Editorial: Top 8 CRAZIEST Boss Battles Ever!

Top 8 CRAZIEST Boss Battles Ever!

          You’ve just fought your way through a horde of enemies, puzzles and god knows what else to make it to the end of the level and find the secrets that await you at the end. But one final obstacle stands in your way. From the shadows, the boss emerges and challenges you to one final standoff.

          Bosses have been a part of gaming since nearly the beginning, and since then there have been some especially cool and creative ones thought up. Today I’ll be counting down 8. of my favourites! Keep in mind that this is my list and my opinion, so if there’s a boss that didn’t make the cut it’s either because I don’t know what it is or I didn’t think they quite deserved the cut.

          With that said…

8. Bowser (Super Mario Galaxy)

          There have been so many great Bowser battles over the years that it was hard to pick a single representative. I also considered the classic Super Mario 64 final fight, the towering Baby Bowser from Yoshi’s Island, the lava castle chase from New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the Dark Bowser fight from Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, and the most recent battle from Super Mario Odyssey.

          But in the end the showdown from Galaxy won out, purely because it’s the single most epic fight against the Koopa king in any Mario game ever.

          Fighting across a few small planetoids in front of an exploding sun is epic enough, but the soundtrack to this fight alone is surprisingly intense for a game about a portly red Italian plumber going through space. It’s operatic, dark, and really makes you feel that this time Bowser is posing a real threat.

7. Akuma (Super Street Fighter II Turbo)

          Getting to this fight alone is a challenge in and of itself. To make Akuma appear, you must make your way through Arcade Mode, defeat all eight preliminary opponents plus the extra-tough Balrog, Vega and Sagat without ever losing and getting at least 3 perfect K.Os, meaning you have to not get hit once.

          Yikes.

          Once this is accomplished, Akuma will interrupt your climactic showdown with M. Bison by sending him packing and challenging you himself. He’s undeniably the hardest fight in the entire game, with super speed, high damage attacks across the board, and an immunity to being stunned. It’s a fight only true Street Fighter pros can take down.

6. Sans (Undertale)

          Undertale is a relatively easy game. The true challenge lies in what it does to your emotions.

          This boss is unlocked through the game’s final playthrough: the infamous No Mercy Run. You must travel through the world of the game once more, playing the game like a normal RPG and killing any and all monsters you come across, including the bosses you once befriended. And, at the end of it all, the toughest part of the entire game stands waiting for you.

          Sans, the chubby skeletal comedian that you once called a friend, lets loose with a barrage of bone-themed attacks to try and stop you one last time. His attacks move at a much higher speed than anyone else’s in the entire game, including the final bosses of the other two playthroughs. With the heavy metal-themed song Megalovania roaring in the background, it’s an epic finale to such a charming and heartbreaking adventure.

5. Ganon (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)

          This one’s been blowing minds since 1998. After you’ve bested Ganondorf in wizard tennis and escaped with Zelda down his crumbling castle, it looks like you’ve succeeded in your quest.

          NOT.

          Ganondorf emerges from the rubble to try to kill you one last time, transforming into the enormous beast known simply as Ganon. With one swing of his blades the Master Sword is knocked away from you, leaving you defenseless (unless you forged Biggoron’s Sword, of course) and completely at his mercy. All you have left are the tools you’ve found in the dungeons along the way and your wits as you face down your biggest opponent for one final battle.

4. Tabuu (Super Smash Bros. Brawl)

          Brawl’s Adventure Mode is…weird. A massive crossover between Nintendo worlds titled “The Subspace Emissary”, the mostly-silent narrative has plot threads that don’t make a lot of sense, a huge lack of explanation, and mostly serves as an excuse to see characters like Samus and Pikachu do awesome stuff together in cutscenes.

          It all comes to a head when the heroes unite together to find the mastermind behind all the shadow craziness unleashed upon their world: a weird cyberpunk-looking fella by the name of Tabuu. He promptly wrecks everyone with one attack, but later on with the help of a few other wayward heroes they are able to regroup, make their way through his Great Maze, and face off with him once again.

          Tabuu is a pretty tough customer, especially on the higher levels of difficulty. His Off Wave attacks will K.O. you in one hit if you aren’t careful, and he moves around so much that it’s hard to stay close and consistently damage him without him using an attack to send you flying. He’s easily the toughest boss the Smash series has ever come up with, and is a fitting end to such a crazy mode.

3. Galactus (Marvel vs. Capcom 3)

          What is it with fighting games and insanely hard final bosses?

          Galactus awaits you at the end of Marvel vs. Capcom 3’s Arcade Mode, and he will show you no mercy as you act as the last defense holding him back from devouring Earth. Before even you even make it to big purple himself you have to go through his guards, crystal clones of Doctor Doom and Wesker played at their highest difficulty and designed precisely for roughing up your trio of characters before the true fight begins. It’s not uncommon to lose a hero before you make it to the final battle, making Galactus all the more difficult.

          And when you finally make it to the true boss? Prepare to lose. Galactus has a massive health bar, and all his attacks cover nearly the entire battlefield and deal massive damage. I’d even go so far as to say that this boss is impossible to beat without taking at least one hit. While not impossible, Galactus is a fight that takes a lot of practice to take down.

2. Red (Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver)

          So you’ve finally done it. You’ve conquered the Johto League and taken down the Elite Four. You’ve beaten Lance and his hilariously cheated Dragonites that by all respects should still be Dragonairs at that level. You’ve made your way through Kanto and beaten all the gym leaders there, including former champion Blue. What’s left?

          The mysterious Mt. Silver looms overhead, with the promise of a deadly challenge awaiting at the peak. After making your way through the mazelike caverns and reaching the top, you’re faced with one final trainer battle: Red, your player character from the original games, appears, and he challenges you.

          Red is considered by many to be one of, if not the hardest trainer battle in the entire mainline Pokémon series. He comes packing a level 80 Lapras, a level 82 Snorlax, all three fully evolved Kanto starters each at level 84, and a deadly level 88 Pikachu, which is to date still the highest level Pokémon owned by a NPC trainer. While a bit of grinding practice and some clever type management (a Ground-type is an absolute necessity to beat Pikachu) will take down Red eventually, it’s still pretty cool to essentially get to fight yourself.

1. Mike Tyson (Punch-Out!!)

          The original surprise final battle, the showdown between yourself and Iron Mike Tyson in the original Punch-Out for the NES is something of legend. Never before did a video game allow you to go toe-to-toe with the reigning champ of a sport in real life until now.

          Fighting Tyson’s pixelated counterpart turned out to be as difficult as fighting Tyson in real life. You can legitimately go weeks and still not have figured out how to beat him. He’s that hard.

          His opener is deadly. For the first minute or so of the fight, every punch Tyson throws is a one-hit knockout. Your three lives will be spent before the battle’s even truly begun, and Referee Mario will be calling it a TKO before you know it. His punches move at blazing speed, and he has no real identifiable patterns you can follow.

          The only real way to beat Iron Mike is with the three P’s: patience, persistence, and practice. He’ll send you packing otherwise. Eventually you’ll start to figure out how he telegraphs his attacks, and slowly but surely bring down his health bar until he’s no more.

          If the fact that you’re fighting Mike Tyson and that he’s one of the hardest bosses in games history wasn’t enough, this fight becomes even more legendary when you look at what happened to it later on down the line. Eventually the contract that allowed Nintendo to use Tyson’s name and likeness ran out, and they didn’t have a keen interest in renewing it in an age before re-releases were a thing (plus, certain Tyson-related controversies might’ve made them a bit hesitant to be affiliated with him). So, in all subsequent ports of the original game, Tyson was replaced by the far less impressive “Mr. Dream”, who looks about as boring and ordinary as it gets. So these days anyone can say they beat Mr. Dream, but only those with an original copy of the game get the far more exciting bragging rights of being the few who were able to defeat Iron Mike Tyson.