We're all familiar with the concept of the character battle. Make-believe videogame people and/or things pitted against each other in an arbitrarily determined battle for victory. It's fanciful nonsense, which is why GamesRadar has already hosted the imaginary character battle to end all imaginary character battles. We settled all those non-existent virtual scores that never needed to be settled in the first place, so that's the end of it.

Now, though, we're taking the ridiculousness nature of fantasy fighting to the next plateau of stupid. This time it's the turn of developers to duke it out, dust it up and do each other over like blood-hungry gladiatorial champions. We've taken 16 of the industry's best-known, best-respected and most beautiful developers and smashed them head-to-head in an entirely make-believe orgy of violence. Let the fighting begin!

MADE: Gran Turismo / Assassin's Creed
Jade spends two hours buffing her smile. It's deadly white with a 20ft blast radius. However, her blinding mouthful of dental perfection is never called into action - Kaz gets massively delayed on his way to the fight and fails to show up. And even if he did make it, he wouldn't be able to do damage anyway. Jade wins by default.
WINNER: Jade Raymond

MADE: Gears of War / BioShock

Wanting to shed his childish moniker and gunning for a grapple, Lord Clifford Bleszinski III of North Carolina flexes his bulging geek guns while sporting a monocle, stovepipe hat and his best fighting slippers.

Too bad Levine’s bloody and beaten corpse was found in the locker room minutes before the fight. Early eyewitness accounts report a crowd of disgruntled BioShock developers fleeing the scene. Bleszinski wins.
WINNER: Cliffy B

MADE: Too Human / Lost Odyssey

Serial forum bait-taker and receiver of the NeoGaf ban-hammer, Dyack moves at a crippling 30 frames-per-second, rendering his blows horribly inaccurate and harmless. Sakaguchi points and laughs. Dyack tells Sakaguchi that if he comes back later he promises that he'll be much better. Sakaguchi points and laughs. Dyack gets unhealthily enmaddened before collapsing with hypertension. Sakaguchi points and laughs and wins.
WINNER: Hironobu Sakaguchi

MADE: Haze / Fable
Can you even imagine the hippy-headed Doak in a fight? No. Neither can we. Molyneux wins.
WINNER: Peter Molyneux

MADE: God of War / Mario

Drunken, surly and berating fanboys as he staggers to the squared circle, Jaffe cuts a bladdered Ghost of Sparta-style imposing figure. His inebriated frame is sent reeling, however, by Miyamoto's trademark, legally contracted smile and the optically offensive nature of his shirt. The bowl-headed Shigger without attitude pounces forward and starts pretending that the Wiimote gripped in his hands is a trumpet or some shit. Jaffe calls Miyamoto a twat and hurls vom chunks all over him. Miyamoto cries because his toy is all covered in sicky. Jaffe passes out. Jaffe wins.
WINNER: David Jaffe

MADE: Half-Life / Metal Gear Solid

Whilst striking his most cleverest looking 'I'm ruminating, bitches' pose and nibbling a very fashionable bag of salty snakes, Kojima realises the futility of the developer fight mimics the futility of war. He starts banging on and on about politics and genes and knowledge and some nonsense about ones and zeros while looking all smug in his designer glasses. No one listens. Newell uses a PS3 to batter Kojima's head in mid-philosophizing. He ponders that maybe the PS3 isn't so bad after all, before making light work of the half-eaten packet of snakes. Newell wins.
WINNER: Gabe Newell

MADE: No More Heroes / Dead or Alive

With all his pioneering work in breast physics we'd be doing Itagaki a shameless disservice if he didn't get through the first round. So we'll have him slice off Suda's head with one of the katanas he famously keeps in his office. Sorry - used to keep in his office when he had a job.
WINNER: Tomonobu Itagaki

MADE: Spore / Quake

Intelligent folks know that fighting is a self-defeating pursuit for the lower classes, so there's no way these two would ever try and bitch-slap the spectacles off each other. Not even in make-believe. Instead, Wright takes the opportunity to show Spore to Carmack. Wright philosophises about panspermia, evolutionary phases and procedural generation. Carmack creates a creature that looks like a penis. Wright loses all faith in humanity and retreats to a cave, thus forfeiting the fight. Carmack celebrates his win by making his penis perform a happy dance.
WINNER: John Carmack