Awesome Bosses/Other Games

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  • The Rancor in Lego Star Wars 2. It was awesome. Also, Two Vaders!.
    • The big finale of the original trilogy. You fight Palpatine, with all his crazy acrobatic skills displayed in Revenge of the Sith. Oh, and to make it fit with the co-op gameplay style? Vader achieves his redemption a little earlier and teams up with his son to fight the Emperor. That's right, two generations of Skywalkers dueling against the Big Bad of the whole Star Wars saga. They changed it, now it's awesome.
    • Another cool boss fight in Lego games would be Kraken in Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean.
      • From the same game, Blackbeard. The way you fight him is also pretty dang unique (using the Fountain Of Youth's waters to give his health to his dying daughter).
  • "You are, all of you, vermin. Cowering in the dirt, thinking...what, I wonder? That you might escape the coming fire? No. Your world will burn until its surface is but glass, and not even your Demon will live to creep, blackened from its hole, to mar the reflection of our passage. The culmination of our Journey, for your destruction is the will of the gods! And I? I am their instrument!" Coolest. Quote. Ever.
    • The Scarab Battle from Halo 2. While not technically a boss, when combined with the bgm, and all the other marines rallying behind Master Chief, bringing it down is surely an ego boost for many.
      • This is followed up in Halo 3, where there are no less than three Scarab battles, which combine both Best Boss Ever and Best Level Ever in varying amounts. You get to fight a Scarab on ATVs with Rocket Launchers, then you get to fight a Scarab at the conclusion of a massive tank battle. What could possibly top that? Oh yeah, fighting two Scarabs in the midst of a massive aerial battle.
      • For added awesome in the dual-Scarab battle, play with a friend and have him pilot a Hornet while you jump into a passenger seat. When he flies over one of the Scarabs, bail out and jump right on top of the beast. With luck, the guards on the Scarab will be too busy firing at the Marines above and below them to notice and you can slip right by them and take out the core with relative ease. Have them extract you off of the roof of the Scarab as it melts down or the ground after you jump off and repeat...
      • The last boss, 343 Guilty Spark, for the sole reason that he's an annoying fuck and lasering him was one of the most satisfying acts ever.
      • Halo 2 has Tartarus, Cheiftain of the Brutes. He's an 8 foot tall gorilla with a really bad temper, who is ledding an entire race of crazy apes with nail guns but he has more than a nail gun, instead he has a huge-assed hammer which sends enemies 50 meters away and his energy shield is almost indestructible, it takes three shots from a beam sniper to take it down and you still just has three seconds to shoot him as much as possible before the shield is back online.
  • Speaking of which, pretty much every one in Shadow of the Colossus. This is, after all, the game that named the Colossus Climb.
    • Nearly every colossus in the game was pants-wettingly awesome, but in particular battle with the 13th colossus. A simply gigantic flying serpent which soars over the desert, you have to puncture the three gas sacks on its underside with arrows to cause it to lose altitude until its fins are trailing along the ground. Then you have to chase it down on your horse until you're riding alongside one of its fins, leap from your speeding horse onto the fin and climb up the fin until the colossus returns to the sky again. Running along its massive back towards it vulnerable points as it soars hundred of meters in from the ground is an incredible thrill.
    • The 13th colossus is also notable for how emotionally powerful the fight is. While all the other Colossus to some degree fought back and thus you could always see them as enemies, the 13th Colossus never fights back at all. He runs from you frantically the whole fight, trying to escape the desert bowl he seems to be trapped in, really hammering in the My God, What Have I Done? theme of killing the Colossi.
      • Not to mention that Phalanx (the 13th Colossus) is physically the largest Colossus, not counting Malus (the last one).
    • Search YouTube for Avion, otherwise known as Colossus #5, and you might find a particular stunt where the player hangs from one wing, waits for the colossus to bank sharply in one direction, then drops straight down and grabs hold of the other wing without even touching the main body. Also, it's relatively easy to leap from the body almost to the tip of the tail in one jump when the colossus is flying straight, since you have strong air currents at your back.
      • That stunt is masterfully performed here. The player's other videos are worth watching, as she's recorded all the battles and perfectly showcased just how awesome every boss fight in the game happens to be.
    • The final colossus is a titanic and menacing colossus fought on a stormy night, which hurls devastating bolts of energy at you from range. You have dash from cover to cover and dive into trenches even to approach it, then you have to climb it. And while the entire game is about climbing colossi, this is almost unquestionably the greatest challenge in the game- it's not as much of a puzzle as some of the other colossi, it's simply hard- and unbelievably awesome. He also has some of the most epic music in the history of epic music in the entertainment industry.
      • It's even more intense if you decide to ditch the whole cover thing and do this.
  • Uzuki and Kariya in The World Ends With You. Their fighting style is similar to yours, right down to having a light puck and fusion, and the rock music in the background is excellent.
    • Although to some people they were That One Boss, thanks to Beat's lousy defense.
    • Also, Draco Cantus is pretty awesome. It's the only one-player fight in the game, because your partners are part of it, and once you get its health down to zero, Neku and his partners do a four-way fusion, at which point he summons a giant Player Pin symbol and fires a Wave Motion Beam from it.
      • The aforementioned boss also fires so many fireballs that the DS literally lags a bit trying to keep up. You feel a bit Badass just having beaten it... unless you eventually get frustrated enough to hit "retry on Easy" since switching to Normal would have meant fighting the two preceding boss fights again.
    • SO ZETTA SLOW!
    • The Giant Bat on Day 2 of Week 3. Mainly because of the hunter/hunted relationship it has with Neku when the bats on the top screen are covering up the stage lights, then the utter pwnage of pummeling it to death once the lights are on. A nice change of pace after getting That One Boss after That One Boss.
      • This one also counts for another reason, since it's an upgrade of the first true 'boss' Noise you fought way back in early week 1. Back then, You had only half a clue what's going on, a few weak pins, no stat-ups, and you were still coming to terms with the combat system, creating a grueling fight out of something you know should be simple. When you see this thing again, you have a full suite of high-level abilities, stats that look much more impressive both on paper and in practice, and you've got combat down pat. Fighting this thing again on proper terms is very satisfying.
    • Panthera Cantus in Another Day. A very challenging fight and a test of your skill without being a Marathon Boss.
  • La-Mulana gives us Tiamat, the Guardian of the Dimensional Corridor. She continuously generates Goddamned Bats to slow you down, has an attack in which she whips out her hair in all directions, a tail whip attack that can chop off a good chunk of life, and gives you a split second to hit her face before she changes direction, should you choose to battle her the hard way (without getting on the infinity symbol you can generate onto her and stabbing her with the knife over and over). Her battle is more less the game's equivalent of Castlevania's Death, and it certainly helps that she has one of the most badass boss themes to grace video games.
    • Viy is worth a mention just for the giant laser Eye Beams out of nowhere. They strike quickly, fill 2/3 of the screen, destroy platforms, and even vaporize the little helper demons keeping his eye open. The HSQ goes through the roof during that fight. Also, he finally makes the otherwise useless throwing knives useful.
    • From the earlier part of the game, Ellmac surely counts. Not particularly hard, he's a giant frilled lizard that chases after you in a Minecart Madness segment with an awesome musical theme while you shoot shurikens in his mouth.
    • Sakit, despite being a very difficult "Wake-Up Call" Boss, still deserves a mention. You're fighting a fifty-foot tall giant statue, armed with little more than a whip and a knife, while one of the game's best boss themes plays in the background. If you can get past the step up in difficulty, it's a fun fight.
  • The Boss fight against Sakaki in .hack//GU is very cathartic, and was a tough fight that makes you glad you were badass enough to beat the shit out of this creep.
    • The crown jewel of GU's boss fights, though, is undoubtedly the Cubia Core, especially if you don't go overboard on level grinding beforehand. The intensity never lets up thanks to the never-ending tide of respawning gomoras, which can do quite a bit to keep you from doing significant damage to the arms or the core and turn the fight into a frantic battle of attrition demanding every single trick in the book for you to come out on top, all the while your ears are assailed by the mind-numbingly awesome tunes of Full Force. It more than makes up for the crap boss fights and pathetic combat system of the original quartet all by itself.
      • Also, series-wise, Cubia was the entity that was stated to be invincible as long as the Key of the Twilight exists; not even Kite could beat it.
    • The several boss fights against Ovan... especially the final one where everything is unraveled, and the incredible amount of emotion displayed afterward. Truly a hard-won and well-worth it battle.
    • Azure Kite is always a blast. Especially the final duel against him and the other Azure Knights in Redemption. You are fighting the digital reincarnations of Kite, Orca, and Balmung, in the Hulle Granz Cathedral, with Azure Kite's amazingly epic Leitmotif playing throughout.
  • Super Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: The Manhattan Project.
    • Even cooler in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Turtles in Time, when he turns into a teleporting magic ninja capable of shooting trails of flame, crescents of ice, and an instant-kill bubble shot that de-mutates the turtles. Yes, he only has three attacks, but his life bar is huge and he moves fast. All those years of calling themselves Ninja Turtles finally comes to fruition, as the fight moves at blinding speed.
  • God Hand is basically MADE of Best Bosses Ever. It's also made of That One Boss. Whimper.
    • Any fight with Azel is awesome thanks to his kickass theme music and the ability to get into a pummel duel with him. Try thinking ATATATATATATATATATA or ORAORAORAORAORAORA for maximum effect. Elvis, while difficult, is still the best boss fight ever. Fuck yes.
  • God of War II has the Colossus of Rhodes. It's as awesome as it sounds. It's also the first boss, and the game only gets more epic from there.
    • This comic perfectly sums up the general feel of the situation.
    • The boss fights of are pretty much Kratos writing a The Bride-style list from a mythology textbook and working his way through it. Perseus, Theseus, The Kraken, Icarus...the list of mythological figures cut down by our favorite Complete Monster Badass goes on and on. And he's not even halfway done yet.
    • The first boss fight in the entire series is fairly epic. Fighting a hydra by pinning two of its heads into the deck of a ship, then slicing the hell out of the remaining central head until you use your chain-blades to haul it down and impale it on the jagged spike at the top of the mast is awesome. And you do this in the first level of the first game—you just know you're in for a good time after that. Also the fight against the giant minotaur was extremely cool, especially catapulting a huge burning battering ram into its chest cavity and nailing it to the wall. While these might seem less impressive these days in light of the amazing boss battles from its two sequels, these were Crazy Awesome at the time.
    • The final battle against Peresephone in Chains of Olympus is similarly awe-inspiring. You're fighting the goddess of the underworld inside the tower that holds the world together. At one point, you even have to scale Atlas himself when Peresephone knocks you out of the tower.
    • III naturally starts on a high, if wet note with Poseidon. Not the dude covered in Tron Lines from the previous game, but a huge construct of rock and seawater you have to fight with Gaia's help, culminating in riding a Megaton Punch from Gaia to force Poseidon out, and then beating him to death from his Point of View.
    • Also in God Of War III, killing Chronos. Yes, the guy who was in the first game. Yes, the guy who's WAY bigger than the other titans. And you do it KEEPING YOUR HUMAN SIZE.
      • Cronos thinks he won after he eats you. Really, you wanted to be eaten to retrive the Omphalos Stone from his stomach. How do you get out of his stomach? You DISEMBOWEL him. More specifically, you drive the Blade of Olympus through his flesh, slice him open, and jump out while his intestines are falling out of his body. Afterwards, just for pissing off Kratos, you smash the crystal spike keeping Pandora's Temple chained to his back and drive it into his lower jaw to get up to his head, then stab the Blade into his forehead.
    • Also also from the third game is Hades. Let's do the short version: you duel the King of the Underworld inside his own palace, literally ripping pieces of flesh off his body and trashing the palace in the process. This leads to a tug-of-war - with the River Styx as the boundary. Once you pull Hades in, you obtain his magical chain-claws...but then the Lord of Death returns once more, so ravaged by your assault that his skull is sticking out of his flesh. After giving him a few more good hits, you sink his own weapon into him and tear his soul right out of his body and absorb it, leaving his body to rot in the Styx as the souls of the dead fly back to the mortal world.
    • The final boss fight with Zeus, even though nobody gets giant, is possibly the most truly epic boss in the entire series, as much for the mechanics of the fight which demand you pull out every trick in your arsenal as for the drama that unfolds in tandem with it: Pandora's sacrifice, Gaia's return, and the creepy blacklight sequence in which Kratos finally forgives himself for his sins. Truly the momentous send-off the series deserved.
    • Also, Erinys in Ghost of Sparta. After seeing all what she did to your soldiers?! Sweet revenge!
    • Then there's her father, Thanatos. After rescuing Deimos and giving him the Arms of Sparta, Kratos joins him to fight the God of Death. Deimos is eventually killed by Thanatos during the fight. You almost feel bad for what's about to happen to Thanatos after that. But it was awesome.
  • Although it was the only boss fight in the game, the battle between Ico and the Shadow Queen in ICO was immensely gripping and tense, right up to the moment when Ico drove the spirit sword right into her dark heart!
  • Lou from Guitar Hero 3, if only because you feel like the world's biggest Badass after beating him. And you fight to "the Devil Went Down to Georgia" and they bleep out the cuss word. And when you beat Lou, you get to play a minute-long solo whilst he just stands there, utterly defeated and reduced to name-calling. Then, at the end, the game utters these final words: "YOU ARE A ROCK GOD!" As if that wasn't enough, you fly up to Heaven on winged motorcycles and play Dragon Force (video game) whilst the credits roll.
  • Saturos and Menardi from Golden Sun. After all of the hype, you finally get to see what they're capable of. Of course, they live up to and beyond expectations. The following battle crosses into That One Boss territory though...
    • Saturos alone atop the Mercury Lighthouse, not only is the battle simply amazing, but the battle theme that accompanies it should be considered the national anthem for boss battle music.
    • Agatio and Karst atop Jupiter Lighthouse from the sequel. They split your party, and the first few turns are struggling to survive. When your party is complete, the battle turns barely in your favor. Barely. Made more epic by the fact that this is one of two battles in the game in which losing doesn't make you have to start over.
    • The mark of a great boss is that he's hard to beat, but doesn't use any cheap tactics that you can't counter. By giving external mechanism for his various tricks, the Star Magician made for a great battle—balancing warding off his Star Ball attack and wailing on whichever ball was most dangerous (Refresh first, then Guard, then get any Anger balls before they selfdestruct; leave thunders alone so the magician can't spawn more of them) made for a great battle. The other two guardian bonus bosses, Sentinel and Valukar, were also fun (although Valukar using our Djinn summons against us was pretty cheap.) Dullahan, the final bonus boss? Um, No.
    • Unfortunately, Blados and Chalis don't quite live up to the hype—their fight is certainly awesome, but just doesn't live up to Golden Sun standards of awesome... especially since they're following some pretty epic boss fights. If you liked Star Magician, try Sludge, a (surprisingly sympathetic) disfigured crocodilian nightmare beast with similar allies and combat strategies. If you'd rather pluck the feathers of divinity, try the Mountain Roc...
  • The dragon bosses from Legend of the Dragoon, not only was the divine dragon incredibly difficult since you couldn't use dragoons, but the sea dragon is awesome for its sheer massiveness.
    • The Virage in the Valley of Corrupted Gravity. The Crowning Music of Awesome is horribly desperate, and makes you think you're about to lose no matter how well you're doing. Every Virage is kind of a Crowning Boss, actually.
  • In Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, your first encounter with the Sinistral Gades, Master of Destruction is meant to be a Hopeless Boss Fight. If you encounter him normally he'll kill half your party with his first attack and cripple the other half- your chances of lasting more than 3 turns are practically nil. However he is beatable if you level grind considerably. Beatable, but never easy- if you put on about an extra 5 or 6 levels (about 3–4 hours of solid grinding) and apply a very tricky strategy revolving around predicting his actions you can (assuming your luck holds) survive against him long enough to chip away at his massive amount of HP and eventually beat him. This is not only immensely satisfying, it also makes it an incredibly tense and fun encounter.
  • SaGa Frontier - Metal Black 3. Especially if Red learned Al-Phoenix before fighting him, then after Metal Black 3 uses Dark Phoenix, when Red uses Al-Phoenix again it becomes an even stronger version of that attack called Rei-Al-Phoenix. Bonus Points if Metal Black 3 uses Dark Phoenix on Red, makes it seem more rewarding.
  • Lord Bane of Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords: He will kick your ass fast. He will kick your ass hard, with 4 devastating spells, each requiring only 5 of one type of mana. So when you manage to return the favor, the sense of satisfaction is major. Particularly if you didn't take time out to load up on uber-spells like Berserk Rage, Stone Gaze, and/or Death Gaze.
  • Ricardo Di­az from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Boy, is he Made of Iron (it takes 5 headshots with the sniper rifle to take him out!), but the resulting scene is so awesome it's well worth the pain.
    • And in San Andreas, the run-and-gun chase through the streets of Los Santos against Samuel L. Jackson's Dirty Cop, Officer Tenpenny.
  • Zone of the Enders has a few awesome boss fights to its name.
    • Nohman and Anubis from Zone of the Enders 1 and 2, mostly by benefit of his world class buildup. You first meet him at the end of the first game, and in a stunningly unexpected sequence he beats the hero. Soundly. He then appears right at the beginning of the second game to do the same to the new main character. As a result you're really spoiling for battle by the time the final boss fight against him starts up... only to find out that said boss fight is really against your girlfriend in an remotely controlled Anubis mock up. The real Anubis then appears behind you and instantly takes out the hero of the first game in a really cheap sneak attack before squaring off against the player in a final showdown... and he shoots you with an orbital cannon. What follows is undoubtedly the two most satisfying boss fights in gaming history, where you finally get to beat the crap out of the guy (in a heavily damaged mech no less).
      • Then you get an upgrade that essentially makes Jehuty the Humongous Mecha equivalent of a Physical God, after which you get a playable sequence in which waves of enemies that were previously a challenge (including multiple clones of a boss you had to fight three times to finally kill) come at you and you rip them apart like so much papier mache, and then fight Nohman, who got a similar upgrade, inside aumaan itself. ZOE 2 ending, pretty much one long CMOA...
      • Not to mention the fact that both of you are now capable of Teleport Spam, which makes the last fight one long frantic slugfest where you're both teleporting all over the place while you beat the crap out of him.
    • Halfway through the second Zone of the Enders game, one enters a mech fight against Vic Viper. Yes, THAT Vic Viper.
    • Also worthy of mention are Inhert, where half of the fight is conducted in pitch darkness, and Zakat, the planetoid-sized genocidal superweapon.

Dingo: "That's no warship... that's an ORBITAL FRAME!"

  • Shoot'Em Ups don't usually lend themselves as much to Crowning Moments Of Awesome as other genres... but the last stage of RefleX definitely qualifies. In the previous stage, you have acquired Angelic Wings that turn your ship into an Infinity Plus One Spaceship, and fought off an angelic Humongous Mecha, and retired peacefully... except that then, you're called for a last battle. A free-for-all deathmatch battle in Earth's orbit against the new model of said previous mecha... and two freaking Kamui fighters with all the artillery from the previous game!, all the while a a rock-powered chanting blares in the background.
    • To elaborate further on the sheer epic of that duel: stage 7 is basically one long boss fight against Raiwat Virgo (angelic Humongous Mecha), in which, partway through, the boss delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that even your reflection shield-equipped fighter cannot possibly withstand, then the Eleventh-Hour Superpower comes into play and you gain the ability to survive just about everything the increasingly-desperate Virgo throws at you, including the aforementioned beatdown, and Wave Motion Gun blasts so huge that they cover the screen! Stage 8, described above, just increases the awesome further.
    • On the subject of Kamui: ALLTYNEX. A Master Computer that appears to also be a Reality Warper, as it teleports you to other arenas and summons lesser bosses to fight you before engaging you directly by creating colorful hexagons that fire various weapons at you. Plus the boss itself looks really cool and has Crowning Music of Awesome playing in the background.
  • Allen O'Neal from Metal Slug has come back to life three times throughout the course of the series, and is fun each time, especially in Metal Slug 2, where he falls off of the cliff and is eaten by an orca, which spits his bones out of the water afterward. The complete randomness of the scene made it that much more awesome. "Come on, boy!"
    • A majority of final bosses from Metal Slug could fall under this, such as the massive battle against the Martian Mothership where you team up with the enemy army in Metal Slug 2/X, the grueling freefall battle against Rootmarks, the leader of the Marspeople in Metal Slug 3, and the colossal, two-screen tall, unnamed demon presumably summoned by the cult/terrorist group you've been fighting throughout the game in Metal Slug 5. The fact that they're all accompanied by Crowning Music of Awesome , especially in the case of 5, doesn't hurt either.
    • Allen O'Neal is even more awesome than before in Metal Slug 7, wherein you have a giant robot duel with him set to the hardcore Assault theme.
      • Playing the third Training Mode (ie, Challenge Mode) version of that fight has you fight him on foot. Man vs mech.
  • The first fight with Nelo Angelo (a.k.a. Vergil) in Devil May Cry. His introduction is badass as all hell, and after That One Boss Phantom, a down-and-dirty sword fight is just the thing to cleanse the system.

Dante: This stinking hole was the last place I ever expected to find anybody with some guts.

    • Every one of the Nelo fights, actually. Most DMC bosses that you face like to do patterns on you. Nelo fights like you, can do moves like you, and if you are not at the very top of your game, he will hand you your ass. Especially during the final showdown with him, where he brings those swords into play.
    • For that matter, any time Dante, Vergil or Nero crosses swords with another human-sized, humanoid enemy, including each other, the resulting fight is guaranteed to be awesome.
      • The second duel with Vergil in DMC 3 deserves special mention, because you and your opponent are essentially equally matched. Both the player and the boss have two weapons they can swap between to create combos, both have ranged attacks, both have Style-based abilities and both have access to the Devil Trigger for a temporary boost in stats and some health regeneration. But because Vergil (on most difficulties) does more damage and has more health, it's up to Dante (i.e. the player) to outwit and have better reflexes than his rival.
  • Speaking of Capcom games, the Onimusha series has several that are worth mentioning. Fortinbras, the final boss from the first game is a fantastic battle against a demon version of A God Am I. If you were lucky enough to grab the Bishamon Sword beforehand, you're in for a real treat.
    • Following that, all three Gogandantess fights from the second game qualify but the third Onimusha game is where the boss fights really shine. Not only do you finally get to fight Guildenstern, a bad guy who you've wanted to slice and dice for three games straight, but also Lord Nobunaga. Twice in a human(ish) form and once more in a "One Winged Demon" form. The only time you and he went head-to-head previously was in a single demon form in the previous game before you fought a giant golden statue that fired spiky masks at you.
    • The fourth game has his share of epic bosses, paired with Crowning Music of Awesome. The very first boss battle consist in Soki curb-stomping a Giant Mecha Demon with Cannons in his chest and a Big Fucking Sword while Soki's epic Leitmotif plays.
    • Dulcis in Fundo: Fortinbras the God of Light. You have to take down his gargantuan, White Serpent form first using the powers of the God of Darkness while flying in the air and slashing him with his sword. The following battle with his human avatar is probably the most difficult and awesome fight of the series.
  • Gunstar Green from Gunstar Heroes. First you fight against him and the huge transforming Seven Force robot in an epic high-speed underground battle. Then a reprisal battle against him with you at the helm of a massive, heavily-armed spaceship. Finally, he faces the heroes mano-a-mano, taking on both gun-wielding heroes with his bare hands and actually kicking your asses around the map if you don't stay sharp. Throughout it all he's never less than poised and in control, coolly acknowledging your victory even as his mecha explodes around him.
    • The Seven Force fight gets better on higher difficulties. Seven Force always starts in the human-shaped Solider Force...but on Easy, you fight two more forms after that, four more in Normal, and on Hard Mode you fight a grueling marathon battle against all seven forms, each with about as much health to them as Pink's mecha in one of the other stages. All this, and you fight him while riding a gravity-defying mine-cart, constantly worrying about whether you should be clinging to the floor or the ceiling to avoid the myriad attacks of each form.
      • The GBA sequel Gunstar Super Heroes pretty much reprises all of this, except in the rematch with Green, he doesn't hesitate to use his Seven Force forms mid-battle. The end result? A ninja teleporting behind your back, turning into a giant urchin, rolling at you, then leaping into the air and transforming into a giant crossbow. It's extremely hectic, pushes the system itself to its limits, and the whole fight is framed by a minimalistic, yet heroic, theme.
  • Zed and Boomerang from Wild ARMs, mostly for theme music (in the remake, Wild Arms: Alter Code F, said themes were made worse and better, respectively).
    • And in Zed's case, because the man sure knows how to make an entrance.
  • The Final Boss, Lord Blazer, of Wild ARMs 2, which combines Crowning Moment of Awesome, Crowning Music of Awesome, The Power of Friendship, Combined Energy Attack, Duel Boss, and Climax Boss into one incredible experience.
  • Nega Filgaia, the final boss in Wild ARMs 3. THIRTEEN consecutive forms each with their own ability, strengths and weaknesses. Unless you have Violators, this is an epic battle that will test your endurance and skill to their very limits. Good luck - you will need it.
  • Adahan from Ristar, another example of the sheer fun resulting from fighting in an endless vertical shaft, with the bonus of showing up early enough to take on before the game gets hard enough that you really wish you could save your game or earn a password...
    • How about Automaton's boss? It's against a large, brutish, ogre-like alien with cyber-armor. No stategies here, just headbutt! Occasionally, he faints, and you have to headbutt a CRANE ARM to cause damage to it. About halfway through the fight, it even shoots HADOUKENS at you!
    • Even better is the final boss, Kaiser Greedy, who throws bullet-shooting drones and red versions of the mushroom-like enemies seen throughout the game, black balls with eyes that can only be described as enemies' CORPSES, nigh-unavoidable lightning strikes, and even rips open one hit kill black holes. And you can avoid being sucked into them. Did I mention that you're a cute little star with stretchy arms and sneakers? AND YOU WIN?
  • The battle against The Great Mighty Poo in Conker's Bad Fur Day, a giant, opera-singing pile of crap.
    • If you can think of another song that has the term 'chocolate starfish' in its lyrics...
  • The fight (in a sense) with GLaDOS at the end of Portal.
    • The dialogue in that fight's the icing on the you-know-what.
    • The fight with GLaDOS at the end of the Prelude mod is even more epic, spanning the entire building and not featuring one god damn Nintendo Hard fling puzzle (the same, sadly, could not be said of the rest of the mod).
    • For that matter, the "fight" at the end of Portal 2, which, if it doesn't top the original, at least is just as awesome. Especially the ending. Lunacy.
  • The final portion of the Chapter 5 boss, Tageri, in Ikaruga. The most awesome instance of Playing Tennis With the Boss ever.
  • Gigyas in EarthBound. In its third and final form, your party cannot defeat it on their own. In an interesting twist on breaking the fourth wall, you, the player, kill Giygas with the final attack.
    • To elaborate: Paula has already reached out to everyone the party met on Earth, but Giygas hasn't been defeated. She prays again, but she doesn't know who else to reach out to. Her call is absorbed by the darkness because you're fighting Giygas, the embodiment of evil itself, in a dimension of absolute darkness. Paula prays one last time for someone to help them; the player, yes, you, the person playing the game, begins to pray for them and destroys Giygas.
    • So many bosses in Mother3. Whether it was Li'l Miss Marshmallow "spilling hot tea" on you or Lord Passion "making you cry by playing a sad song", almost all the bosses are worth mentioning!
      • The entire final Boss Rush. First, you go up against the Natural Killer Cyborg, an enemy so massive its sprite completely fills up the screen. Then, you go through the Porky Bots, a horde of minibosses. Then, you come up against Porky himself, who you've undoubtedly wanted to beat up ever since you found out he was behind everything (and is gloriously hard to boot). Finally, you get to the final boss, who is covered below.
      • Though not actually a boss, Negative Man. Moreover, like Mother 2 before it, the game featured a unique final boss. In it, the rest of your team is incapacitated, leaving you to face the Masked Man, your brother, Claus, one on one. Any attempt to attack him is made impossible, as Lucas can't bring himself to attack his brother. Claus continues to attack you, though, so you must guard at every turn to slow down the damage ticker, and heal whenever your health gets too low. Over time, your deceased mother reaches out to the two of you and asks Claus to stop his assault. Claus continues to attack, but his attack strength decreases as he gradually uses weaker and weaker PSI attacks. Eventually, he dies when a lightning PSI attack is reflected off of your Franklin Badge and strikes him. Commence horribly heartrending ending.
  • Any game where Akuma is a boss usually has a fun, albeit difficult fight with him. Akuma's AI is noted to be the one most similar to a real human player's, so the challenge comes from outfoxing him.
  • Destroying Savato in Trauma Center: Second Opinion. The level is hell in the DS version, but on the Wii it's not only made easier (that is, beatable) but significantly more fun, and still presents a good challenge.
    • Similarly, Cardia from New Blood. Not particularly hard, but the fact that it transforms into a glowing jellyfish monster right on cue to the Ominous Latin Chanting just seals the deal.
  • Honestly, ANY multiplayer-focused FPS with a Duel Boss botmatch at high difficulty is the nexus of both powerful That One Boss and Best Boss Ever feelings. On the one hand, the repeated drubbings you get tend to feel pretty cheap, on the other, actually beating them DOES make you feel God-Like.
  • Ugh-Zan III, the final boss of Serious Sam: The First Encounter. He's 330 feet tall and has rocket launchers and laser rifles the size of buildings! And the music is pretty epic too.
  • The truly epic final duel against Kyle Katarn on the Dark Side path in Jedi Academy, especially on Jedi Knight difficulty. He was every bit the worthy opponent you'd expect him to be, without being the cheating, overpowered, one-hit-kill murder machine that Desann was in Jedi Outcast.
    • The final battle against Marka Ragnos, the "most powerful Sith Lord evah" was also pretty good. Sure, he had a somewhat annoying instant-heal-to-full-health move (though he can only use it 4 times before running out), but at least he didn't kill you in 1 hit or have an impossible-to-break force choke like Desann did.
  • The first fight against Axel Gear in the original Rocket Knight Adventures. You just spent the entire level being chased by Axel in a giant robot. At the very end of the level, you cross a series of platforms only to be confronted by another robot. Only this one is empty. At which point, It is officially On.
    • That pales in comparison to the last fight against Axel Gear. After an already epic one-on-one, he shatters the spaceship's hull, and you spend the next few minutes duking it out with him while clinging horizontally to a set of exposed plumbing with debris flying past you into vacuum. Your last hit detonates his jetpack, and the screen fades gray as he's flung, trailing fire, into open space in slow motion. It wasn't just an awesome boss, it was a Crowning Moment for the Sega Genesis itself.
      • Then there's the final boss battle against the pig supercomputer. He rolls out a pretty slow series of attacks for awhile, with the music being a rather odd choice for a final battle. After a few hits, though, the supercomputer teleports to the top of the screen, a sped-up version of the normal boss music plays, and the boss starts firing out those slow attacks way faster. After defeating it, the player makes their way to a nearby escape pod out of the space station, and the player is treated to an end-game cutscene of the pod escaping just in time to escape the...wait, what's that behind Sparkster's pod? Oh Crap. Cue the core of the supercomputer chasing you through space itself, with you being defenseless inside your weaponless escape pod. How do you win this battle? The boss is so hell-bent on killing you that it chases you into the atmosphere, where it burns up and explodes due to the heat of re-entry. Yet another Crowning Moment for the Sega Genesis itself.
  • Another Century's Episode 3 features an absolutely incredible final boss battle with the Shin Dragon from Shin Getter Robo Armageddon. This is due, in no small part, to the massive size of the mech and the stage in which you fight it. The Buster Ark from ACE 2 deserves mention as well, quite simply for being the hardest fight in that game by far, as well as the true Final Boss.
    • To explain why the ACE 3 fight was so awesome, it's because you're in between two alternate Earths being pulled towards each other into a collision, and between you and salvation is a city-sized dragon-like mecha who is to scale. And you are to scale, and chances are you might be in a 4 meter tall bug mecha.
  • The final stage of Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 3's Story Mode pits you against the manga's two major characters on one long 25-something-kilometer stretch of the high-speed Wangan Line. By this point your car is powerful enough to blast down the expressway at a constant 340 km/h (211 mph).
  • beatmania IIDX 15 DJ TROOPERS's "Military Splash" extra stages represent your performance in the song with a shooter-like duel with a giant boss figure in the song background window. Hitting notes fires lasers at the boss to deplete its HP, while missing notes causes the boss to hit you. For full effect though, you'll need to be playing one of these songs in Expert mode or with the Hard gauge (both of which make you fail the song if the life gauge falls to 0%), because when you finish the song, the boss dies (regardless of HP left; a full combo will completely reduce it to 0), signifying that you survived the entire song.
  • Even though the rest of the game was okay, the best part in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is the boss fight against an entire FRIGGIN' Star Destroyer.
    • The battle against the Star Destroyer is at least an awesome concept, if executed poorly. Darth Vader, on the other hand, pulled off both concept and execution.
    • Both the Emperor and Darth Vader; you fight the latter at the end, then for your final boss fight you choose between one of them by moving towards and attacking one or the other. Warning: if you choose Vader you not only get the Dark Side ending, but he's Nintendo Hard.
    • In the Play Station 3/Xbox 360 versions only, at the second mission to Raxus Prime, PROXY reveals that he's kept one of his forms hidden for years until just this moment -- Darth FREAKIN' Maul.
  • In Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II, the first time you get to go head-to-head against an insanely huge Star Destroyer in your dinky lil' B-Wing is... memorable to say the least.
    • It gets better. A later mission has you versing two Star Destroyers at the same time, with hordes of TIE fighters exploding everything around you (literally; you and possibly your two wingmates are the only Rebel fighters remaining at the end of the mission). A similar mission in Rogue Squadron III goes even further, tasking you with disabling three Star Destroyers only to launch an attack run against the freaking Executor, a ship at the very least eight times the size of a Star Destroyer, ending with you ramming into it's command bridge, causing it to crash into the Death Star. Absolutely incredible.
    • Two Words: Imperial Walkers. Everything's better with tow cable!
  • The Armada-based Transformers for the PlayStation 2 reminds you of just what "Robots in Disguise" really means in the Mid-Atlantic stage, when the aircraft carrier you've infiltrated turns out to be Tidal Wave.
  • Meanwhile, in War For Cybertron, there's the first boss fight against Trypticon. You're in jet mode, blasting him as he plummets from orbit to crash into Cybertron. In freefall. It was a thing of beauty.
    • Then comes the ACTUAL fight with Trypticon, which is just as awesome. And of course, five levels before in the Decepticon campaign, you have the fight between Megatron and the last line of Autobot defense, Omega Supreme...the game has other bosses besides those two, but they pale in comparison.
  • The fight against Skeith in the first .hack// game. Especially if you've read the books and seen the first anime up to this point. Nobody has ever managed to win against this thing. Skeith is Mind Rape personified, and it requires an entirely new type of playing up to that point. All the Phases after this is just more of the same copying it. Skeith is so badass that the protagonist of the next series is Skeith, more or less.
  • The glorious moment in Half Life 2 where you finally blast the everloving CRAP out of the Combine helicopter that's been dogging you for a level and a half at least. And it's a running battle through AbsurdlySpaciousSewers and wide-open spaces with plenty of eye candy. Oh, and you're riding a hovercraft armed with Frickin' Laser Beams the entire time. INSANITY.
    • The final battle of Episode 2. Easily the most epic encounter in the entire Half Life series.
      • Gordon Freeman versus the Strider Army. Who will win? The fifty-foot tall, heavily armed monstrosities? Or the theoretical physicist?
  • Though the Banjo-Kazooie games have many gloriously surreal moments, the battle against Mr Patch in the second game has got to come tops. In it, you fight a giant, inflatable dinosaur, or "Strange Wobbly Inflatable Thing", as the game puts it with the ability to summon boxing gloves from nowhere, patches you need to blow off with grenades and some of the most wonderfully demented battle music ever. Also, his main attack is to spit exploding beach balls at you. Awesome!
    • The fact that you spend half the boss fight flying doesn't hurt either. But there's also Lord Woo Fak Fak, more fun when you realise you can fight him in submarine mode. And then the final boss, a witch in a giant drill tank who gives you trivia questions in mid-battle! (and the trivia level before as well, with hundreds of questions that stretch your knowledge of the game to the limit)
    • The first time Banjo and Kazooie fought Gruntilda, at the end of the first game, was pretty awesome as well. She has all the tactics of a Final Exam Boss, forcing you to use practically every move you've learned at your disposal just to survive. Including the epic phase of the fight where Banjo and Kazooie take to the sky and dogfight her. And the Jinjonator. Oh dear lord, the Jinjonator.
  • In G-Darius, pick a boss. Any boss. To start, here's Queen Fossil, the boss of Zone Beta.
  • Pikmin 2's battle against the final boss, the Titan Dweevil, which is pretty much a living tank that can shoot fire, water, electricity, and poison.
  • Sheltem from the Might and Magic games is probably one of the most Badass bosses ever. He gloats about being unstoppable, and he's basically right. Your party cannot kill him. If you try, he calls you fools, waves his hand, and you all die. Even if you get around this, you still don't fight him.
  • The Climax Boss battle against Luca Blight in Suikoden II, often voted as one of the most memorable boss battles in RPG history. Finally taking down this psychotic bastard is satisfying enough, but pelting him with countless arrows, battling him three times with three squads of your most powerful characters, pelting him with more arrows, and then defeating him in a one on one duel is just unbelievable.
    • There's also Lord Gorudo, late in the game. After the evil bastard hits Nanami with an arrow, possibly giving her a fatal injury, the hero and his former best friend Jowy, who were enemies but moments ago, are QUITE pissed, and team up to whip his ass to hell and back.
      • Quite literally to hell and back, seeing as Jowy has several attacks that seem rather demonic, thanks to his Black Sword Rune. Attacks that stand out are one that heavily resembles a hellish version of Gilgamesh's Gate Of Babylon. The other attack seems to throw the victim so hard into the Void that Exdeath would be jealous.
  • Trance Dumas in Lunar Knights. He presents an actual challenge (he can drain your health and he's got his own Burst attacks) and his pattern (at the start, at least) mixes it up enough that it doesn't get too repetitive, and if you're smart enough to not hit him rapidly enough to constantly force him into the bat swarm attack that gets faster and spreads further as his health gets lower, you can have a satisfying conclusion to the battle by timing a parry well enough to go * through* the guy.
  • Any game in which the final battle is against the Christian God automatically qualifies, but among the most notable is the one in the first Shadow Hearts game (especially because of Imbroglio.
  • Also in Shadow Hearts was the final Duel Boss against Fox Face, helped a lot by the scene that comes before it. There's also Atman.
    • In Covenant, we have the battle with Astaroth. After a truly awesome Shut UP, Hannibal, "Astaroth", the best song in the game, starts playing and the throwdown begins.
  • In Aquaria, the Sunken City boss (an invulnerable golem with hammers for hands, attended by a hard-to-damage wraith) not only works great as a Puzzle Boss and a normal boss battle, but the music is kick-ass incredible.
    • Aquaria has a few memorable ones, particularly Nautilus Prime, without the Energy Form... or the boss of the Sun Temple. The music for the latter's second form is just that good.
    • Then there's the five-part battle against the final boss, The Creator, who is basically a Physical God. It all culminates with you and your boyfriend facing off against a towering, twisted monstrosity with some of the best music in a game filled with excellent music. The final phase isn't really all that difficult (the hardest part is probably the second phase), but the sheer scope of the battle makes it pure awesome anyway.
  • The huge battle against Kojira at the end of the Japan area in Destroy All Humans 2. First you chase a giant, energy-spewing Godzilla lookalike across the countryside, avoiding its attacks and trying to zap it with your saucer's piddly weaponry before ending up in the middle of the city. You then have to destroy all the buildings in the city before she has a chance to to prevent her from healing while trying to avoid her huge salvos of energy missiles, and then you have to land and chase her about on foot while shooting her with your disintegrator ray. All while the Japanese army is sending out huge battalions of soldiers and laser-equipped tanks to deal with the both of you and your character makes snarky remarks about how unfair her healing is.
  • The third level of R-Type. Yes, the whole level is the boss, and you spend your time flying around blowing bits off it.
    • R-Type was in love with that kind of fight. Stage 4 of Super R-Type is just your small craft flying in and around a giant ship, culminating with a fight against its power supply. R-Type FINAL had Stage 3.0, where you do the same as in the original R-Type, but in 3D (and with all the interesting quirks that that implies), plus this one has a city-destroying laser that sucks you in while it charges. (Of course, you can destroy the laser for some massive points, if you're feeling adventurous.) The boss is, again, the core of the ship, except this one has much more Bullet Hell going for it.
    • Of course, then there's level F-C of R-Type FINAL. It's the best-hidden ending, and...wait, it doesn't have a boss! No matter; what it has instead is the longest and hardest level in R-Type history. Heroic music blares throughout, the story implies you're traveling through time to stop the Bydo before they ever cause the universe any trouble, and your skills will be put to the ultimate test. The lack of a single large enemy might make this fit better under Best Level Ever, except you only get one life. The challenge is above and beyond anything a simple boss could ever provide, exemplified near the halfway point by a HUGE wave of the standard mook spacecraft. It sounds unimpressive, but in-game, it's completely overwhelming to be caught in a huge wave of starfighters for a full minute.
  • No More Heroes, given its boss-centric storyline and gameplay, is loaded with numerous thrilling, quirky fights. Read to follow.
    • Dr. Peace? He stands on the pitching mound of a baseball stadium, effortlessly parrying your lightsaber with his trusty six-shooters, which he also casually fires at you, while music plays which can only be described as 'Wild West Techno.' And his introductory song, his other Crowning Music of Awesome can be played here.
    • Rank 8 boss Shinobu. As the first boss where blindly attacking is a good way to die quickly, the resulting fight is extremely tense and very cool, the majority of which will be spent silently circling your opponent waiting for an opening.
    • Destroyman is a complete psychopath. And he has machine gun nipples, and a crotch cannon. It's no wonder they brought him back in the sequel. The sequel's incarnation, incidentally, takes place in a large warehouse with an upper area, and the boss himself now consists of his two seperated halves.
    • Harvey Moiseiwitsch Volodarskii, a stage magician armed with Dual-Wielding LaserBlades, death traps, and Interface Screw.
    • Speed Buster, sees you in a Ruins for Ruins Sake cleared-out street, and consists of you trying to avoid her insanely powerful weapon by smashing your way into abandoned buildings and edging up, whilst fighting yakuza hitmen, and wrestling her giant laser cannon with your katana, to simply make it to where she stands.
    • Bad Girl from the first game has by far the largest library of attacks in the series (some of which evolve throughout the battle), employs a devious one-hit kill move (which you can turn against her if you know how), summons mooks (by hitting them off of a gimp conveyor belt (!!!), and you can hit them back) and possesses a large enough lifebar for a satisfying battle. She is easily one of the most memorable fights of the entire series,due to both her insanity and her...fascinating visual design.
    • Jeanne is fast to the point of hilarity and can counter your grab moves. She is also one of the only times when charged strikes are really effective.
    • Henry is the exact boss you've been waiting for. A beam claymore, high flying martial arts, plenty of health, and an awesome instant kill. You fight your twin brother as a boss with the same basic attacks.
    • No More Heroes 2 has many more incredible boss battles, such as have Charlie MacDonald. You arrive in a football stadium and meet up with a bonehead jock and cheerleader cohorts. What kind of fight do you get? A giant fucking robot battle in the middle of Santa Destroy, of course.
    • Margaret Moonlight, an elegant gothic lolita armed with a laser guided sniper rifle dual scythes. Seems they really weren't holding back the crazy in this game. And her crowning music of awesome, a song insulting both Travis and the average gamer.
    • Matt Helms, a horror movie Pastiche, with an flamethrower-axe and molotov cocktails. The battle area seems small at first, but is mostly completely destructible.
    • Mimmy, not particularly the boss herself, but rather the actual fight. You play as 'Mister Sir' Henry 'Motherfucker' Cooldown. You get to play as the Crowning Boss of Awesome.
    • The Rank Three, Captain Vladimir is a former Soviet cosmonaut who had been lost in space for who-knows-how-long with robotic tentacle arms. And a goddamn Kill Sat.
    • The fight against Alice Twilight, features one of the most tragic finales to a boss fight ever.
    • Jasper Batt Jnr. is, to some, dissapointing, but looking at a different light, it may be on this list. A Three. Part. Boss Fight. And yet, they cleverly avoided Rousseau Was Right with the revenge theme by making the entire thing ridiculously camp. Lampshaded by Henry.

It's not happening, brother. I can't be associated with that travesty. I've got standards for fuck's sake.

  • Jack Mathers, the Stage 2 boss of Time Crisis 4. Captain Rush teams up with you and wrestles him throughout the battle. The final boss battle, which has you in a last-ditch effort to destroy the Big Bad on top of a human pyramid and stop squadrons of unmanned bombers from nuking major U.S. cities, would qualify too, if it weren't for the fact that the ending of this boss battle is Always Close. But it does make up for that with Ominous Latin Chanting.
    • The first boss, Marcus Black, is worthy of note: after pursuing him in the streets of a big city while he's on a truck, you're in an helicopter and the enemy's tanks try to stop you in all manners, you finally blow his truck's tires with a sniper rifle making it slip and fall down. No One Could Survive That, right? WRONG: the boss literally blows his way out of the truck and says "You want it? Then come over here and... take it!" before starting to shoot you with AN ANTI-TANK RIFLE. Cue guitar riffs, boss fight and Stuff Blowing Up.
    • The Final Boss of Razing Storm. You encounter a huge freaking battleship and begin by dismantling the cannons and lasers on its underside with a rocket launcher. Then the rear hatch opens and you proceed to blow away troops firing down at you ("Have a nice flight, sucker!"). After more Beam Spam, the battle culminates with you facing off with the front of the battleship, which has A SKULL FACE WITH A Wave Motion Gun ON IT. "Let's show them who the real soldiers are!"
  • Curtis Blackburn in Killer7. MOST AWESOME SHOOTOUT EVER.
    • Gotta add in Ayame Blackburn, sebaibu!
  • Axelay, stage 5. It's a burning cyborg lava ogre. Take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KHRx-z7888
  • The Ace Combat games have a few awesome boss fights worth mentioning.
    • The final mission in Ace Combat Zero. One on one dogfight? Check. Super-advanced enemy fighter? Check. Crazy Spanish guitar of awesome? Check. The fact that you're fighting against someone established as your best friend in the war? Super Check.
    • Also, on the topic of Ace Combat, the second last and last missions of Ace Combat 5 are amazing, though lacking in a specific boss.
    • If you could count anti-fortress missions, 04s Megalith and 6s Chandelier are epic; facing enemy aces in any of the games is pretty great.
    • The XB-0 Hresvelgr in Ace Combat Zero. By extension, the P-1112 Aigaion and its escorts in Ace Combat 6.
  • The final battle of Ruru's scenario in Magical Battle Arena, where Kirara, Sarara, Nanoha, and Fate appear to help you take down a Nowel that's permanently in Super Mode and accompanied by the usual army of Gadget Drones plus the clones of your comrades. Epic.
  • Dark Cloud 2 had the battle with Emperor Griffon's true form who happens to be a cute bunny child named Sirus who's angry at the humans for killing his best friend It's tough as hell, but very satisfying, especially considering the music that went with it.
    • The battles against Gaspard are also pretty damn awesome.
  • Come unprepared, and Dark Brain can be the most annoying boss, ever. But if you do get prepared, then get ready to face the hardest, best and probably most epic boss battle in OG Gaiden. Dark Brain himself has tons of HP, regenerating greatly and has powerful attacks, and has TWO forms (both still have huge ass HPs). Taking both forms at one turn each does prove to be a challenge on your party formation (who support attacks who), what Seishin skill to use, etc etc. It even out-epics the final battle with Shu in Alpha Gaiden (and as a result, fighting against Shu after DB is beaten feels easier)
  • In a rather (tragically) unknown PSX RPG, Legend of Legaia, the final boss fight. After making your way through the body of the Juggernaut/Cort fusion which took over Rim Elm, you meet the now completely deformed Cort. Made even more awesome if you saved those uber summons you just got till this battle and are fully decked out in the Ra-Seru equipment found in the dungeon.
    • The fights against the Delilas family are epic. All three are Evil Counterparts of the main characters, so their techniques and battling style are very similiar to your own. Your party is split up to take on each member one-on-one, and the only way to win the battles is to use everything you know about the combat system to it's fullest potential.
  • Any of the Impact battles from the N64 Mystical Ninja game, but especially the giant peach spaceship.
  • Duke Nukem 3D's final level: Duke, VS the big bad alien on a grid-iron field covered with powerups and cheerleaders. Come get some!
  • Legacy of Kain: Defiance- Kain Vs Raziel. You switch between playing as both during the fight, which is awesome enough. Throw in the fact that this is the climactic fight the series has been building to since Soul Reaver 1, that both have the Reaver (in their previous two fights Kain, then Raziel had the Reaver respectively), allowing for an even duel, plus the terrific vocal performances of Messuers Simon Templeman (Kain) and Michael Bell (Raziel), and you have one hell of a dramatic fight. Add in the fact that the actual gameplay is awesome (two telekinetic swordsmen slashing it up in a gothic cathedral) and the awesomeness quotient is of the scale.
    • The boss fights from Soul Reaver (at least, most of them... oddly enough, the fights against Kain were the least interesting in a lot of ways) were all great because they all involve using the bosses' environment in some way against them, although the challenge pretty much goes out of all of them once you figure out how you're supposed to wipe them out. They also have awesome intro sequences...in one, the boss has turned into a giant immobile insect whose body is gradually engulfing the building and you walk into some weird organic-looking halls before actually getting to him. In another, you climb a spiral set of "steps" in the spectral realm to emerge above the water and go back into the real world, to find the water you were just in contains a giant shark-monster.
    • The first Blood Omen had some pretty sweet fights too, although a lot of them verge on "scrappy boss" territory (especially that damn Azimuth).
    • In Soul Reaver 1 you learn that Kain resurrected you and your vampire brethren from the souls of six Sarafan knights, warrior-priests dedicated to ridding Nosgoth of the vampire menace. At the end of Soul Reaver 2 you break into the Sarafan stronghold and kill those same knights, ending with a climactic duel against your mortal self. Incredibly. Awesome.
  • From Sin and Punishment: Successor to the Earth, while it's hard to pick just one, the fight against Fake Earth was suitably awesome.
    • Let that sink in for a moment. You fight an entire planet.
    • EVERY boss fight in S&P is fucking awesome.
    • Its sequel, S&P: Star Sucessor, has a lot of fantastic boss fights as well. Just to name one, the Gryphon Keeper—it is two previous bosses of the stage combined Voltron style!
  • Cave Story does not have a single unfun boss fight in the entire game; but the final boss sequence against the Doctor has to be mentioned for sheer awesomeness. Then it gets beaten again in awesomeness by Ballos.
    • The crown, though, must go to the fight with the Core. The boss that drowns you as one of its attacks. The rising water was used amazingly well here as a gameplay element, especially seeing as it impedes your movement. All this backed by Crowning Music of Awesome.
  • Any of the giant battles in Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm. You have Naruto vs Gamabunta, Naruto vs Gaara and Shukaku, and Tsunade vs Orochimaru and Manda. All of them are awesome, definitely the highlights of the mission mode.
    • To elaborate on the last one, as in the anime, all three Sannin have their bigass monsters summoned, and instead of characters for supports, like the rest of the game, your supports consist of GAMABUNTA AND KATSUYU. You throw Manda against a MOUNTAIN. And at the end, Orochimaru just kind of lies down somewhere in pain, looking absolutely hilarious.
      • The sequel maintains its fair share as well, such as adding in a Naruto vs. Sasuke fight that was only a minor scuffle in the original manga, which calls back to the final battle in the first game while showing how much the two has diverged since then. There is a fast-paced dogfight through the streets of the Hidden Sand Village between Gaara and Deidara. Sasuke loses control of himself to Orochimaru, who takes on a battle-of-the-titans between an eight-headed serpent and Itachi's Susano'o in the stormy ruins of the Uchiha Hideout. We have Jiraiya taking on Animal Path Pain, then three Pain bodies, then all of them plus his animal summons. This is taken even further when Pain fights Naruto, with him using every trick he used against Jiraiya, plus standing on a boulder he's levitating with his gravity powers while raining 100-foot meteors down on Naruto. Every boss fight has acrobatics and devastating moves the anime's budget could not possibly have done, even with the movies. And there's probably more of this to come in Naruto Storm 3...
  • Graffiti Kingdom's final boss fights. The first guy is essentially a giant technicolor Satan that you have to beat twice, and then after that his own son [who you thought was dead] comes out and KILLS HIS OWN FATHER, then fights you in a six-stage epic complete with the most amazing music in the entire game.
  • The final boss of Dragon Quest 8, Rhapthorne, is an epic battle in and of itself. The first fight vs him has you fighting vs a little fat roly-poly characture of a demon with a pipsqueek voice, the second battle has you forced to fight him on top of the goddess of light from a previous DragonQuest game, Ramia/Godbird Empyrea. The only thing that detracts from the fight is the fact that his English voice sounds like a Disney villain with bad sinuses.
    • The bonus boss, Dragovian Lord is also pretty epic. You fight him several times, each time he gives you 1 item out of a set pool, and the next time you fight him he gets stronger. Until the last time, when you fight the first 7 forms and an 8th final form, all in a row, without healing.
  • The Thunder Force series of Shoot'Em Ups has plenty of awesome boss fights, especially in V when you fight the Rynex ship you pilot in Thunder Force IV/Lightening Force, which docks into several giant mech armors during the course of the fight, all while the awesome intro theme from TFIV plays in the background. Also, the newest game in the series, Thunder Force VI, has giant versions of Thunder Force III, IV, and V's player ships as bosses.
    • Made even more awesome if you don't use Over Weapon or Syrinx's Wave shot to cheese through these bosses.
    • Segagaga for the Dreamcast parodies the TF bosses with a Shoot'Em Up that ends with you fighting a Sega SG-1000...which then morphs into a Mark III (aka Master System)...then a Genesis (complete with Sega CD and 32X addons)...and finally a Saturn. All the boss forms except for the Saturn consist of the system shooting sprites from its various games (the Mark III fires off Fantasy Zone bosses for example). All this punctuated by truly epic boss music.
  • The two second-to-last boss battles in the Viewtiful Joe main series. In this first game, you (and your Dark Side-turned mentor) are piloting mechs that are large enough to circle the globe in about a dozen steps. It only gets bigger in the next game. In the second, Six Machine (said mech) turns into the head of a much larger giant robot. And this time, it can circle a star system in a few short seconds. And the boss mech is bugger than Jupiter.
    • Both are then followed by mono a mono battles sans mecha.
  • Noitu Love 2 has 2: The final boss, and 02-JOY, both due to music and innovative ways you take them down/expose them.
    • The level 3 boss fight against Rilo Doppelori also deserves mention. On normal difficulty level, it doesn't seem that hard, but she will kick your ass back and forth on the higher difficultly levels if you haven't brought up your game enough.
    • Also O2-JOY from the first Noitu Love. From his unreachable perch he's completely invincible, so how do you beat him? Bang keys at random on the piano until you piss him off enough that he drops his guard!
  • Quite a few bosses in Mischief Makers qualify, but Lunar deserves special mention. Your character rides on the back of a tiny thrill-seeking kitten (only makes slightly more sense in context), while Lunar gives chase in some sort of huge panther motorcycle thing; especially awesome when he screams "EAT LEAD!!!" and fires a machine gun at you, laughing maniacally.
    • Any of the times he Macross Missile Massacres you, you can jump onto said missile and surf it for the greater part of the fight! And since the game's battle system revolves around throwing your opponent's attacks back at them, you can catch Lunar's Wave Motion Gun beams and throw them back!
    • The final boss should also qualify. What other game lets you grab a 50-foot tall robot by the foot, effortlessly lift it into the air, slam it into the floor like you're beating out a rug, and toss it into the background?
      • "Shake, shake!"
  • The Cyberdemon. It's got to be about fifty feet tall, with a rocket launcher for an arm and loads of bionics, in a stage where it is often the only enemy, for which you have ammunition and weapons practically thrown at you, and explodes when killed because the ammunition inside it cooks off and detonates, reducing it to a pair of stubs where its legs were. The Spider Mastermind and the Icon of Sin might have their fans, but the Cyberdemon, on the 1-12 scale of badness, is a 37.
    • In the sequel, in level 20 "Gotcha!", there's a room with a Mastermind and a Cyberdemon. If you get the two to start fighting one another, guess who doesn't win.
      • Well, you never know which one's going to win because you don't know how often the Cyberdemon will decide to fire, whereas the Mastermind is relentless. Cyberdemon is definitely more awesome, though.
      • Generally, if the Mastermind wins, he's about two bullets away from keeling over.
    • Maledict, the commanding demonic dragon made of the evil spirit of Dr. Malcolm Betruger, in Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil. You start the battle by landing on a flowing platform in the bottomless space of Hell. You have the the Artifact but it's only in limited use. Maledict demands you to hand over it, but the marine simply points the gun at it. The battle start with Maledict randomly throwing fires and summonding the local cannon fodders at you. You just simply kills them all and then use the Artifact to slow time and then you just fire whatever kind of guns right at Maledict's slow-flying ass. After a while, Maledict decides that its gonna stop bull-shiting around and then just throws meteors at you, and all you can do is to avoding them and not trying to fall over the platform, as well shoot the beast up. And you can't get any healthpack during the battle. That and everything else makes it to one of the most adrenaline pumping boss fights ever. Its really makes up Doom 3's Cyberdemon's status as the Anticlimax Boss.
  • The Jabberwock from American McGee's Alice. All the bosses' power is proportionate to their ability to mindrape, and this is the first one to wipe the smirk off Alice's face and make her scream. Tough battle, awesome lines.
  • Due to the fact that Radiant Silvergun has about two dozen of bosses (none of them which are recycled) witch almost every single one of them seems to determine to kill you using every trick in the book, you'll experience Crowning Moment of Awesome very often (at least if you are skilled player that is).
  • Tomb Raider's Bacon Lara/Doppelhoe. She's a Puzzle Boss who copies Lara's every move in a symmetrical room except for a small pit of lava she can fall into.
  • Contra III's Stage 4 is epic in every way possible, but the boss at the end has you hanging taking down two turrets and core of an airship. What makes this epic? The fact that you're jumping from helicopter missile to missile or else falling to your doom.
  • Fire Emblem 6, Murdock Yeah!
    • Radiant Dawn, (3-13) Ike yeah! Alternatively, (3-7, 3-E) Micaiah Yeah!
    • Unfortunately, the latter three will be missed by most players since 3-7 and 3-13 end after a certain amount of turns and 3-E ends after 80 deaths between the three armies, and in all cases the boss is at the back of the map. But if you're fast enough you also get Black Knight Yeah! in 3-7 and Kurthnaga Yeah! and Nailah Yeah! in 3-E.
  • Blue Dragon has a notable boss fight part way through Disc 2. Whilst working through what is - easily - the biggest dungeon in the game at that point whilst set to a 1-hour time limit, the party re-encounter the final boss of Disc 1 and his four assistants - all 5 of which are robots who had been destroyed in the last dungeon of Disc 1, one at a time. This time? You get an epic cutscene, then face the four assistants in a 5 v 4 battle where the enemy AI works together with a beautiful set of teamwork attacks, after which you get to re-fight The Dragon who is riding a GIANT FLOATING CANNON. Mere words cannot express how awesome this fight actually is.
  • Any appearance of the Star Wolf team in Star FOX 64. Special note to their appearance on Bolse, because Bolse is pure awesomeness all by itself. (And is nominated as such here, since the satellite is the boss—and fights back with FRIKKIN LASER BEAMS once you start to take out its core).
    • There's nothing quite like skipping through their intro cutscenes (especially on Fortuna Fichina) and shooting them down before they even break formation.
    • Also, the train conductor on Macbeth The Scottish Planet, who taunts you all throughout the level. His Mechbeth can become That One Boss, but this can be averted by sending the train crashing into the weapons factory, which is the most satisfying feeling ever and still probably the #1 moment in controller rumbling history. (And yes, the Shakespeare reference was absolutely necessary--supplementary material says that Andross tore down a Birnam Wood to build that weapons factory there.)

"I can't STOP IT!!!"

    • Speaking of which, Andross himself made for some memorable boss battles. Be it the face in the original or the giant brain with detachable eyeballs in Star FOX 64.
    • Drakor from Star Fox Adventures is an absolute blast to fight. It resembles a first-person rail shooter, in stark and abrupt contrast to the third-person Zelda-esque adventuring that you've been doing the whole time up to this point, but the whole fight is really quite fun and it leaves you with a great feeling of exhiliration and satisfaction after it's done.
      • Drakor's fine but the finest hour of Star Fox Adventures will always be the battle against the Red-Eyes King. A truly enormous, building-sized T-Rex hunting in the enclosed labyrinth of a sacred temple? Fuck yes. Plus the creature is so massive it is completely immune to ALL of Fox's attacks, requiring you to trick it into stepping into an electrode trap and then throw a bomb at it. And it's tough enough to survive multiple bombs to the face. Bringing this beastie down will truly make you feel like a Badass.
  • The El Gigante Ndesu fight from Resident Evil 5 definitely qualifies. Fanservice? Check. Satisfying weapon? Check. Unlimited ammo? Check. A sudden break away from the slightly repetitive third person action? Check. Mass destruction? Check. Balance? Check. It. Is. Awesome.
    • Wesker. The QTE events, the smack talk between characters, the EPIC cutscene that takes place in the assault bomber? Also doubles up as a Crowning Moment of Funny: succeed in counter-attacking certain boss abilities, and Chris will shake his fist around after nearly breaking it on the other guy's face.
    • Resident Evil 3's Nemesis. As if the fact that his name's in the title doesn't hint that he's a tough bastard, he pretty much ruins your day constantly throughout the game. Near the end, where you're in the Dead Factory, he literally won't stop until you blast his limbs and head off. The fight where he mutates into a giant monstrosity's also memorable, since you finally get to kill him. With a railgun the size of a truck.
    • And from Resident Evil 4, we have Jack Krauser: coming nearly immediately after another taxing boss fight, this epic three-parter boss fight is the one everyone remembers. Crazy ambushes? Check. Rambo-esque traps? Check. Crazy awesome quick time events? Oh yes. Your knife, normally a desperation weapon, doing as much damage as a magnum? Or how abut his super-human abilities, the fact that his primarily weapons are a knife an exploding bow, grenades and a machine gun, or him entering his One-Winged Angel from as he sets up explosives, giving you a time limit that, while generous, truly kicks up the adrenaline. Combine this with over-the top machismo and enough Foe Yay and two way motivation rants with Leon, and it's enough to make any gamer squeal with delight.
    • Speaking of Resident Evil 4 that game had a lot of great boss battles.
      • The Del Lago, an enormous lake monster that you fight using harpoons while on a boat.
      • El Gigante, basically a giant. At one point you fight two of them at the same time.
      • Salazar, who doubles as That One Boss unless you use the Rocket Launcher.
      • The U3 a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere, you have to dodge it's attacks while quickly moving through three container pods before they drop, and then finishing it off when you get to land.
      • Krauser, who is mentioned above.
  • zOMG! has this with the second boss, the OMGWTF. After fighting your way through a graveyard, you come to the gate. When you approach, you're forced to fight a small army of OM Gs. Then the boss comes out. Part dragon, part scorpion, part hat. And it wants you gone. Just because words can't properly describe how awesome a dracoscorpiohat is, here's a picture. Besides looking awesome, it's the first really tough enemy you'll face in the game, so defeating it for the first time really gives you a sense of achievement.
    • And then you reach "The Endboss". The buildup in the last few stages of Chapter One is a positive infodump that calls back about a dozen different aspects of the Gaia Online plot-manga from several years ago, and the chapter boss itself must be seen to be believed. It is also extremely difficult to beat (even in Easy Mode) without being overbearing, but rather awe-inspiring, which makes it completely satisfying when the last explosions fade and you teleport back to Barton Town for your rewards.
    • Prior to being nerfed, Landshark was more than deserving of its Memetic Badass status.
  • Silent Hill 2, Pyramid Head. Whether it's the Hopeless Boss Fight (in which he can't be damaged), whether it's when he becomes That One Boss (in which there's suddenly two of them), or whether it's simply fleeing from him in the Labyrinth, it's easy to see why this utterly terrifying monster (literally and figuratively) of an Implacable Man is one of the most iconic elements of the series.
  • Just about any time that Giacomo, Ayme, or Folon show up in Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. The battles against the three of them (especially the last time, immediately after you beat them they recover and you have to fight them a second time) are the best, but solo Giacomo near the beginning of the game can be That One Boss, and solo Folon is pretty cool, too, if only because he's so funny. (He acts like a clown, he has blue skin and a blue-and-red mohawk, and one of his main attacks is called "Worg Laser". What's not to love?) Just to top it off, there's the boss theme, Chaotic Dance, complete with incomprehensible lyrics.
    • That said, for those who weren't very fond of Those Three Bosses, there is also the fight with the "Angel of Darkness" a.k.a. Kalas about three fourths of the way through the game. Although he too presents an incredibly difficult fight (being able to attack with HP-draining nine-hit combos), the electric guitar version of The True Mirror is blasting and you can practically feel the party's determination to overcome this challenge and bring Kalas back to his senses. Plus, there's the fact that, y'know, you're fighting the main character, which isn't something that's done in RPGs all that often!
    • Malpercio. Yeah, he's a nightmare to fight, but my god, is it cool. You fight him on top of the Cor Hydrae, in the middle of a dimensional anomaly. As you whale on him, he goes from just stomping on your party to firing giant dark arrows at them, swapping his elemental alignments, and finally stealing their health with Enchanted Blade. All while Violent Storm is blaring in the background.
    • There's something about "The True Mirror", because when it shows up again in Origins, it's fully orchestrated to lend a feeling of awesome to the fight with Baelheit, also subtly alluding to the fact that he's the real spiriter. Seriously, the entire three-part confrontation is epic: first, he takes out Sagi's allies, forcing Sagi into a one-on-one swordfight; when Sagi starts gaining ground, he goes into a Motive Rant explaining his sordid history, which Sagi finally interrupts by essentially saying "Shut UP, Hannibal!"; and finally, Sagi's allies regroup and stand with him for the real fight, during which the boss uses the same kind of special spiriter finishers Kalas used in the first game. It's almost a shame that The Man Behind the Man has to stab him in the back right then, because the fight with him had no chance of living up to such an amazing confrontation with the Big Bad you had been fighting for most of the game.
      • That, and the fight against Shanath. Everything about this fight was incredible - the fact that Iconoclasm was playing in the background, the fact that the player had wanted to kill this guy for ages, the fact that you get to use your new attack on him...really, any descriptions of this fight just don't do the emotions justice.
    • Any fight with Wiseman, be it the first fight where he sics a dragon on you, or the second one where he possesses Verus' body and turns into a full-fledged Eldritch Abomination.
    • How about every late-game boss fight in Origins? After the first half of the game, where you lose nearly every boss fight, it's so satisfying to watch Sagi shred through bosses like they're made of tissue paper. Destroying the machina armas, killing Wiseman, even the bosses of the chracter sidequests are incredibly fun to fight.
  • Deus Ex isn't exactly known for it's boss fights, but the "fight" against Bob Page is of epic proportions. Page himself in stuck inside a giant impenetrable globe of glass, taunting you as he activates every single base defence The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is armed with. In addition to minigun turrets, he then starts unlimited spawns of the game's Demonic Spiders. At this time, Page is pretty much a locally omnipotent Physical God. As you come closer and closer to defeating him, his taunts turn to pleading, then to taunts again as he comes closer to ascension. You then get to pick exactly how you want to finish Page: Outright kill him, collapse his base taking the entire Internet down with it, or achieve godhood before Page does.
  • The King of the Wild Hunt in The Witcher. He's been tailing, menacing and even personally attacking Geralt throughout the game. When he makes his final appearance, he basically tells Geralt he's been his bitch the entire time. Fighting him is optional, but it gives Geralt the best lines, a thrilling fight, and the more crowning climax to the game.
    • Berengar is another that deserves mention, coming as it does shortly after being knighted by a Goddess and given an Infinity+1 Sword. This is a character Geralt has been chasing and hearing shady reports about, and when finally found has been brusque, evasive, then openly provocative, lying and taunting. Also an optional fight; sparing him grants less satisfying lines and he goes on to die rather lamely and inevitably during another boss fight Geralt must finish himself unless you are really really lucky.
    • Also, the fight with Zeugl is pretty awesome as well and it is not optional. You have to fight its tentacles and cut them off, and than its head comes out of the water and you have to hit it.
  • The battle with Courtney Gears in Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal. A firefight with an insane robotic popstar on an MTV-esque stage while a remix of said robot's hit single "Death to Squishies" blares in the background? Awesomeness.
    • The battles with Dr. Nefarious in both Up Your Arsenal AND A Crack In Time. He's one of the few you can't RYNO spam to death and he shoots freakin' laser beams and does all sorts of crazy stuff.
  • Garino Corsione in Gungrave: Overdose. As the final boss of the game, you fight this guy in a alien spaceship/cathedral....thing. He constantly spouts A God Am I-esque lines while playing a friggin' advanced-tech pipe organ, but what really makes this fight awesome is Unlimited Demolition. Whoever you're playing as gains a considerable power boost in that the Demolition Shot Gauge regenerates on its own, allowing you to spam the uber Lv. 3 shots more often. During the second phase of the fight, when you empty the boss' life meter, you're treated to an epic boss fatality cutscene-- Triple. Final. Demolition. Shot.
  • The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match has longtime series villain Rugal Bernstein as a hidden boss. Getting to him in itself is quite difficult. When you do get there, you'll know by the kickass cutscene showing Rugal emerging from his cybernetic coat, ready to crush every dream you ever had. Then the fight starts. The game's camera-panning-down-from-the-ceiling effect with Unlimited R playing in time on his brand spankin' new Blacknoah stage (Which first appeared as an extra 3D stage in the PlayStation 2 port of the original, mind you) sets the mood to what is guaranteed to be a hell of a fight. You also can't continue against him, so give him hell before he gives it to you.
  • Deadly Creatures has one of the most awesome Final Bosses ever. Not only do you fight a man with a shotgun, despite being a three-inch scorpion. You also get to stab him in the balls with your stinger. Three times!
    • The boss fight against the rattlesnake in chapter 9 begins with you (as a tarantula) encased in a ring of fire, trapped with the snake as it constantly tries to chow down on you. After hitting it enough times, you move to a vertical battle on the gas pump (which is ON FIRE AND ABOUT TO EXPLODE) and finally, you have a sequence where you have to dodge all the rattlesnake's final, desperate attacks against you, culminating in an epic dodge maneuver where the rattlesnake misses and ends up biting itself; then, as you scuttle away, leaving the snake to writhe under its own fangs, the pump explodes. Hell yes.
    • And then, for some inexplicable reason, everything blows up. Bad. Ass.
  • Any Fraxy boss ever made by Eboshidori. (Crowning Music of Awesome optional.) Most of these are hard enough to qualify for That One Boss as well, but they make up for it terms of sheer awesome. He even has a Fraxy version of Hibachi!
    • The RefleX Stage 7 boss fight is coded into Virgo 400K. Your ship even gets the appearance of your ship back then!
    • Add True Acala, Sakra-Devanam Human Type, and Sunyata to the list. Crowning Boss Maker of Awesome?
  • The first Shredder fight in the Technodrome in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4: Turtles In Time, for the home console versions. That highly amusing Camera Abuse Mook toss? Actually has a use, and is the only way to defeat Shredder.
    • Super Shredder is difficult but entertaining, with each of his attacks requiring a unique way to dodge (jump over the fire, stay on the ground when he shoots ice, avoid the green mutagenic fireball), and him only being open to attack after launching one of his attacks.
  • Soul Calibur has the following:
    • The hidden fight against Night Terror, a winged version of Nightmare with WINGS and that enjoys shooting Frickin' Laser Beams at you. in Soul Calibur III.
    • Floor 60 ascending in Tower of Lost Souls in 4. You get three characters against a single Algol. And for good reason: he has 200 Health, Attack, and Defense, and uses some of the most epic combos in the series.
    • One of Algol's combos merits its own mention. Algol knocks you into the air, hits you a couple of times, and then uses his THRONE as a BASEBALL BAT!
  • X-men Origins: Wolverine, The Sentinel fight.
    • That's nothing compared to the battle with Deadpool.
  • Speaking of X-Men, the Sentinel Core from X-Men 2 on the Megadrive was one of several moments of awesome from the game - a tricky boss fight against a holographic nightmarish apparition of the Sentinal, armed with eyebeams and lightning bolts and one hell of a electronic wail. This finishes off with a Metroid style escape sequence where you must escape from the factory it is contained in, complete with alarms, earthquakes and explosions galore. Combine this with some pumping music, you have one of the most memorable sections of the game. The best part? It's the FIRST boss.
  • The final boss of Gundam Vs. Gundam? The Devil Gundam. In its Devil Colony form. It throws giant beams, explosive particles, Gundam Heads, Death Army MS, and even its own gigantic fists at you.
  • Shadow Complex deserves a mention for its final boss. An entire lake drains away to reveal a huge gantry which has missile silos and launches an Airborne Aircraft Carrier. You can't attack it directly; your only option is to fight through the army of Spider Tank and Strider Robot enemies and respawning soldiers to use the base's own missile silos against the carrier. It's pretty awesome. And in order to get one of the achievements, you've got to forsake the powered armor and other upgrades in the game and do this armed only with a pistol, grenades, a foam gun and the clothes on your back.
  • Not strictly a boss-fight, but the battle with Nicole Horne at the end of Max Payne is a charming combination of deeply satisfying (after all the shit she has put Max through) and utterly fucking badass.
    • "What do you mean, 'he's unstoppable?'" So satisfying...
  • Super Robot Wars, being made of Epic and Awesome by its very nature, manages to deliver a quite a few bossfights of this nature. Others verge on Nintendo Hard.
  • Bentley vs. Jean-Bison in Sly 2: Band of Thieves. Since Bentley is a turtle and Jean-Bison is a, well, bison, Bentley can't hurt Jean directly. Luckily, the fight takes place in a sawmill, so Bentley can lead the lummox into jets of fire, spinning sawblades, and falling logs. The whole fight has a very Looney Tunes vibe to it.
    • When talking epic boss battles in Sly 2, we must mention the most greasy sweet boss of all:

Dimitri: You think you have juice? Don't show me a little mind when talking about such big things...you think you can swing the bat? Show your bling and let me shine you!

Sly: I have no idea what you're saying...and your suit sucks!

Dimitri: Let's dance!

    • In Sly 1, the final level sees you in a blink-and-you-die race up a GIANT DEATH RAY while it's collapsing into a lake of lava and pieces of it are falling down around you while some of it is shooting off electrical arcs. When you finally make it to the top, you fight a giant evil robotic owl who taunts you the whole time while you're flying a jetpack armed with rockets and shooting pieces off of him.
      • How about all the other bosses of Sly 1 in general? Well, except the first one, he's boring. Muggshot is a frantic Puzzle Boss, Mz. Ruby throws the established pattern out the window by turning her fight into a rhythm minigame, and the Panda King adapts a constantly-evolving "Flame Fu" moveset to keep you down. Also, you re-do the Panda King fight in Sly 3 to help the Panda King into a Heel Face Turn to save his daughter and recruit him into the Cooper Gang.
    • Sly 3 has the pirate captain Le Fwee, which sounds completely lame, but It Makes Sense in Context. One of Bentley's trademark What the Hell, Hero? plans has failed, this one involing a mind-controlled giant squid smashing Le Fwee's crew while Bentley risks his life to rescue new team member (and Bentley's unrequited love) Penelope from her imprisonment. Well, the plan itself goes just fine, until Le Fwee himself threatens to kill Penelope. Sly whisks her away from danger, but Bentley falls out of his wheelchair, leaving him helpless before Le Fwee. However, Penelope comes to the rescue with a sword of her own, and stops Le Fwee from harming the turtle with a line that's equal parts funny and heartwarming: "Nobody touches that turtle...but me." What ensues is a madcap swashbuckling duel across the mast of Le Fwee's pirate ship, followed by a touching cutscene where Bentley finally gets his girl. Of course, then you're informed that the above-mentioned Dimitri is going to join the Cooper Gang. The entire sequence is just a whirlwind of extremely awesome events, least of which being the sweet duel.
  • A possible Psychonauts Crowning Moment of Awesome (and Crowning Moment of Funny) Boss would be "Kochamara" from the Lungfishopolis level. He's not that hard to beat, but he manages to lampshade both a bunch of combat video game tropes and the entire giant-monsters-in-Tokyo type genre as well.
  • In Chrome Hounds, there's the Xbox Live Only "Unidentified Weapon Appears" mission, which is one of three examples of a Crowning Boss Fight of Awesome. They're kinda rare, but damn once you've done one, you'll feel awesome. Nothin' beats a Battleship Raid with 5 of your buddies.
  • "Whoah! Is that a long health bar or are you just happy to see me?"
  • Prototype features a Melee a Trois between Alex Mercer, the infected (and their Mother, Elizabeth Greene), and the Marines and BlackWatch. In Times Square. And Elizabeth's One-Winged Angel form is practically a Kaiju. And Mercer gets to take her down. The final boss battle is slightly less epic, but a Melee with the closest thing to an Evil Counterpart the game throws at you, onboard an aircraft carrier, while a nuke is ticking away and the carrier's fighter wing is bombing the deck is definitately awesome.
  • In Jagged Alliance 2, about halfway through the game you get to fight "Mike", a fellow mercenary (the best recruitable merc from Jagged Alliance 1). He's a a shameless opportunist, and is now hiring out his services to the enemy this time around, basically betraying his fellow mercenaries. In fact, each A.I.M Merc recruitable in the game (there are roughly 50 of them) has special spoken dialogue for when Mike is spotted and for when Mike is eliminated. He's extra bad-ass because he carries a very rare and powerful assault rifle (G11), which you'll definitely want to collect for yourself.
  • The final sequence of Rez (with the four minibosses and the big room). That's an experience that no game will ever recreate.
    • The Area 4 boss, where you chase a giant shapeshifting creature of cubes through corridors while the pounding rave tune "Rock is Sponge" plays.
  • The train fight in Mega Man Legends 2 if for just the sheer awesomeness of the music. It's a two part battle where you have to face both parts of the Quirky Miniboss Squad on a train outfitted with guns, bombs, lasers and in the second part missiles. It's not hard at all, in fact it's a cakewalk considering this is one of the last boss fights on Terra. The music changes when you get past the first part of the fight and have to face the Bonnes (again) except this time they start by firing servebot-guided missiles at you (some of them say hilarious things as they're flying out)the hilarity of this fight makes the fight one of the best in the game.
  • There are plenty of ridiculously awesome fights in City of Heroes:
    • Showdowns with Praetorians, the Freedom Phalanx's Evil Twins (or the Freedom Phalanx themselves for villains)...
    • Player villains taking on their own chosen patron and eventually Lord Recluse himself...
    • Romulus Augustus empowered with the might of Nictus...
    • Reichsman, who turns out to be another Evil Twin of Statesman, who fought for Nazi Germany during World War II in an alternate universe. The Reichsman is so powerful that he is literally in a class of his own. Whereas other enemies are classified from something as lowly as "Minion" to something as powerful as "Archvillain" or "Hero" or "Giant Monster," the Reichsman is "Reichsman". If that doesn't instill fear in the hearts of a poorly put-together pick-up group...
  • And from Champions Online, two endgame lair bosses with absolutely awesome battlefields.
    • Shadow Destroyer, who, several times during the fight, floats up and tears a rift in reality itself, plunging the entire battlefield into the Lovecraftian Qliphothic realm, forcing the players to force it back, before they are destroyed by his increasingly powerful attacks, or the realm itself.
    • Therakiel, who shortly into the fight moves it to the ground zero of the biblical apocalypse. You can literally see, above and below you, the winged legions of heaven and hell circling towards the final confrontation which you are desperately trying to avert.
    • And just for the awesomeness of his Large Ham delivery and sheer insanity, Foxbat has become a fan favorite as well.
  • Leorina from Klonoa: Lunatea's Veil. After she goes all One-Winged Angel unwillingly, she begins to skate around the arena. You know those lighting enemies you use to go up really high? When she tries to jump on you, you fly up using those to hit her in her weak point. It doesn't sound that impressive, but actually playing it feels like you're playing Dragonball Z. It probably helps that the background music is quite possibly the biggest Crowning Music of Awesome in the series.
    • For added effect, try yelling "SHORYUKEN!" every time you attack her.
  • The second boss in Wario Land The Shake Dimension. Basically, Wario in a unicycle complete with spring loaded boxing glove, in a high speed battle against a race car going at jet speed down a long road. High Speed Battle indeed. Neat music too.
    • Also the final boss in said game. You can only wish Bowser would wisen up and use that many attacks in a future Mario game. Basically, four stage battle with The Shake King, complete with a final form using multiple laser beam blasts, lightning attacks and shooting fireballs around.
  • Many of the boss fights in Star Ocean the Second Story. The final boss of the PSP remake Gabriel comes across as extremely badass when he states in prior to the battle That he didn't need anyone else and getting this far barely phases him. This along with her attacks and boss music fit the atmosphere of a Crowning Moment perfectly.
  • The battle against the Marquis of Dragons, Crosell, in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. Battling a huge dragon while one of the game's best battle songs plays in the background? Amazing.
    • While many final bosses have some alternate form or transformation. Crosell just gets back up and stops fucking around
  • In the Mana series:
    • Legend of Mana gives us the battle with Irwin. World at stake? Check. Battle on top of the dragon he's trying awaken? Check. Epic music? Big Check.
    • Seiken Densetsu 3 gives us Dangaard, God-Beast of Wind. That the music is epic goes without saying. The real kicker is that you're fighting him in mid-air ON TOP OF YOUR PET DRAGON!
      • The same game also has Dolan, God-Beast of the Moon. You get to the very top of the tower and hear music unique to this boss. The boss doesn't appear right away, so you have some time to apply stat-ups. Then the tower shakes and two big hairy arms rise up and the battle with this wolf-beast Kaiju begins. As GameFAQs' boss guide put it, "Now THIS is a God-Beast!"
  • Seabook Arno's final story mission in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2, which teams him with Domon Kasshu of G Gundam and half the cast of Gundam ZZ to take down Master Asia. Master Asia, however, cannot be killed until after you've defeated the Devil Gundam, which just so happens to be That One Boss. Meanwhile, enemy officers show up to harass your allies. By the game's standards it's a long and involved mission, which makes incredibly satisfying to beat; the Massive Multiplayer Crossover nature of your allies makes it fun.
  • In Hype: The Time Quest, Mhasse is the only boss that really requires any tactical thinking.
  • Space Channel 5 has amazing bosses in the series, but there are two that really stand out from the rest. The first is King Purge, a primate like robot with speakers on it's hands, and you have to use the power of Michael Jackson to beat it. The second is Great Purge, where you sing the main theme song with the final boss.
  • Contra. Red Falcon. Three Lives. Eff the Konami Code.
  • James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing: Escaping Diavolo's villa—and, to unlock a new cheat code, you have to do it unarmed. It's Nintendo Hard in the very best sense—damn near impossible, but the crazy awesome Good Old Fisticuffs make it way too much fun to be frustrating. And the Badass Spanish bullfight-style music barling away in the background doesn't hurt, either.
  • The Hopeless Boss Fight against Etna in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, especially if you'd never played the first one before and therefore don't know who she is. You've just plowed through the first three chapters of the game with little effort, and you're ready to take on another boss... but what's this? You're getting your ass kicked by the Disgaea equivelant to Goombas and wondering why the boss keeps dodging everything you throw at her... then you see what her level is.
  • Tetris: The Grand Master 2 PLUS's "invisible roll" is one minute of playing TGM2 at instant-drop speed with the pieces turning invisible upon locking down. Achieving the conditions for this is a CMOA in itself, and then there's surviving it, which rewards you the titular Grand Master rank. You can watch someone complete it here (starting at 8:32).
  • The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man fight from Ghostbusters The Video Game. Blasting away at a 50 foot marshmallowman ((who throws helicopters and spits marshmallow minons at you)) while dangling from the side of a building only being supported by two other human beings surely defines Crowning Boss of Awesome.
    • It should be noted that this boss is the only boss that's 95% the same fight between the realistic style game and the cartoon style game.
      • Stay-Puft be damned—what about the freaking Collector? Damn, but he's got a bitchslap from hell...
  • Even if Phantasy Star Universe isn't necessarily well-known for having awesome bosses, one has to admit that the battle against Dulk Fakis' second form is pretty awesome. The battle takes place on a glowing platform in space with a panoramic view of the entire Gurhal system. Some of the boss' strategies are a nice homage to Dark Falz and Olga Flow from Online. Oh, and the boss fires a giant meteor at the stage and blows up the entire arena.
  • In the first Tenchu game, the first fight against Onikage definetly counts; on top of a Shogun's palace, on a moonlit night, with Onikage's awesome Leitmotif. So epic.
    • In Tenchu 2 there is Ayame versus Tatsumaru. You just wanted so badly for it to happen, and it was very delivered.
  • The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion expansion Knights of the Nine has a particularly epic final battle. After storming an enemy fortress with more allies than you ever have, continuing on solo, and defeating Umaril's physical form, you chase his soul to the afterlife, battle him miles above the Imperial City, and kill him enough that he stays dead.
  • Mushihime-sama Futari, True Final Boss aside, has the Stage 1 boss. You've been flying forward for nearly the whole stage, when all of a sudden, you drop down a cliff and a T-Rex-like dinosaur starts chasing after you.
  • Nineball from Armored Core in all his appearances. Fast, powerful That One Boss set to an incredible badass theme that gets you pumped up? Hells yes.
  • Dragon Warrior Monsters for GBC, either version, but easier if you've got Cobi's... DARCK. That mofo would NOT go down! Frustrating and enjoyable, because once you've beaten his 4000 HP ass...you win.
    • Of course, the DS sequel, Joker, had a Bonus Boss battle against a high-powered...um, Estark. Yes, the King of Monsters himself from Dragon Warrior IV. The battle goes on for what feels like ages, with Estark having the usual array of high-powered Dragon Warrior boss powers. Of course, once it's all over, what happens? He joins your team, of course. Honorable mention goes to Captain Crow, pirate extraordinare, who you run into from time to time when navigating the islands of the Green Bays Archipelago, only for him to throw increasingly-tough monsters at you until he stops screwing around and fights you himself; the fact that this fight is repeatable costs it in the awesome department, especially if you have the aforementioned Estark on your team.
  • EverQuest has The Master of Dreadspire, Mayong Mistmoore. After clearing through all of his lieutenants and minions in his underground castle/alternate dimension, he finally faces you himself, and to date he is the only boss in EQ raids to have his own theme music. After you defeat him, you learn that you and your raiding party just fell into his trap, and slaying him has had the unintended effect of causing his ascension to the Norrathian Pantheon.
  • Streets of Rage 2. Shiva. An amazing example of a Dual Boss. A Duel Boss from the first game gives people nightmares, but they re-appear in the third game with a new look and a new set of moves. They are ironically easier to beat, and it's much faster paced and more manic.
  • Gotcha Force has the final boss, which is basically where you and all of your allies are blown up to ENORMOUS size to fight a giant space station of death. It can be frustratingly difficult, but the pure joy of actually BEATING that boss is magnified once you finally do win.
  • Two battles from The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge come to mind.
    • The first is the battle against Lock, Shock and Barrel. Even though Oogie is the Big Bad, LS&B have been doing most of the work. They fight you when you're trying to reach plot points, they close off parts of town until you find keys, and generally share a role as The Dragon. You finally get to fight them in moonlight on the roof of the mayor's house. While they ride around in their mobile bathtub, charging into you, the background song is Jack berating them for refusing over and over again to stop causing chaos. They get a verbal comeuppance, they eventually fight you all at once, when previously only one was fought at a time, and you're on the roof of the mayor's house.
    • Then you have the final boss, Mega Oogie. Throughout continuity, Oogie Boogie has been a Dirty Coward. Even here, he's never fought you directly, only used his Living Shadow. Now he leads you into the twisted junkyard that comprises the space between Holiday Towns and commands his insects to bring him garbage. This is built up around him to form a gigantic body made of holiday memorabilia and filled with boxes and cans. This oversized Oogie (slightly taller than the highest point you can reach.) can only be defeated by attacking his feet without being stepped on or by shooting burning gas at him. Then, when you defeat him, you still have to do one of the dance battles you've been doing for the whole game, with the catch that all missed buttons come out of your health. Not bad for a licensed game, hmm?
  • Any fight with a vehicle in Uncharted 2, these are definitely large parts of why the game rates so high.
    • The first vehicle is a helicopter that attacks you, destroys a sky bridge while you are in it, and chases you across rooftops and into a hotel, where it blows holes in the side of the building to get at you! The best part? It eventually gets fed up and blows up the building's foundations, causing it to collapse while you're inside of it! You're forced to jump out, then fight the copter with grenade launchers to send it down.
    • The second chopper fight is definitely more awesome. Its broken into two parts. The first, you have to flee from it while it blows cars off the train you are on. You escape (barely) by going into a tunnel, just as you were about to be crushed by a car flung about by missiles! When you see it next, its still following the train, but this time you fight it by using an AA gun mounted on a tank which is strapped to the train. The resulting fight has you keeping missiles from hitting your tank as you try to gun the helicopter to the valley floor a thousand meters below, with snow swirling everywhere as the entire party careens along the side of the mountain. Just awesome.
  • eXceed 3rd: Jade Penetrate Black Package's final boss Celestia Lindwurm (note that the battle is supposed to go at about twice that speed). Awesome attacks and the two most epic pieces of music in the entire game mean that she is far more awesome than even the Bonus Boss.
  • Bayonetta has several awesome boss fights.
    • The first dedicated boss level is against Fortitudo. A massive jeweled, armoured two headed dragon with an upside down head for a body who has appeared a few times over the last few levels. You start the fight in a ruined colosseum in which Fortitudo scorches the earth to lava during the fight. Over the course of this battle, you suplex his ass and rip off his heads, which are individually dragged down the hell by hundreds of grasping hands. Summon a massive crow demon (who manifests through your hair) to peck his remaining eyes out and then fire a meteor through his face. And he still has time banter with you before his remains follow his heads to hell. Awesome.
    • The final battle, versus Jubileus himself/herself in the epilogue, which consists of you essentially fighting- and killing!- GOD, in outer space! With nothing but your own skills! You finish her (Not a typo) off by sucker punching her soul into the sun! The boss isn't even over after that. Bayonetta and Jeanne have to destroy the statue of Jubileus while it plummets toward earth. Best. Boss. Ever.
    • What about your Evil Counterpart, Jeanne, who in her last fight forces you to play hot potato with MISSILES? Or the Big Bad, Father Balder, who can a) fire on you with a Kill Sat, b) throw SKYSCRAPERS at you (which Bayonetta headbutts back!), and c) can actually destroy some of your largest demons? For added fun, you finish him off with a LIPSTICK TUBE TO THE FOREHEAD in Bullet Time!
    • As stated above, the final battle against Jeanne. But it needs to go more in-depth. It's not just the hot potatoes. This was a fight that the game had building towards. Each fight against her forced you to utilize more and more of your skills and think more on your toes. If you try to win the fight by button-mashing on any difficulty higher than easy, you're going to get your ass handed to you. Like the fight against Jubileus, it requires you to use every bit of practice and skills you've accumulated over the course of the game and it is amazing.
  • The new Ninja Gaiden series has a few. Granted, the Ninja Gaiden series is infamous for being Nintendo Hard, but Fiend Genshin ranks as one of the most fun and challenging bosses ever, particularly on Master Ninja, where it's just you and the Worthy Opponent with a redonculously powerful set of moves in a nerve-wracking fight where a single mistake means your doom.
  • Toontown Online had the epic CFO, CJ, AND CEO.
    • CFO (Chief Financial Officer) has his boss battle located in a warehouse. To win, you have to drop a safe on him, by using one of the magnetic cranes hanging from the ceiling! This is the only time in the game where you can actually use those cranes!
    • CJ (Chief Justice) has his/her boss battle in a Cog Court of Law. It was metaphorically a great big case, where you would go to the witness' stand and take evidence. The evidence is literally a scroll, that you throw into a big scale in the center of the court where you are supposed to make your side of the scale go to the bottom, where you would win the case.]
    • CEO (Chief Executive Officer) has his boss battle in a Golf Club where you are supposed to go on the tables and use seltzer bottles to try to squirt him into submission. You can also use the golf balls on the side of the stage to slow him down.
  • Chrono Trigger. Even today, despite the SNES-era storyline, graphics, and music, the Climax Boss at approximately the halfway point of the game can't be anything but one of the greatest boss battles of all time. Magus has brilliant build-up, an amazingly kickass battle theme, is one of the most difficult bosses up to this point, gets a wicked anime-cutscene introduction in the remakes, and just generally exudes awesome. Such was the impact and awesomeness of that battle that many gamers think Magus is The Dragon at first.
    • And there's also Lavos' final form, with the Amazing Technicolor Battlefield and awesome animation after awesome animation. Or Black/Rust Tyranno, basically fighting against a HUGE fire-breathing T-Rex.
  • Let's give Chrono Cross some love as well. Yes, the last few hours are painful, but the fight with FATE is excellent. And the Dragon God as well, even if the fight doesn't quite make up for Terra Tower.
  • I Wanna Be the Guy: Dracula. Yes, IWBTG got on this page. Let's review: he throws apples giant cherries delicious fruit on fire, as well as the frickin' moon, at you, sets the floor ablaze several times, and turns into a Waddle Doo at the end, all with epic music playing in the background. Hard or not, that battle was pure awesome from start to finish.
    • Or, considering this IS IWBTG we're talking about: From start, to start, to start, to start...
    • He can even kill you in the intro speech, when he throws his wineglass at you. You have to jump over it.
    • Mechabirdo's boss fight also counts as you ride huge-ass missiles and the BGM taken from Ikaruga's boss fight made it MORE AWESOME.
      • Honestly, every boss fight in that game is seriously awesome! Mike Tyson probably less so than the others, but assuming you take the upper path first, he's still an awesome first boss.
  • Okami appears to be angling for all of its bosses to fit this trope, but particularly amazing is the fight against Lechku and Nechku, enormous clockwork owls with top hats, canes, and monocles.
    • Also, in this fight, you're joined by SHIRANUI, Amaterasu's pre-incarnation from 100 years earlier, who's essentially Amaterasu amped up to 11 - you can in fact just sit back and let Shiranui take care of the boss herself the first time you fight them. The second time, Shiranui AND Oki fight alongside you, and in order to damage them, you have to stun them, then get Oki to FIRE AMATERASU LIKE AN ARROW at them. Oki and Shiranui also attack the bosses themselves. It's the boss fight that you don't fight on your own, and Oki and Shiranui are truly badass allies.
      • Shiranui also has the Celestial Brush on her side. Think your Cherry Bombs are strong? Shiranui has a goddamn holy nuke. Galestorm, powerful? Shiranui doesn't even need the upgraded version to damage.
    • The Ninetails fight. A boss with similar moves to you!
      • Ninetails's surprise ability to de-inkify you with its own brush if you're too slow to draw your attacks is just one of the many aspects of that fight that made it one of the game's most memorable. There's also the emotional lead-up to the battle After Ammy finds Himiko dead, Rao reveals she's now just the vessel of evil bent on plunging the world in darkness, and mockingly thanks Ammy for foolishly handing over the Fox Rods she needed to unleash Yami and the wonderfully dark atmosphere of the stage itself. Just have a listen to Ninetails's awesome track. It's extremely satisfying when Ninetails almost haughtily raises its lightning sword high up in the air like it's invincible, and you know exactly what to do...
    • Yami, just... Yami. You have to use every single brush technique to fight him, including the ones perceived as useless. In the last round Ammy gets knocked out for the count and due to everyone's prayers gets restored her to her former glory. Cue howl, Intro music to one of the best boss tracks in this game. And the showdown with the final boss's final form.
  • For all intents and purposes, the final witness/culprit of each case in the Ace Attorney games can be considered the case's boss. One of the most memorable is the final showdown with Dahlia Hawthorne's spirit at the end of the third game. It's especially satisfying to take her down, knowing what she's done and tried to do, and that's before Mia steps in...
    • Also von Karma. Just... von Karma. Franziska wasn't that difficult and she could literally whip the judge into submission.
    • The confrontation with Embassador Quercus Alba in Ace Attorney Investigations. Unlike past games, all the cases are related in some way, and thus all the tragic events, such as Oliver being Amano's scape-goat and having to abandon his daughter, and the death of Kay's father, can be traced back to him. And God, does he put up one hell of a fight. No matter how many flaws and circustances you bring up pointing at him, he will always throw something back at you. Thus it is incredibly satisfying when he finally comes down.
  • Mortal Kombat had Goro, whose moves included grabbing you with two arms and beating you with the other two, or his four-arm version of the power slam.
    • Goro's entrance deserves a mention. The match just before is a fight against two opponents, set in Goro's Lair. Once you beat the last guy, your points are tallied up...and then, with no transition, Goro roars and smashes through the ceiling and starts the fight. No announcer, no respite, just immediate ass-kicking.
    • Another mention goes out to Onaga, the final boss of Mortal Kombat: Deception. Let's see... he starts off every battle with a great roar, his grab is sheer awesome, and it takes place in a spike-laced arena where the six Kamidogu stand on pedestals circling it. And with each one you break, Onaga gets a little easier to fight. On top of that, he notices when you approach one and rushes to stop you. Whoever came up with that subtle touch is amazing.
    • Mortal Kombat 9 also has the final fight of Cyber Sub-Zero's chapter in the MKIII act of the game. He goes up against both Goro and Kintaro, the game's two SNK Boss Mid Boss characters in a tag-team (While Sub-Zero's on his own) and the game expects you to be able to win.
  • The battle of wits with LeChuck at the end of Monkey Island 2 Le Chucks Revenge. Never at any other point in the series has the villain (who's usually played for laughs) been this bloody terrifying. Any player who doesn't jump every time he enters the room with his crashing theme and that voodoo doll of his clearly must be a robot incapable of fear. And this takes place at the end of a point-and-click Adventure game where you can't even die. How many Adventure games have done a final boss that can actually stand head and shoulders with bosses from other genres?
    • The Final battle of Tales of Monkey Island is also terrifying. In theory, you know you don't have a health meter of any kind, but the fantastic voice acting will make you feel like you really can't take another hit.
  • The sorcerer duel with Mordak in King's Quest V. Graham is a ex-knight, not a sorcerer (that's Alex's department), and still manages to hand the guy his rear with some fast thinking and a borrowed wand. Another nomination is for Alex's duel with Alhazred in King's Quest VI. Using a mostly useless sword and what had to be a crash course in sword fighting (he was raised a slave, after all), he manages to hold his own long enough for Cassima to break out the dagger she concealed in her robes and stab the guy in the back!
  • Another one from Sierra. Space Quest 4's fight against Vohaul. Holy crap. The Master Computer is on a countdown to self-destruct and Vohaul has pulled a Grand Theft Me against Roger's Kid From the Future. Roger, who isn't the most athletic of guys, is fighting hand to hand with his hijacked kid, manages to knock him back, gets the disk, manages to swap his kid back into his body and Vohaul to disk just as the counter runs down. Whew!
  • Punch-Out!! has many memorable bosses: the epic battle with Mr. Sandman, for instance, or the "soda"-addicted Soda Popinski. But the king of them all must be the Wii version's Bonus Boss: Donkey. Freaking. Kong. What makes it even better is the sheer difficulty of this fighter. He's constantly taunting you, leaves few opportunities to get stars, he hits hard, and his patterns are hard to predict. A truly epic battle from a character from the Mario universe, of all places.
    • Speaking of Mr. Sandman on the Wii game, try fighting him in Title Defense mode. He gains the ability to wink and QUICKLY follow it with an uppercut, sometimes doing this 5 times BEFORE he resumes his regular patterns. If you knock him down enough times, he'll fly into a rage where he'll do nothing BUT wink and uppercut for a whole minute! If you can survive the onslaught, Mr. Sandman tires out and you can punch him forever without him recovering AND gain stars at random, allowing you to put him down for good with a 3 star punch! Epic of the charts with this fight.
    • Or you can just jab him as soon as he winks. If you jab him in the eye he's winking with, you get a star, meaning you can easily knock him out 2-3 uppercuts into his onslaught.
    • The Club Nintendo Premium match against Doc Louis, mainly the "Sparring" difficulty, where you really see Doc is more than a fat guy who keeps taking your bike.

Doc Louis: I INVENTED the Star Punch!

  • The final battle in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Against a Nano Machine infested Nick Fury. Fury unleashes the powers of almost a dozen heroes and villains against you, keeping you on your toes and switching tactics-all the while ranting about how you need to submit to the collective.
    • The Deadpool boss fight. Partly because he attacks an enemy, followed by one of your own allies on account of disturbing his vacation to look at the cherry blossoms. Partly because he proceeds to get angry at the player for laughing at the fact he came to see the cherry blossoms, and announces that it's boss battle time "time for a little Boss Battle, SUCKERS!!", and partly because you unlock him shortly after.
  • Do Don Pachi, or indeed any Cave game, is practically defined by soul-crushingly hard but extremely satisfying bosses. The final boss Hibachi really kicks it into 11th gear (twice, given she has two forms) for your fight with her, which is appropriate, given that you have to play the game WITHOUT CONTINUES in order to reach her. Not only that, but the boss music from Do Don Pachi is enough to send shivers down the spine. It's just so epic and pulse-pounding. So memorable.
  • Super Smash Bros. Melee introduced Crazy Hand, the destructive yang to Master Hand's creative yin. Even better, its appearance was at first a total surprise - you cruise along the classic mode, fighting hard against an old, familiar foe as the final boss... then that cackle erupts, and Crazy makes its appearance. The rules had changed, and it was time to face up to the beatdown.
    • Mr. Giga Bowser! After completing adventure mode on normal, no continues, 15 mins (most likely 1-2 lives left) you face this MONSTER of MONSTROUS proportions! In SSBB you can actually control Giga Bowser as Bowser's Final Smash.
    • Tabuu, the final boss of the Subspace Emissary in SSBB. You're fighting basically a hologram humanoid--think Fighting Wire Frames from Melee but on MAJOR 'roids. He's spent much of the game manipulating The Ancient Minister, AKA the playable ROB, into sacrificing his robotic brethren so that Tabuu can invade from Subspace. He's mind-controlling Master Hand, which, in a case of Fridge Mind Screw, kind of implies he's the player (as Master Hand was in turn implied to be a child playing with his toys, which is effectively the player if usually minus the "child" part). At one point, he simultaneously one-shots the entire playable roster, resulting in Nightmare Fuel when you go to save the game and ALL YOUR CHARACTER ICONS ARE GONE. And that's just BEFORE you actually fight him, which involves instant teleport-explosions, throwing you with the chain he was using on Master Hand, various lasers (including one which involves him growing huge and his massive head approaching from the side of the stage) and, oh yeah, OFFWAVES. If you don't know how to spotdodge or roll with precise timing, or you're not playing a character that can stall offstage for a while, or you're on an Easy difficulty, it's an unavoidable kill. And with obligatory Crowning Music of Awesome to boot. Surprisingly, he's not that hard until you get to upper difficulties, since he moves slowly on lower ones (and his every move isn't an OHKO). SSE had a couple other epic fights, such as Rayquaza, Duon, Galleom, and Meta Ridley.
  • Technically almost everything you fight in Monster Hunter is a boss in comparison to the way most games are played, but the fight against Lao-Shan-Lung stands out for several reasons. First off, it's a frikin' huge dragon, and secondly the music once you get to the final area comes with what is possibly the best out of the game's various Crowning Music of Awesome.
    • And then MH Tri is released, and Jhen Mohran comes along. A dragon the size of Lao that swims in the sand. You get to fight him on a boat; a boat armed with cannons, ballista guns, and a dragonator (A giant clockwork spike). If this isn't enough, during the final segment of the fight, striking Jhen with the dragonator triggers a remix of the music heard while fighting Lao. And it's every bit as epic.
  • Ape Escape: Pumped and Primed has a light feel to it, until you get to the final boss, a Giant Face from hell, which is actually the core of the entire virtual world in which the tournament takes place. It's also the first and only boss to have multiple health bars. Coupled with the fact that it has more attacks then any other boss in the game, which deal a lot more damage, and it's One hell of a boss. Until you realize that Monkey Team's "Goliath Fist" special hits multiple times (due to it being so tall) for massive damage, and that it's mostly stationary...
  • SpongeBob SquarePants. The underrated Battle for Bikini Bottom's final boss is one of the most epic things in Spongebob. Its battle is long and hard and has 2 forms. And the best part is it has the best music ever. Click here for really awesome music. Which sounds like Final Fantasy. Very memorable to any gamer who has played this game. Also the cutscenes are very amusing with a Ho Yay joke. One of the best boss ever. The Movie's final boss can also be mentioned, and its music also great.
  • From the criminally unknown Breakdown for Xbox, there is the Climax Boss, Solus. Every human enemy in the game involves using cover and the environment well, while the T'lan enemies require you to simply dodge the first hit and then beat the crap out of them before they can recover. Here, Solus is standing in the middle of an arena which is floating in mid-air, and the last time you fought him he utterly curbstomped you and proceeded to stand in front of an exploding nuke without flinching. This time, you have exactly the same powers as he does, and the only way to beat him is to bring the fight to him in an awesome fistfight, countering his superspeed with your superspeed and dodging his energy blasts. The first time you knock him down, he congratulates you, since up until then he had never been knocked to the ground. Ever. When you bring him down to roughly half his health, he simply shakes his head and declare "Your death was meant to be swift." before taking his performance up a notch.
  • The criminally underrated PSX game Alundra has its fair share of excellent boss fights, including a duel against a crazed werewolf in plain view of the horrified village, running from an animated stone colossus, fighting a dream demon while simultaneously trying to keep the man whose mind you are in from being sucked into the abyss of its maw, or maybe just the way the final boss battle sees you win through the prayers of all the (rather few at that point) surviving villagers granting you strength... before you finally set him on fire.
    • Despite its rather cold reception, even in comparison to its prequel, most if not all of Alundra 2: A New Legend Begins's bosses qualify. Highlights include an early boss fight against the giant robotic bull boss (prefaced by an entertaining fleeing scene reminiscent of the aforementioned Goht) and the demonic spider fought on a rapidly-descending elevator (doubly so when she smashes the guard rail protecting herself and Flint from smashing against the walls). The grand prize has to go to the demon whale, however; an enormous mutated whale swallows most of the game's cast, stranding them in a Scrappy Level spanning its innards. After all the puzzles are finally said and done, the player comes face to face with the whale's mutated, mechanical heart, which defends itself with summoned mooks, beam spam, and more. It's a fair, yet challenging boss, and it's only vulnerable when it hangs down as if to say, "Take out the aggression of being stuck in this damn level out on me!"
  • The So Okay It's Average game DICE based on the same anime is completely based on mindless repetitive action and nonsense plot. The Shell, main phlebotinum, is simply equal to solarbenite, so you can have a idea, the game was simply panned by critics. Everything is just stupid until the secret last mission, when you fight the true last boss: the Shell created a Eldritch Abomination and it's up to you to impede him to destroy the universe (yes, the universe), with your Transforming Mecha, with everything, since the bare hands to the main cannon. It's truly the only Crowning Moment of Awesome of the entire game, you just have to earn much patience.
  • Wolfenstein 3D had you fighting Adolf Hitler himself in a suit of mechanical power armor with four miniguns attached. Enough bullets would take his armor off, but he would still carry a minigun in each arm. Luckily, it didn't take much more after that to kill him and watch him melt into a puddle of gore, complete with replay!
  • Master of the Wind has a boss fight during a rock concert. With the lead singer. Who summons a bunch of rock angels. All of whom look different (and awesome) and have music-themed attacks. While you have two Guest Star Party Members. And "Spirit Never Dies" plays in the background (you know, this song) because the singer is still rocking out. Best. Boss. EVER.
  • Brutal Legend - huge bosses plus metal soundtrack equal sheer badassery. First boss in the game: Eddie rams a spiked gate through its head and celebrates with a guitar solo and a "Decapitation!!" shriek. And it's only the beginning, afterward you get to fight a metal spider with Brocas Helm's Cry Of The Banshee as background music, and of course, the final, axe-to-spear brawl with Emperor Doviculus set to the tune of, of all things, The Painkiller!!!
    • The demise of Doviculus makes the player really feel like a metal badass: DECAPITATIOOOOOOON!!
  • Grand Chase has the Corrupted Divine Tree in the Forest of Life. Four heads in each corner to take out before the main body, constant mook summoning, and when all the heads go, ACID RAIN starts pouring down.
    • To even the odds a little, Gaia (the one you're supposed to rescue) periodically summons healing magic at certain spots, which is a full HP heal for you, and also extends the fight somewhat, as this also restores Gaia's HP.
  • In an otherwise unmemorable game, Madworlds Kojack fight is one of the most awesome things ever.
    • Mostly because you see Jack ramming himself aginst himself. As Kreese put it: "We are witnessing the most violent masturbation ever."
    • Even better is the final boss himself, The Black Baron himself. It comes out of complete nowhere for anyone playing hte game. But when they face him, they realize that this person got Rank 1 because they're STRONG AS HELL. Unlike Kojack, who you fight in an underground secret base with motorbikes, you face The Black Baron in a brutal fist-fight, on an arena on a tower, WAY up high in the sky, with the audience cheering in the background, while an incredibly laid-back song (which is fitting, considering who the final boss is), which is actually quite fitting for the final boss and refreshing to hear, plays in the background, stating how Jack is cramping the Baron's style and he wants to basically pimp slap him in the face. If you get knocked out of the ring, you get bludgeoned with a spiked bat and then launched back into the ring.
      • It gets even more intense after you take down half the final boss' HP. IMMEDIATELY, the music shifts from the laid-back 'Look Pimpin' into 'So Cold', stating just how ticked off you made him. The boss then gets a potential One-Hit KO, a lightning kick, and a rocket punch that can knock you out of the ring instantly. Throughout the fight, the clashes can be described as 'Multiple Cross-Counters', the two of you basically punching each other until The Baron takes a bit too much damage and you slam the boss' head into the arena. And when you FINALLY drop his health down to zero, you get the pleasure of home-running the boss into a dartboard to finish him.
  • Hero Core's final boss fights are pretty awesome, at least due to the music. But then again, so are The Elites, Silencer, the Guardian..
  • Odin Sphere's final book is basically a Boss Rush of awesomeness. Bonus points to Levanthan, who is his own stage, and Darkova, for being such a tearjerker.
  • Musashi: Samurai Legend gives you a final stage where you get to beat on all of Gandrake's directors, followed by the man himself. Rothschild is particularly fun, what with his magic tornadoes and such.
  • Belgar, the final boss of Final Fight. While the battle is fun enough, the best part by far is punching the man who kidnapped your daughter (because let's face it, you're playing as Haggar, not Cody) through the windows of a skyscraper.
  • Classic Phantasy Star has a multitude of awesome fights, but Phantasy Star 4 surely has the greatest bosses in the series. Including the new games.
    • Zio. Just... Zio. Smug, twisted, genuinely TERRIFYING once he cuts the cultist crap, and he can and WILL rip you to shreds... and oh yes, the first time you fight him, he will finish the battle by plot-killing Alys Freakin' Brangwin. Killing him is sweet revenge indeed.
    • Dark Force. Three times. The first time can count as a That One Boss if you haven't been paying attention, the second time is in a tower of meat, and the third time... well... let's just say Seth never saw it coming...
    • The Profound Darkness. Three forms, devastating attacks, and the ability to use The Strongest Spell Ever (before Online and Universe nerfed it anyway). Even using the almost cheatery fifth character doesn't even come close to giving you a definite win.
    • Re Faze's Alys. The most painful way to get a killer spell ever...
  • Pick pretty much any boss from Darksiders, for example the "Payback's A Bitch" fight against Straga. A boss fight against a giant raging demon with a hammer the size of a large building who flings smaller enemies at you, all the while you're shooting portals to get to the back of his head and cut it open. Then there's the end cutscene when you shoot a portal into his head and destroy him from the inside. Chills...
  • Matthew Patel, the first boss of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game. As soon as he jumps out of the background and your character deflects an attack from him, you know epic shit's about to go down. It also helps that his theme is the Crowning Music of Awesome.
    • From the same game, Nega Scott, who is a combination of this trope and That One Boss.
  • BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger has the final battle in the True Story. You play Unlimited Ragna, against Unlimited Nu, in a proper Three Round Deathmatch (unlike every other story battle), on an Amazing Technicolor Battlefield, to the tune of the game's theme song, Ao-Iconoclast. And it's marvelous.
  • The remake of NBA Jam by EA Sports has the Magic Johnson boss battle. He's a literal one-man team.......because HE CAN TELEPORT! He'll lob the ball up and teleport to finish an alley-oop dunk, pass and teleport to where the ball is going, pump fake and teleport, and so on. What especially makes this so awesome is that the first time Magic pwns you, you'll be geeked out and amazed at how Magic effortlessly beat you. And you'll NEVER get frustrated. It takes time, but instead of thinking, "DAMMIT I LOST AGAIN" you think, "I'm getting there!"
  • The Deadpool battle in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. A chaotic confrontation against three Deadpools, none of whom stop talking, some great bits of comedy (such as 'Pool teleporting in with a card to announce the start of the next "round" or two Deadpools interviewing Spidey-as a grapple attack. a great score helps too.
  • Spider-Man: Web of Shadows has a lot of fun boss battles in general thanks to it's fantastic combat mechanics, but the Vulture is a true standout among the game's various villains. It's a thrilling aerial battle where you'll have to chase the old bird into the sky by web zipping across his henchmen and trade blows with him while ducking out and evading his bladed wings. And if the awesomely chaotic fight wasn't enough, there's the finishing quick time event where you get Spider-Man to run across his blades and piledrive him into the street for a K.O.
  • Splatterhouse: The new remake features Biggy Man, an enemy with CHAINSAWS FOR HANDS!!! The fight starts out with you blasting him with a shotgun, before he disappears and drops you through the floor, separating you from your gun. Next, you have to duck and weave, avoiding his chainsaw attacks and hitting him between attacks. If he hits you with one of his attacks, he'll vanish and reappear, trying to cut you down from behind. During the final phase, you rip off one of his arms, then use his chainsaws against him, giving you a chance to pay him back for any difficulty this fight gave you, before finally going in for the big finish.
  • Mass Effect has a couple. There's the thorian, a big creepy mind-controlling plant. The final fight against Saren. Then in the sequel, there's a few more. There's the Thresher Maw during Grunt's loyalty mission. Tela Vasir during the Lair of the Shadow Broker is awesome, not to mention the fight against the Broker.
    • The fight against Tela Vasir can also be hilarious if you're playing as a Vanguard. The boss gets an equivalent of the Vanguard's Charge ability, and brags about it. So if you Charge her while she's boasting and start punching her in the face... well, now you're the one chasing her around and she's using Charge not to attack, but to escape. It is suitably epic.
  • The Kingdom of Loathing class Nemeses, after which the Big Bad is anticlimactic. Everyone has their favorite.
    • Gorgolok the Demonic Hellseal, with bone shields that must be shattered before using your newly acquired super-critical-bamming attack.
    • The Spaghetti Demon, for allowing you to do something you can't do anywhere else: Spam Entangling Noodles, a spell which you have been using at the start o most every fight since you hit level 3.
  • Sakura Taisen V, pretty much every battle from the second battle against Ranmaru at the end of Chapter 6 up to the first battle with Nobunaga in chapter 8. The two battles that bookend this period are sheer awesome Marathon Bosses, but in between you also get some bitchin' awesome defense missions and a Puzzle Boss in the form of the third Ranmaru battle...oh, right, and Dark Shinjiro.
  • The final battle with Ripto in Spyro: Ripto's Rage. The Ominous Latin Chorus, the orbs you've collected throughout the game can be used to unleash destructive power that both you AND the boss can use, and the finale where Ripto blasts the entire ground apart, converting it into a lava pool, forcing you and Ripto to use Golden Orb powerups to fly and shoot fireballs at each other.
  • In Purple, the final boss gets irritated by his health display, so he throws his Ultra Frisbee at it, cracking it and rendering it useless. You go through the rest of the battle with no indication whatsoever of how much health he has left.
  • The battle against the Wendigo in the little-known game Brave: The Search For Spirit Dancer. Not only is the Wendigo the upper-half of a giant, red, horned, flying, and flaming skeleton, Brave fights it by shooting at it with an amulet, whilst riding a large Bald Eagle spirit, over a pit of lava, with fireballs, rocks and explosives flying everywhere.
  • A few in Bug!. One was Bug facing against a Background Boss octopus who flung fish at Bug, so Bug had to use a tennis racket to swat the fish back to the octopus' head. The other one, while very difficult, was the swamp worm- Bug had to stand on a tiny platform floating on instant-death water as the worm tried to attack Bug. The awesome part came when the platform started moving, and then both Bug and the boss had to trade shots with each other in what was essentially a spitting competition.
  • Tron Evolution has Abraxas. Man, he is actually Darth Vader! Covered in Tron Lines!
  • Speaking of Tron games, Tron 2.0 has a good one in the form of the Kernel. He's truly a Worthy Opponent, and you end up facing each other Deadly Disc against Deadly Disc. Fuse it with the fact Jet's trying to rescue his enemy and a side order of Escort Mission as Alan is trying to stay out of the way of the combat.
    • There's also the Final Boss - the digitized abomination that Crown, Popoff, and Baza became when they digitized themselves. You're battling them inside the transit beam going back to the analog world on a series of floating platforms. The artwork is beautiful.
  • The second X-Men Legends game has Apocalypse as the final boss. On his own, he's not a pushover, but depending on how powerful your team is, he's not too hard either. Then he summons his 4 Horsemen who you've beaten individually at the end of the previous 4 acts, turning it into a Battle Royale With Cheese. After one or two occasions of knocking his health down to zero, only for him to respawn almost instantly, do you realise that he's also a Puzzle Boss. After using his machine to power yourself up the same way he has, you have to tear through mooks to smash up generators for his machine (as well as Apocalypse himself who teleports to it in order to guard it). Only once the machine is destroyed is the boss fight over.
  • Play Tekken 6. Arcade mode. Make it to Azazel. Beat him. CELEBRATE!
  • The Dadgame has several epic (and epically hard) bosses for a free flash game. The gigantic Final Weapon and its secret counterpart, Final Weapon X, sporting an arsenal that would make many a mech collapse in shame, including bombs, missiles, plasma bolts, lasers, more lasers, and even MORE lasers, plus an unorthodox way of defeating it compared to most other bosses? Sakupen, who fires gigantic beams and explosions at you? Phantom, a living glitch, and also a Puzzle Boss? And Mecha-Death, who seems to have been made of superconcentrated awesome?
  • In Iji, the Final Boss Tor definitely qualifies. He's got attacks where he flies several miles away, and shoots lasers or missiles at you, then flies back. And when he's back, you face Bullet Hell of epic proportions. From blasts that leave rippling waves on the ground, to missiles that turn into other missiles, to a bolt of energy you have to reflect back at him. And he even has a one-hit kill that not only kills you, but wipes your stats. Also, if you've beaten the game before, you can find a terminal and power him up so he has even more HP and attacks more.
    • The final fight with Asha also qualifies. After trying to (and possibly even succeeding in) killing Iji's brother, being able to finally put him down for good is immensely satisfying, and the fight itself is suitably epic as well.
  • The Final Boss of Dead Rising 2 is an epic fist fight against the Big Bad on top of a building surrounded by a sea of zombies as an AC-130 blows holes in the building in the background. If you get knocked off the platform (and you often will), you have to cleave your way through zombies and avoid the AC-130's cannons to get back up while he shoots at you with his pistol. Alternatively, skip the epic battle and just have a shoot out with him if you bring a pair of sniper rifles and a bunch of healing items, popping out of cover, getting a shot off, and rolling back in. Still fairly epic as you have to watch out for the zombies, the AC-130, and his pistol.
  • The final boss of inFamous is one hell of an epic fight in a game loaded with them. You're put in a one-on-one duel with Kessler, the man responsible for the deaths of thousands and the destruction of your city (not to mention killing your girlfriend)in the middle of a huge crater you woke up in at the very beginning of the game. Kessler has powered up versions of all of your moves, plus it's hard to actually hit him since he'll teleport a few feet away everytime you shoot him unless it's during one of his moves. Beating him requires skill, patience, and liberal use of the dodge button.
  • The 2009 Ghostbusters was just a parade of wonderful boss battles. The Stay-Puft Man? You're dangling over a goddamn building firing proton darts at it! The Librarian? You're down in secret passages within the library not opened for decades, sealed in a creepy little chamber with you, her, and the classic team. Cool! The Spider Witch? Beautifully creepy, and double the Squick for any arachnophobes. You get to see what a Slor looks like (as mentioned in passing in the first film). And then, there's Shador himself. Oh. Wow. Thank you, Misters Aykroyd and Ramis!
  • Fighting Victor Creed as Wolverine in the fairly decent game adaptation of X-men Origins: Wolverine is incredibly brutal. Since both Wolverine and his half-brother Creed have a Healing Factor, they beat the everloving shit out of each other through various means. Since one of the game's main mechanics involves throwing enemies into dangerous objects, and the game refreshingly lacks Contractual Boss Immunity, there's plenty of of things laying around that you can use to impale, bludgeon, crush, and otherwise horribly maim your dear brother. Of course, He can do all the same to you.
  • Morganem or to be more precise, Uthurak Incarante, the Final Boss from the Warcraft III custom campaign "To the Bitter End". In a custom campaign that has a number of intense and very difficult boss battles, he really takes the cake. First, the player discovers that the enemy they've been trying to defeat the whole game has become the gateway for an Eldritch Abomination that wants to unmake the entire universe. Then, the entire last Chapter is dedicated to this one climatic battle. As well as being ungodly tough, the boss gets progressively harder and smarter throughout the fight. You only have a chance of winning because damaging him causes "Mana Splinters" to spawn in the area. By the end, the entire Boss Room is filled with enemies, earth-shaking spells get thrown back and forth, and Morganem even tries to usher in the Apocalypse and all the while wicked music plays in the background. If you survive against all the odds, you're rewarded with a suitably impressive end cinematic to round it all off.
  • The bossfight against Rex Cavalier from Hellsinker is both a really long boss and very well thought out. All the while, Mickey Mousing is in full effect. As the fight goes on Rex changes attacks based on your performance, with everything from missiles to more lasers. And when he explodes and seems to be beaten, his Spirit Kernel takes over the fight in one last struggle while the music picks up and the background starts flying by very fast. And finally, in a last ditch attack, Rex tries to load over his spirit onto the protagonist. If you stop him it's on to the next stage; if he succeeds, however, you get a Nonstandard Game Over where your spirit gets corrupted and is slowly turned into the PRAYERS you have been fighting.
  • Batman: Arkham City gives us Mr. Freeze, who COMPLETELY averts Boss Arena Idiocy by making sure that once you use a strategy against him once, you can NEVER USE IT AGAIN. He's completely invulnerable to head-on attack and can kill you in under 5 seconds with his ice beam. Beating him requires that you utilize every stealth-based attack you have used, since once you have used one trick on him, he'll put up a defense that prevents it from working again. For example, if you try to attack him by gliding off of the top floor rafters and kicking him, it will work at first, but then Freeze will fire his beam into the air, making the air denser and gliding becomes impossible. On New Game+ mode this will go Up to Eleven, where you won't just have to use five or six tricks, you will have to use all of them due to his increased health and general Badassery.
    • Also you can't just use the Gargoyles, you have to rely on stealth techniques you may well overlook in favour of just glidebombing and vertical takedowns. It forces you to do what Batman does best: adapt, use brains, traps and creativity.
    • The fight Bruce has with Ra's Al Ghul while tripping on the Blood of the Demon is nearly as good. It has some of the best (and most outlandish) visuals in the game (which is saying something), a tense atmosphere, and gives Batman the opportunity to counter attacks from over twenty opponents at the same time (He's normally capable of a mere three counters at the same time).
      • One word: Clayface. Fighting this Humanoid Abomination with Talia's scimitar, while dodging its insane attacks and slicing up its Mooks, while near a Lazarus Pit involved in the awesome Finishing Move against this boss....it's awesome.
  • In Gears of War 3, finally getting to have a proper battle with a Brumak on foot was great.
  • Satan from The Binding of Isaac. Yeah, you heard right - in the Halloween update's Bonus Level of Hell you have to fight the devil himself. To even get to the level you have to have beaten the extremely cheap True Final Boss at least 10 times, then go through a level full of DegradedBosses. Once you get there, he's got a fallen angel fighting for him, which is spewing projectile blood like there's no tomorrow, along with death lasers. Then, at 50% health, it splits in two, making it faster and harder to hit, as well as doubling its firepower. When you finally beat it, Satan finally gets off his throne and grows huge. He's powerful, but his attacks aren't that hard to dodge. When you take him down, he just gets back up, grows another health bar and flies off the screen, so he can stomp all over you. When you finally really kill him, you're treated to one of the MindScrewiest endings ever to grace a flash game.
  • Galactus in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, just for the sheer scale of it. To start, every other fight in the arcade mode, save for the first, is preceded by a page-turning animation of the victory screen to show who your next opponents are. Galactus, just to show how far above the rest he is, disregards this convention and tears apart the victory screen as his entrance revealing the battlefield, a rocky plane overlooking the world. The game doesn't hide what is at stake- the announcer will shout "The battle for Earth!" before his usual stuff, and the HUD even changes in accordance, with "Time" replaced with "Earth Limit" and "Save the Earth!!" added as well. Heck, once Galactus summons his heralds to take care of you, he'll teleport to the background and loom over the planet! If you manage to take the heralds out, Galactus will return to the foreground and slowly approach you, as the camera slowly pans up to reveal how much he towers over you, as a truly pulse-pounding theme sets the mood. If you lose at any point, the game will remind you just how much you screwed up - instead of just a "K.O.", the screen will show "EARTH K.O." while the announcer says "Global destruction!", and to hammer it home, you are treated to a scene where Galactus destroys Earth. However, if you manage to beat him, the announcer declares "You have saved the Earth!" while Galactus falls off the stage. Yep, you just defeated a cosmic being that can consume whole planets with a team of three people. It's enough to make anyone feel like a hero.
    • Yes, beating Galactus with a team featuring Thor, Amaterasu, and Doctor Doom is pretty much impressive, but it's even more satisfying if you use Badass Normal characters like Chris Redfield, Captain America, or even Frank West to beat Galactus. Yep. Friggin' epic.
  • Reflux from Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. The champion of a race of feared warriors, who you have to battle in an underground arena surrounded by lava. While the rest of his people watches the fight. Who keeps hurling fireballs at you and calls down flaming rocks. Epic.
  • Pick a fight with Eve. Any fight with Eve. But the two best have to be where you fight her while running from one side to the other on a flaming horse and buggy, and the final fight with her at the wrecked remains of the Statue of Liberty. Especially the second one, where you get a great Shut UP, Hannibal moment against Eve and go on to what is easily the toughest boss battle in the game. And every fight with her is highlighted by the game's iconic operatic score.
  • LittleBigPlanet 2. All the bosses you fight in LBP2 are... different, to say the least.
    • The first boss is a tutorial boss, yes, but it's a freaking giant monkey who throws punches at you and uses an electrified yo-yo while you're danging from a grappling hook, trying to avoid touching the electricity.
    • The second boss has you throwing freaking cake at it while it tries to shock you, vaporize you, and finally just beamspam you to death.
    • The third boss is a giant turkey that you can't even fight. The only thing you can do is run away while guiding Sackbots, swinging from giant platforms, and yanking on levers before you get stepped on.
    • The fourth boss is a giant scorpion mech that you fight with a flying bee while shooting honey bullets. It tries to shoot you out of the sky with Frickin' Laser Beams. The awesome boss theme doesn't hurt either.
    • The fifth boss is inside the head of one of the creators. You actually shrink down and go into his body. You travel into his brain and shoot the hell out of the virus with the body's own white blood cells.
    • Holy crap, the final boss. The Big Bad of LBP2 is a giant fucking vaccuum cleaner that you fight in three stages. Words cannot even describe how awesome and intimidating this boss is.
  • Lucifer from Dantes Inferno. Man, you fight SATAN himself! And you are only a human!
    • King Minos is also cool. A giant half-man, half-serpent who guards the entrance to Hell. The last moment when you have to impale his head on a sharped-wheel is just... gosh, just play the game!
  • The Coachman from the video game version of Pinocchio. You actually get to kill him!
  • The Passing from Left 4 Dead 2. Sure, there's the entire fact that, in general, you get to make your own awesome boss fights thanks to the AI Director, but there's something about just getting to the bridge and seeing the remaining original survivors in all their glory, making idle banter with the new four survivors before going down to start the generator. First off, having the original survivors not just stand there like complete goofs but actually take up positions and open fire on the Horde as they try and stop you is awesome unto itself, but having Louis, then normally cheery, optimistic, and most carefree of the survivors kill a Tank with a Browning .50 calibre machinegun, all by himself is nothing short of completely kickass.
  • Many, many bosses of Dark Souls qualify for this. Special mentions go to Ornstein and Smough, no matter how much they are kicking your ass, Sif for being a badass wolf wielding a greatsword in his teeth, and Gwyn, Lord of Cinder.
  • In the Syndicate remake, enemy Agent Tatsuo makes for a hectic battle as you chase each other round the train station, trying to get behind him before he gets behind you while Tatsuo flash steps everywhere and deploys holographic duplicates to confuse you. When you finally manage to wear him down, you get to hack his hologram projector and blow it up in his face. Not to mention Skrillex's remix of the main theme playing in the background.
  • In One Piece Pirate Warriors, the final boss. After Ace gets downed by Akainu, instead of seeing Luffy break like he did in the original series, the player gets to MAKE LUFFY BEAT THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF AKAINU, with Ace's spirit aiding Luffy in a similar way to how Goku helps Gohan in the Cell Saga.
  • Distorted Travesty has the final boss, The Artist. The fight is pretty insane, due to Jeremy and Hexor both attempting to screw with the game's code and out-hax each other (giving you all sorts of Eleventh Hour Superpowers in the process). Meanwhile you're hopping around, destroying the Muffins, and avoiding Bullet Hell attacks from the boss himself.
    • Also, the Shroud Lord. This thing is hard (may even be the toughest boss in the game), has a ton of health, and a love of Beam Spam and Bullet Hell, but between the epic music, the context of the story, and the fact that this thing and its minions have been dogging you for half the game, you'll be having too much fun to be frustrated.
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