Tennis Boss: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:tennis-boss2 1548.jpg|link=The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|frame|Link answers Phantom Ganon's serve with a forehand smash.]]

 

{{quote|''All you have to do is deflect your enemy's attacks back at them, like a game of interstellar [[Pong]].''|'''[[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee]]''' reviewing ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]''}}

 

{{examples}}

 

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' is considerably fond of this. Fans of the games often refer to this trope as "Ganonball". ''[[Phantom Hourglass]]'' gave it an official name, Dead Man's Volley.

* [[Blackout Basement|Dark Grotto]] boss<ref>[[Fan Nickname|Also known as DarkRed.]]</ref> in ''[[An Untitled Story]]''. He charges up a fireball and you have to reflect it with iceshot. He <s>might</s> will reflect it. How many times he will do it in a turn increases with [[Turns Red|amount of hitpoints left]] ''and'' with difficulty level.

 

 

* Even if it's not essential to defeat him and very risky to do, in the first ''[[Devil May Cry]]'' you can swat back the fireballs that the first [[Recurring Boss]], Phantom, spits at you, and this is also the solution to one of the (few) game's puzzles. Doing this to the [[Final Boss]] in his second form gets you a health power-up.

* Done in ''[[Kendo Rage]]'' against a boss that literally, is playing tennis with little star shaped monsters.

 

 

* In ''[[Epic Mickey]]'', Mickey must do this with Petetronic's [[Tron]] discs in order to stun him long enough to hit him for real. While Petetronic does not attempt to hit back, he will put up deflector shields later on that automatically sends the discs back at Mickey, requiring Mickey to break a hole in the shields to get to Petetronic.

 

 

* During the fights in the optional stages in ''[[Bonesaw]]'', your opponent will spiral balls of green and yellow energy at you. The only way to defeat the boss is to hit the spiraling orbs with the titular weapon, which you need to charge from scratch as the boss uses YOUR Bonesaw energy to summon his own at the start of the fight.

* In ''[[Bayonetta]]'', against the third-to-last boss, it's possible to catch a missile several times your size and throw it at the boss, who throws it back, so you throw it again, etc. The next boss tries to kill you with skyscrapers and a [[Colony Drop]]... [[Holy Shit Quotient|Yeah]].

 

 

* In ''[[Snowboard Kids|Snowboard Kids 2]]'', any projectile can be deflected back at the racer who shot it by doing a quick board grab. The idea is that the projectile hits the smooth, reflective surface of the snowboard. Deflected projectiles, however, can be deflected again, sending the projectile back at its target. This can be kept up until someone times it wrong or cannot do a board grab.

 

 

* Possible during the ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]'' series. Mario has a move which flings his cape (of ''Super Mario World'' fame) in front of him, doing one of two things: Turning an immediate opponent in the other direction or redirecting projectiles in the other direction. It's with this second possibility that the 'tennis' idea comes into play.

* In ''[[Killer Instinct]]'', the final boss Eyedol can smack your projectiles back at you. Use a cheat to play as Eyedol, and you can play tennis til the cows come home.

 

 

* ''[[Doom|Doom 3: Resurrection Of Evil]]'''s first boss was one of these. For that matter, you could kill virtually every other (non-boss) enemy in the game with ''one hit'' in this manner.

* ''Postal 2'': When fighting [[Special Guest|Gary Coleman]], you can kick his grenades right back at him. They explode on contact.

 

 

* Final battle. ''[[God of War (series)|God of War]]: Chains of Olympus''. Textbook example.

* In the ''God of War''-like ''[[Heavenly Sword]]'' for the [[Play Station 3]], you can deflect the daggers of the crazy mercenary and in the final battle the fire and lighting balls of the mad king.

 

 

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has a few boss fights with variations on this.

 

 

 

* In ''[[Rayman|Rayman Raving Rabbids]]'' and its sequel, nearly all bosses in the shooter levels were shielded and could only be defeated by hitting missiles they shot at you. No matter what angle you shoot the missile at, it somehow finds its way back to the enemy.

** In the original ''[[Rayman]]'' platform game, Mr. Sax is defeated by punching his "sharp notes" back at him.

 

 

* In general, after starting with Zelda, Nintendo loved using this trope everywhere. ''[[Donkey Kong Country|Donkey Kong Jungle Beat]]'' features several mini-bosses that must be fought in tennis matches.

** The first form of the final boss in ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]] 9'' spits out explosive dinosaur eggs (!). The eggs have to be shot back so they bounce into the boss's mouth.

 

 

* The N64 game ''[[Mischief Makers]]'' had a level where you play ''volleyball'' with a boss. The boss in question is also a kitty cat.

*** There's more. This is a boss fight where the cat that you are riding on is being chased by a giant motorcycle that looks like a dog, is armed to the teeth, and is ridden by an anthropomorphic wolf. You can also ride on the missiles it fires (while still riding the cat, of course). [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwgqjI_ZhM0 So... yeah...]

 

 

* [[Bonus Boss]] Ice Titan in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' requires you to hit his icicles back at him, as anything else you can hit him does absolutely nothing until you stun him with the aforementioned icicles. In fact, you can do this in all sorts of places. Most projectile attacks in the game can be reflected back at an opponent, often giving a nice xp bonus and stunning the enemy.

* In ''[[Terranigma]]'', during the second form of Dark Morph boss, you have to deflect its attacks back to cause damage. The first form of the final boss applies too.

 

 

* ''[[Ikaruga]]'' allows you to absorb like-colored enemy fire and return it in the form of homing lasers. While this isn't technically reflecting fire, the game's second to last boss volleys homing lasers at the player at an ever increasing rate which are optimally returned the moment they are absorbed.

* DJ Octavio, the [[Final Boss]] in ''[[Splatoon]]''. He's got four stages and several attacks, and ''all'' of them are dealt with this way.

 

 

* ''[[Homestar Runner|Strong Bad Zone]]''. The Wii version lets you permanently raise your shield, though.

 

 

* The second part of the battle against [[Eldritch Abomination|Leviathan]] in ''[[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]]'' is this. After you destroy its tentacles, it will start spitting huge festering balls of... something... at Isaac, who must use his kinesis to push them back at it. It always shoots five at a time, so the key is rebounding only the odd-numbered ones: the first and third ones will collide with the second and fourth ones, leaving the fifth ball to be shot back into its... mouth... or whatever the hell the Leviathan shoots those balls from.

* In ''[[Half Life|Half-Life 2]]'', the gravity gun can be sometimes used to catch enemy attacks and throw them back; Anti-matter orbs and objects stuck with hunter flechettes, for example. Also, grabbing a manhack (a flying sawblade robot) creates a chainsaw-like effect if held in the Zero-Point field, aside from the use of launching it at an enemy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* In ''[[Pokémon Special]]'', Guile can reflect a Pokémon's attack back at its user using his sword.

** It's later subverted with the second of the four legendary monsters. The beast shoots a ball of sound ([[Physics Goof|don't ask]]) at Kuwabara. He's about to try to bat it back when the others tell him to dodge. He jumps to another pillar ... and the ball of sound obliterates the one he was standing on.

 

 

* The movie ''[[You Don't Mess With the Zohan]]'' features Playing Tennis With The Boss" ''literally'' through the use of tennis rackets and a grenade.

 

 

 

* ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'' has an three-against-one instance of this in the episode Not So Simple.

 

 

* ''[[Girl Genius]]'': "He threw a [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20030117 bomb] at me!"

* In [[Cucumber Quest]], [[Action Girl|Almond]] does this to [[Cute Witch|Peridot]] in [http://cucumber.gigidigi.com/?webcomic_post=109 this comic].

 

 

* In ''[[Kickassia]]'', Yanki J does this with one of Baugh's cannonballs.

* In ''[[Xin]]'', Andre and Finrak do this with a baseball, hitting it back and forth with bats.

 

 

* In ''[[Kung Fu Panda 2]]'', {{spoiler|Po defeats Shen's battle fleet by catching and throwing back the cannonballs launched at him.}}

[[Category:Boss Battle]]

[[Category:Tennis Boss]]