Joyswag: win a copy of Shadow of the Colossus

The ultimate boss for me has to be Sin (from FFX), because he could take any shape, was unkillable, and he was the main character's father (or dream of a dream of a father... :P). Plus he could turn into that wicked awesome black-hole-creature-thing that sucked everything up.

Definately had to be the Psychonaut's boss. There has never been a better (or more noble) fight!

Definately had to be the Psychonaut's boss. There has never been a better (or more noble) fight!

Looks fun.

I'd have to say that my favorite boss has to be the final boss Ivaldi in Gun Valkyrie for the Xbox.



I remember it taking me forever to defeat this boss, and once I did, my hands were useless, cramped up claws but it felt great to beat this game.



This has to be one of my greatest gaming accomplishments ever.

The one boss that gave me fits more than any other was Psycho Mantis, from Metal Gear Solid. The amount of verbal abuse I threw at my console during that fight would set a cat on fire! It took me awhile to figure out how to stop his mind reading act...

Final Ganondorf from Zelda: Ocinara of Time. The length and intensity of that battle was great!

I've always wanted to give this a shot...

My all time favorite (and most hated) boss battle was Ashura from Final Fantasy IV (FF2 in the US). This was one of the first boss battles I can remember in an RPG that took quite a bit of thought to work out a successful method of killing. The battle is long, but not drawn out, and intense.

So many boss fights to remember, but one that actually made me buy the game was Contra 3 alien wars, where your attacking the ship while jumping from missle to missle. I saw this boss fight at a demo snes at walmart, and couldn't believe my eyes. I never saw such a dynamic construct before of jumping from missle to missle while fighting the boss. Way to cool.

The boss that I have the most vivid and visceral memories of (therefore, my favorite I recon) is Ganon in the original Legend of Zelda for the NES. Zelda was the first linear Story-based RPG type of game that I played, and getting to Ganon felt like quite an achievement. It took me more than a week of constant trial and error (and a dash of luck) to defeat him, but when I did, whoooo boy, was I ever proud of myself! I could finally get back to watching Robotech and doing the homework I had been ignoring...

I like Bowser as the comedy-relief style boss in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

I'd have to go with the Master from Fallout. His multiple personalities, psychotic dreams and the fact that you don't even need to kill him to beat him makes him the awesomeness :).

I've wanted to play this for awhile :(

For me, the worst final boss was taking out Crowe in Far Cry: Instincts. Talk about a non-intuitive level! He's out there firing what looks like a high-caliber assault rifle from an elevated position. Meanwhile I'm contending with the living dead-- the zombies that charge you and blow up.



Jebus.

There are so many choices I could put. There have been many boss fights I've liked to replay again, but only one stands out in my mind as taking up so much of my time.



The final confrontation with Alex Trevalyn on the Cradle level of Goldeneye 007 is my pick. While Metal Gear, Mario, Zelda, Mega Man, and Viewtiful bosses are easily the most creative, stylish, and memorable BOSSES in history, the Cradle fight is still the most dramatic.



The N64's limits prohibited the Cuban jungle to be seen, instead covering the ground with fog, giving the illusion that the two Double-O agents were battling it out in a floating arena in the sky. The pumping music and the swaying pace of Bond mixed to create a sort of rythem that stirred your heart. You had to hunt down and kill your old comrade.



Chasing him all over the Cradle, you shot at him continuously, blasting away waves of guards that clearly did not understand the significance of the battle between you and the ex-006. He was invincible, shouting his taunts at you silently; as there was no voice acting, his words were conveyed as subtitles that seemed more cold than a human voice could have possibly conveyed.



Then, after completing a few objectives that you never truly cared about (stopping the transmission, etc.), you could finally concentrate on what you knew you came for.



The final music comes in, fast-paced and dramatic, as Trevalyn challenges you to the final duel that will decide the better agent. You follow him. You enter the small room. You climb down the ladder.



And then, before you even realize that you've been fighting him, Trevalyn's dead. Bond flies off on the helicopter. It's all over. Nothing more to say.



"For England, James?"



"No. For me."





...Of course, you could just eschew all this serious drama and just replay it over and over again with different cheats on to make it all look funny. That was fun too.

Kahran Ramsus from Xenogears. He had such an amazing heart and sense of depth. The entire game, he chased Fei and Citan as hard as he could, and everytime you met him, you would grow a little more sympathetic to his cause. By the end of the game, his life wrecked, his friends betrayed, and his gear mangled, he still fought. Not because he had any chance of winning the fight, but because that was what he believed in, and his entire life was used up, trying his best to find a purpose.



I feel a lot like Ramsus, just wishing a purpose, just trying to find something, a reason or a hope, that his life meant something. While I don't have a four-hundred foot gear and live in a cloud city, it really weighed heavy on my heart to kill Ramsus. I'd never felt that way about a video game. I felt like I was the villian, because I had to step on Ramsus to fulfill my own purpose. Xenogears taught me so much at such a young, impressionable age. It taught me humility, and that no matter how important I thought I was, I'm just a fart of wind coming from a spit of sand on a beach full of other more important things.



Ramsus' hunger for purpose could only be fulfilled by his own death. I cried almost all day, when I eventually finished the game in it's entirity.

Ninja Gaiden's bosses kicked my butt. SoC looks awesome ...

I don't know if it was a boss, actually it was near the very beginning of the game. Metal Slug, 3, I think. That crab dude, that is destroying the pier as he/she chases you, with cannons embedded in its shell, lobbing missles at you while you run and shoot. If that isn't good enough, how about the battle with aliens as you fall from the sky. brilliant I say.

The last boss in Silpheed (SegaCD) against a huge spacestation. Crazy fight!

Final Fantasy VII Final Boss Fight, when Cloud is headed down and he opens his eyes to see serphro Standing there. It wasn't anything more then a one button attack but to watch that guy get taken down for Killing Aries was the best thing. Also seeing Cloud's final Limit break shine the way it did was awesome.

I had have to saw Lavos from Chrono Trigger on the SNES was my favorite. I remember it took me a lot of tries to kill him. The battle where I finally finished him took forever and every ounce of patience I had. The cool thing about Lavos was that you could beat him at certain points in the game to affect the ending. This made me want to play the game over and over to beat him at all the different times to view all the endings. Good times, good times.

First time your un into Ruby & Emerald Weapon in FFVII. You're like WTF is this? Over 1000000 HP and a time limit!? But once you have the right members, the right materia, limit breaks, and KoTR, it wasn't that bad. But those two were bosses

I'm gonna have to go with Kefka on this one. While I'm sure I could think of plenty of great boss fights, Kefka'a character from Final Fantasy III (or VI according to our boys in the east) was one that really got my attention with his radical ways and crazy personality. His last fight, I think, was a very dramatic closing to an RPG that really did a great job of making the player feel like they had really understood and almost bonded with its characters.



I think FFIII (VI) really became the game for all other RPG's to be compared to at that time. I would also be willing to bet that squaresoft (remember those days) thought of it as THE Final Fantasy game to surrpass when developing FFVII.



In short, here's one for Kefka and his crazy laugh

Mine is ultimacia from FFVIII was probably the hardest bosses for me and the most challenging

most memorable boss ever for me would have to be.....serial killer x from condemned : criminal origins. there's just something about ripping a guys jaw off that really satisfies your inner demon, mind you this may not really be my most meorable, but sense this is the most recent game that i beat that had an end boss it stuck with me. but seriously, first you rip his jaw off and then like a minute later you get to shoot Mr. Vanhorn's evil douche nephew, super cool.

Mine would have to be from Shadow of the Colossus...





***** Spoiler Alert *****

Do not read if you do not want to know what happens at the end of the game...





Once I killed the last Colossus (hard in itself), I was transported back to the shrine. Once I transformed into the big shadow demon, the controls are tough and smashing the little dudes is almost impossible. Before you know it, I am hanging on to the side of the well waiting for my meter to run out and carry me to my death.



I must have tried that end colossus 8 times trying to get to the possessed state only to fail each time.



Great game tho...

Alot of you have mentioned alot of memorable boss fights for me. One I like to mention is MGS3's last boss, Boss. But the one I really remember having an effect on me was my first rpg, Chrono Trigger. As soon as you get the time machine the epoch, you could fight the last boss, Lavos at any point in time of the game with 12 different endings. But for me it wasn't Lavos... even tougher was Queen Zeal and her giant floating hands. I remember thinking, this boss is impossible to beat. I spent most of my time trying to heal my entire party from her back to back savage beating. After time traveling into 6 different eras, getting the rainbow sword, and leveling my team up to level 99 (Crono, Ayla, and Magus), I was sad to think that this game had to end.

I personally have to go with the Shadowlords of Ultima V on the PC. Partially because I have fond memories of U5, but also because there was so much to the Shadowlords. The Ultima games had really good stories and backgrounds, along with that story covering across multiple Ultimas.



They might not have been the Final boss (Lord Blackthorne), but they were so much better. They were the embodiment of Falsehood, Hatred, and Cowardice, created from the shards of Mondain's Gem of Imortality, which is so much better than being meerly a person corrupted by power.



The "boss" from Ultima 7-9, I always hated. The Guardian was just plain annoying in 7-8, although less annoying in 9.

One of my all time favs is Mike Tyson from Mike Tyson's Punchout!

Although I am a big fan of the Zelda series my vote is for the Mother Brain in the orignal Metroid. It was a good fight, and getting away wasn't all that easy.

I can still remember beating Dracula in the final level of Castlevania Adventure for the original Game Boy. If you got hit during the battle, you lost your weapon power-ups, and the battle became increasingly difficult.



Once I figured out his attack patterns and learned to evade his projectiles, I could keep all of my power-ups and defeat Dracula in not time. Thus ended my first epic adventure on the old Game Boy.

Dodongo, who hates smoke.

I would have to say Ansem from Kingdom Hearts, simply because it seems like it's going to be the end of the game after you fight him the second time. You then find out that it's another 20+ minutes until you actually finish the game.

I'd love it!

I always loved Rubicante from Final Fantasy IV. So purely evil, yet he wanted a fair fight, and thus healed you before taking you on. He also had the weirdest toy in gaming - the cloak of resistance swapping (when he covered himself with it, he was healed by ice effects and took extra damage from fire).

It has to be Bowser! -From the Mario Franchise!

Dodongo dislikes smoke.

It has to be Bowser! -From the Mario Franchise!

I personally have to go with the Shadowlords of Ultima V on the PC. Partially because I have fond memories of U5, but also because there was so much to the Shadowlords. The Ultima games had really good stories and backgrounds, along with that story covering across multiple Ultimas.



They might not have been the Final boss (Lord Blackthorne), but they were so much better. They were the embodiment of Falsehood, Hatred, and Cowardice, created from the shards of Mondain's Gem of Imortality, which is so much better than being meerly a person corrupted by power.



The "boss" from Ultima 7-9, I always hated. The Guardian was just plain annoying in 7-8, although less annoying in 9.

I've been waiting for a deal to get this game. Doesn't get much better than free!

The Sea Serpents from God of War were great as the game basically threw you into a huge battle at sea and you were required to beat them to move on without any major tutorials.

The giant brain in lifeforce, is probably one of my most memorable, and probably the first boss battle i really remember, besides bowser of course. You had to shoot it in the eye why dodgeing the snake like rock arm. man that game was awsome, think i'm gonna have to go look for a rom of it now. well it's a toss up between the brain and the heart with the snake thing running around that, same game just the brain was the first lever and the heart was the last if i remember correctly.

I would have to go with Anubis from "Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner". That was one of the most difficult, yet entertaining bosses I have ever faced. My friend and I spent hours trying to beat this guy. Once Anubis went down, yells of triumph echoed throughout the house.

My favorite boss would have to be the Chief of Police from Stubbs the Zombie.



*****Possible Spoilers*****



He made himself out to be such a tough guy, and then he challenges you to a dance off! I like the Simon-feel to the battle, and I love the music. 50's-era, only done by new artists? Awesome! The cutscene when you beat him was great too.

The bosses in "Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers" for the NES were the best. Basically you had to throw a ball at whatever weak spot the villian had. Simple stuff, but the music was AMAZING, and those fights were damn fast. It's great to refresh these memories with a good 'ole emulator on the PSP. I've handed the game to friends at boss saves, and told them what to do. Most of my gamer friends lose on slow motion. They also make fun of me for having a Chip 'n Dale game.

I'd have to go with the final boss from Cybernator. Not only is it incredibly hard, but no matter how, or how many times, you beat it the game always ends with a bad ending. I tried so many times to try and make it a good one, but it never happened.



Second would have to be Goro from the origional Mortal Kombat. He was just incredibly hard to beat when I was younger.

This game looks great :) I've been wanting to get it forever, the demo was uber awesome

Quickman - Mega Man 2



My favorite boss in one of the greatest games ever created.

The last boss fight I remember spending hours on was Metroid Prime: Echoes' Emperor Ing. It's not bad on normal, but I was on the hardest difficulty (it's either "Hard" or "Very Hard", I don't remember). The Emperor Ing shows no mercy in its 3rd form, and you just hope that you can get the right ammo respective to it's changing vulnerabilities. Not to mention its legs can get in the way of your shots, and it can decide to hit you like a truck at any time.



After getting pummeled with that, then you get graced with yet ANOTHER multiform boss battle, although it's nowhere near as difficult.



I can just remember being relieved that I finally beat both Metroid Primes on the hardest difficulty levels at 100% completion. I can't wait for MP Hunters and MP3.