Ryu

Ryu from the Street Fighter series is the ultimate loner. He's a wandering warrior that just needs a waterfall to practice dragon punches in. Ryu and his bag travel the world, looking for the purest thing known to man: a good fight. What's in the bag? Clothes? Dirty magazines? We may never know.

Ryu doesn't seek the company of women because they'd just get in the way. He needs to stay focused on the important things in life: throwing fireballs, executing hurricane kicks, and maybe throwing some more fireballs. Unlike Street Fighter's resident ladies' man, Ken, Ryu doesn't waste his time with partying and womanizing or any of that nonsense. He's got meditating to do. Or something.

If you're sick of all the Valentine's Day cheer, look no further than Ryu, one of the most independent men in the world of video games.

The Prince and Farah (Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy)

In a lot of ways, the on-again, off-again romance between the Prince of Persia and Farah over the course of the Sands of Time trilogy mimics the love between Joel and Clementine in the Jim Carrey motion picture Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In both the game and the film, you've got two seemingly mismatched pairs who somehow fall in love with each other. Farah quite literally forgets about the Prince at the end of the Sands of Time when he rewound time to foil the evil vizier. Clementine and Joel both forgot about one another when they had their memories of each other expunged from their heads. By chance, each couple meets again. For the Prince and Farah, this fateful reunification happens in the middle of The Two Thrones, when Farah escapes from imprisonment by the vizier's army, and the two meet up while trying to fight through the city of Babylon. Over time, each couple regains the fondness for one another that they once had.

It's not the most conventional pairing, but Farah and the Prince truly are two of a kind.

Over the course of The Two Thrones game, the Prince even fights inwardly with his evil half over the feelings he's having for Farah that he can no longer repress. But despite his desire for blind revenge against the vizier, and the mocking ridicule from his other personality, the Prince's love for Farah wins out in the end as she shows him what it means to be a more-compassionate leader to his people. Instead of blindly charging toward the final battle against the vizier, the Prince, with the help of Farah, eventually overcomes his base half and takes time in his journey to directly help the people in Babylon who have been under siege from the armies of the vizier.

It's not your typical love story, but the fact that the Prince and Farah could overcome such an odd separation and fall for each other all over again demonstrates a trueness to their love. If it could happen twice under independent circumstances, it can't be a fluke, right?

Billy Lee, Jimmy Lee, and Marian (Double Dragon)

Love hurts: The 1987 arcade classic Double Dragon features one of the most memorable, most affecting expository sequences in gaming. Back in those days, games didn't waste your time with long, drawn-out, noninteractive cutscenes--especially arcade games, which needed to grab your attention quickly, and then quickly kill you off so you'd dump more quarters into the machine. And, Double Dragon totally nailed this particular art of getting you hooked.

The game begins as a woman is violently kidnapped by a pack of thugs. She's just minding her own business, and wham! She takes a sucker punch to the stomach and is promptly and unflatteringly slung over the shoulder of some thick-necked jerk. Just as he and his cohorts exit stage left, a nearby garage door opens and out comes determined-looking Billy Lee--and his twin brother Jimmy, if you were playing with a friend. The brothers Lee waste no time at all as a thug approaches. There's no "try to reason with him" button, only punch, kick, and jump. You know what needs to be done.

Better show her a good time for the next 12 months or so, Billy...

Double Dragon is a rescue mission, but it feels like a revenge tale. Though no words are exchanged at any point in the game, you get the impression that Billy and Jimmy are so pissed off about the whole thing that they're going to thrash every last thug they can find to teach him a lesson. You get that impression because, despite how Marian's captors are just a few steps ahead of the Lee brothers, Billy and Jimmy walk at a somewhat leisurely pace, and you can't make progress until every last thug onscreen has flickered away, defeated, if not dead.

At the end, once you finally free Marian from the clutches of some crazy assault rifle-carrying idiot in the heart of some unholy temple, Marian is released from her bonds and plants a big old kiss on our hero. There's a little heart that floats up and away and everything. Of course, the sequence of events is a little different if two players have fought their way up to this point. With no one left to fight, Billy and Jimmy turn their fists on each other, presumably since there's only one Marian. Subsequent versions of Double Dragon tried to spin it like Jimmy was a traitor the whole time. But in the original arcade game, there's nothing but cruel, cruel love that turns brother against brother.

When the dust finally settles, the game proclaims, "may you live happily forever." It's a touching conclusion to a brutal game, but it's made a little ironic in hindsight of 1998's Double Dragon II: The Revenge. This game's intro sequence is similar to the original's, only this time, Machine Gun Willy goes full-auto on the poor girl, who blinks away once, twice, three times like all those bastards you thrashed in the first game. The message? Love is fleeting, so enjoy it while it lasts. Also, Double Dragon II totally sucked.

Alexander and Cassima (King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow)

Sure, he's a prince and she's a princess, and they're both the highest quality specimens that VGA-256 could possibly provide, but the love between Alexander and Cassima is darkened by the plots of a sinister vizier who stands between the star-crossed lovers, between Cassima and her crown, and between the entire royal family and their lives in King's Quest VI.

It begins at the end of King's Quest V, the last adventure of Daventry's King Graham, who must free his family and the princess from a distant land, Cassima, from the clutches of an evil wizard. Cassima isn't home for long when she's imprisoned again, in her own castle, this time by the court vizier. (As a side note to all future kings and queens, you might want to consider getting rid of all the wizards and viziers, since they're generally nothing but trouble.) Alexander, who is been visibly aggrieved by his separation from the raven-haired beauty, taps into her pain spiritually by way of a magic mirror, and is off to find, rescue, and yes, eventually marry Cassima.

A prince to rescue a princess locked away in a tower. The stuff fairy tales are made of, right?

The lengths Alexander goes to are a little extreme, from scaling the cliffs of the Winged Ones and defeating the Minotaur in the catacombs (a puzzle, which is about as complicated and perilous as you would imagine the catacombs to be) to exploring the depths of Hell in order to bring her murdered parents back to life. In the game's alternate ending, Alexander can dress up like a serving woman in order to sneak into the castle. But it's even better told the long way, in which Alexander conjures spells, befriends the court jester, and eventually stops the vizier's sham wedding to Cassima.

Along the way you're treated to heartwarming moments, like Alexander sending love notes and flowers to the imprisoned maiden by way of her pet mockingbird, and a tender conversation in which he addresses her through a hole in her bedroom wall. Only in a love story like this could he come across as a romantic and not a Peeping Tom. Of course, in the end, all nefarious plots are foiled, and Alexander and Cassima are able to be together once again. The story between these two couldn't end any other way than happily ever after...unless you never figure out how to get past Death, in which case the game might hit a little too close to reality.