t even throw a regular boomerang properly, so you got to at least hand it to Ty for flaunting.

2) Greek Guy’s Tiger Form (the protagonist from Altered Beast)

Sure,  Tiger Form only makes an appearance on the fourth stage, but he leaves quite an impression. He fires golden balls of flame that go in a zig-zag motion and does a vertical golden-streak jump kick that obliterates anything and anyone above him.

1) Tiger Woods

Sorry, Tiger. As awesome as you are at getting the ladies and walking on water in-between matches, we have to reserve this list for fictional characters.

1) Sagat (from the Street Fighter series)

Who said that this list has to be “animals only”? Sagat’s known as the Tiger of Muay Thai kickboxing. He shouts out “Tiger” for all of his special attacks, Supers, and Ultras (I’m surprised he doesn’t have his own chain of “Tiger” phad thai; he coulda made millions!). He’s imposing, big, tall, muscular, and will kick your ass if you look at him the wrong way.

And the best part about him is that he can do it all without depth perception. If anything, putting this badass on the top spot adds a lot of credibility to the word “tiger”.

Stick around for another Friday Fives later today, as soon as I’m done with No More Heroes 2.