She was the evillest bitch-queen from Hell, man. I was screaming and throwing things in frustration. Great game.

Offhand some of the most memorable boss fights I can think of would have to be...

The carrier at the end of the first level of Starwing, yes it was stupidly easy but even now I still smile everytime I take it down and I remember how magnificent it was the first time. In fact most of the bosses in Starwing were great.

The brain in Flashback, Im not sure why that stands out in my head.

Ganondorf from Ocarina Of Time was a great boss. Ditto Link To The Past.

Hmm, Meta-Ridley in Metroid also brought on slack-jaw syndrome.

The original Jedi Knight was pretty good for bosses too, probably because it was the first time we got to dual with lightsabres properly, Jedi Outcast is also pretty good for that... though I still don't quite get why everyone (well Edge anyway) didn't seem to think much of it.

Ohh yeah, Nemesis was a great boss too if you can call it that, given he was pretty much one step behind you for most of the game.

What about you lot?

Insert Rez here.

The R-Types all had memorable bosses. The first boss from the original has to be one of the most recognisable bosses of all time, or something.

I enjoyed some of Half-Life's bosses but the final boss for the original game was just confusing and frustrating, and the one for Opposing Forces was dulltastic.

The mid-game boss from Alien Breed 3D gave me a rare old fright the first time I ran into it.

The huge military installation from Banshee that, having shot up once, you then did a huge loop the loop and had to do it all again as new defence systems trundled out. That was ace - more than made up for the earlier "sweep the entire screen with big metal arms" crane monster thing.

The sinister agent from Deus Ex - can't remember his name - who you have to fight in the underwater base. Memorable mainly for getting my stealth-and-sneaking tailored ass kicked the first time I ran into him, then reloading from before I went down there in the first place and leaving a LAM behind on the wall where he appears. I was probably supposed to do something with the electrified rails and such, but my way is funnier, albeit in a scripted-event breaking sort of way (the LAM detonates and kills him before his lengthy, gloating speech, which then happens anyway).

Finally, the cyberdemon and giant spider thing from Dooms I and II respectively are certainly "memorable" though not especially "good".

Definitley agree on R-type, especially the ship on level 3. The entire level is the boss.

The cyberdemon in Doom was great, I liked the way you heard it before seeing it.
*THUNK**THUNK**THUNK*
"Oh man, What the hell is that?"

And the battle at the end of Final Fantasy 7 for the illogical but hugely entertaining concept of your enemy detonating the sun in a supernova, just to give your heroes a bit of a scalding.


Oh, and yeah, how come magazines hate Jedi Outcast so much. I really enjoyed it (after a configuring the force powers to be at least vaguely accessible)

Great topic BTW

Though I haven't played Outcast I have heard the phrase "sniper level" mentioned many times.

Gahh, the cyberdemon, how the hell did I forget that!

Oh and of course Wolfenstein... the minigun guy, and of course the fuhrer himself.

Freespace deserves a mention here too, the last boss type ship battle was great. Sidenote: Freespace 2 brilliant. Play.

I remember Wizpig form Diddy Kong Racing, truly a terrifying boss.

Also trying to beat Gruntilda from Banjo Kazooie was a pain in the arse.

the mine cart tunnel boss on gunstar heroes was great. especially when it turned into a gun :)

Heh I was going to do a similar topic today!

My FAVOURITE boss is King Bowser from Yoshi's Island. The hardest boss would probably be Mizar from Jet Force Gemini.


giant_frying_pan

I think the most memorable boss was liquid snake in metal gear solid. It was class (thats the fist fight and the chase)

The final boss on Death Egg in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Mega Drive was 'awesome', and almost impossible for me in my youth. What, NO RINGS?!

Fighting Don Niu on the top of the Yellow Head Bldg with Lan Di watching from the helicopter on Shenmue II was pretty awe inspiring too.

Mother Brain in Super Metroid.

All of R-Type's bosses were incredible.

Shadow Link and Ganondorf from Zelda OOT were both good.

I felt sooo proud when I did both of those, especially the Shenmue 2 boss as I did it all perfectly on my first try, QTEs and all.

That bit where Ryo is walking along and ten thugs attack only to get the hell kicked out of them is also a rather unbelievably good-looking (where he spins on his head with his feet flailing to nob some fella running by) QTE.

I think Ripley from the SNES Metroid was the hardest and most rewarding, especially when he flickers off screen.

That who Yellow Head episode is a huge "gaming moment" for me.

that boss on the roof was indeed great. but really everything about both shenmue games was completely fantastic.

You won't believe this, but when I first did Grunty, I didn't have double health. Also when I got to the Jinjonator bit I fired eggs into the holes one at a time! So for every egg I fired she then went balistic chucking bombs at me! 4*4 = 16 times that happened. I kid you not.

The whale in New Zealand Story, probably because it was the first game boss I saw at the age of 5 and because loads of people got stuck on it.

Erm... Giygas in Earthbound. Really really creepy.

Gruntilda gets the nod for being hard as nails, yep.

And Bowser at the end of Yoshi's Island. That looked so great at the time, and the fight at the end of Yoshi's Story managed to be rather disappointing by comparison, despite having all that 64-bit might chucked at it.

New Zealand story! I'd completely forgotten about that. I loved that game.

Gruntilda was difficult, no doubt about it.

I seem to remember the T 1000 was stupidly difficult in Terminator 2 towards the end, at least on the Spectrum.

I also seem to recall Midnight Resistance had some pretty nasty bosses.

I used to love the bosses in Carrier Arwing, specially the big robot walking thing.

The dragon in Phantasy Star Online was very memorable too.

Ooh Contra, the fricking last boss in Contra was a right git

Thats all for now.

B-K was excellent, once that big stone Jinjo was off it really did feel like the end of the game.

B-T end boss was...ok.


giant_frying_pan

The fight on top of the building in Shenmue II was excellent, of course.

Also good was the Doomsday Zone in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, with Hyper Sonic nonchalantly smashing his way through asteroids.

Also! Ico's final boss was a bit too easy, but I liked the graphical effects. Does this make me a bad person?

Hardest: Well, Mizar in JFG was pretty difficult, but in a "can't figure out how" way. The twin praying mantises were much more unpleasant in my opinion. I distinctly remember emptying absolutely every single weapon I had at those things and being reduced to killing them with the blaster or something.

Most of the bosses in Ikaruga are pretty spectacular and a great challenge to go up against. The penultimate boss of chapter 5, with the spinning ball for a body, sticks out in my mind.

Ganondorf in Wind Waker. Now that felt like a proper battle!

The final boss in Gungage was a bitch. And pretty much every Parodius boss has been memorable for one reason or another (usually just due to their fucked up Japanese weirdness), especially Sexy Parodius's Raccoon with Huge Testicles. And the mermaid from Gokujou Parodius/Fantastic Journey, because you have to look at her tits to see when she's about to attack. And Capuccino, the big pillow thing (also from Gokujou) that just shoots powerups at you. I could go on, but... I won't.

The last boss of Chrono Trigger is all right. Especially when newcomers will constantly smack the middle part and scream, 'Why it no dying?', when the main part looks far less significant.

And Kid Chameleon had pretty scary bosses.

Ah, Wizpig took me absolutely ages to beat. It was one of the most satisfying feelings when I finally did it though.

Banjo-Kazooie was lovely, and Grunty was indeed a fine boss. Was Banjo-Tooie any good? For some reason despite my fondness of the first game, I never felt the urge to pick the sequel up. Everything about it looked so... bland.

for those that like their shooter's, i'd recommend rRootage - a shootemup of nothing but great boss fights! its a bit of an abstract one graphics wise, but definitely worth a play ;)



other than that, you gotta love those bosses on Sega's Nights into Dreams :)

christ, none of you bothered to mention M. Bison? lazy sods...

M. Bison was a doddle.

Like I said above, it was good but not great. Not worth the effort completing the game, to be honest.

It was fun though.


giant_frying_pan

I found a nice glitch in defeating M.Bison (Difficulty 8) with strechy no-hoper Dhalsim:

Jump and do a spiral headbutt thingy, follow by a Yoga Flambé (read: Flame) on touchdown.

Anyway, how about a list of "most disappointing bosses"? One for me includes that guy in Shenmue who continually says "Lan-di-sama will reward me greatly etc eee". You know, the little freaky dude.

Most disappointing boss ever: Baby Bowser in Yoshi's S***y.

2nd most disappointing boss ever: Bowser in Super Mario Sunshine.


giant_frying_pan

I don't like the way the bosses in Tenchu 3 work. It's terribly disappointing to stealthy ninja Grand Master your way all through the mission, only to be faced by a cutscene where you're standing around the middle of the room like a fool and have to fight one on one (or sometimes several on one). I would've liked to have at least the possibility of killing by stealth (y'know, like it says on the front of the box, an' all) even if they'd made it tremendously difficult to avoid a direct confrontation, because when it turns into a beat 'em up, it turns rubbish.

Gunman Chronicles had probably the most disappointing bosses ever - I was expecting some of the cunning imagination of Half-Life and Opposing Forces (what with it using the same game engine) but got a big blobby thing that crawls away after five minutes or so to get shot by a big robot and another robot that you aren't actually allowed to fight, instead getting to shoot some of the most basic monster types in the game while another robot does the job for you.

Oh, another good boss was Mundus from the original Devil May Cry (as opposed to the skanky sequel, which nearly made me cry).

Secound samuri on the amiga had some of my fave boses. The way the fights worked were very inventive eg there was this skelaton you had to flick a switch to drop a heavy object on him. My fave in that game was the big head thing that you had to shoot balls at by hitting them with your sword. Ocaria of time has my fave 3d boses really making use of the fact the game was 3d to have monsters that were really big rather than just as big as the screen. All the boses in yoshi's story were a disapiontment to me. The rest of the game is ace though. Oh yeah and the dead rat boss in apidya is my all time fave boss of any game.

"shin akuma"
oh man