Boss Fight - The Greatest Boss of All Time

To end this year's Boss Fight feature I wanted to talk about the greatest boss in arcade game history. This meant I had to trawl through blog posts and forum threads from all around the internet to get an answer. As you can imagine there is a lot of contention over who is the greatest boss to have appeared in an arcade game, especially as arcade games tended to be so hard that most people only ever saw the first few bosses of any given game. But, after a considerably amount of crowd sourcing, I found the following candidates:

• The Giger-esque alien, Dobkeratops from R-Type
• The sometimes dead, sometimes alive Geese Howard from Fatal Fury/King of Fighters 
• The robotic head of General Akhboob from Total Carnage
• The toughest old bloke in video game history, Heihachi Mishima from the Tekken
• One of the trippiest boss encounters ever, Xiga from Radiant Silvergun

But the name that appeared at or near the top time and time again was none other than Capcom's king of the criminal underworld, M. Bison from Street Fighter.

In the Street Fighter universe, M Bison is the head of the Shadaloo crime syndicate, who are based on a small island off the coast of Thailand. He dresses in the bright red uniform of Shadaloo's private military, complete with cape, which in early games he casts off before fighting. As well as being a crime boss he possesses "psycho power", which among other things allows him to turn his whole body into a flaming torpedo.

The first time I saw Bison in action it was in an arcade in my home town. Some guy I didn't know had beaten a load of people in one-on-ones using Guile and finished off his 20p by beating all of the computer opponents — all except Bison, who's combination of head stomps, double knee presses, somersault skull dives and psycho crushes quickly ended the player insurrection and left a 16 year-old me awe struck. At the time, nobody was talking about performing combos in Street Fighter 2. Instead most player matches focused on well-time special moves. Seeing Bison in action was the first indication I ever saw that moves could be strung together in fluid sequences. It would be years later before I got good enough at Street Fighter to be able to regularly beat Bison and even today, I'd need a good couple of goes with my main, Blanka, before I'd been up to the task.

So why is he such a great boss? For a start, his appearance was both striking and evocative; few people would deny the similarities between Bison's uniform and that of Nazi SS officers. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, his popularity is linked to the popularity of Street Fighter itself, plus the vast number of spin-offs and sequels the franchise has had, meaning even if you didn't face him in the original Street Fighter 2 in 1991, you've probably faced off against him in another game since.

Rather than show a game footage of such a popular boss in action, I thought instead I would show the fight between M Bison and both Ryu and Ken, from the animated Street Fighter movie, which does a pretty good job of demonstrating how much of a bad ass Bison is supposed to be.

And that does it for my boss fight feature. There are loads of bosses I could talk about, not least the candidates listed at the beginning of this post, but I want to begin a new monthly feature next year, so I'm ending it here. Thanks for reading.

MTW

Boss Fight - Rootmars (Metal Slug 3, 2000)

It's difficult to say which SNK Neo Geo series is the best, but I do remember when I first saw Metal Slug in a Mansfield arcade in the mid-90s thinking how incredible it looked. Of the many Metal Slug games there's been, 2000's Metal Slug 3 is generally considered to be the best. As with previous games, you are battling General Morden's army, only discover Morden himself is under the control of the same Martian threat that appeared in the second game. And begins another crazy, over-the-top Metal Slug adventure, in which you battle enemies human, undead, mechanical and Martian alike.

The final boss is the Martian overmind, Rootmars, whom you encounter on-board its giant mothership, in orbit over Earth. You begin by entering a chamber to find Rootmars is hooked up to heart of the spaceship by numerous wires and tubes. When the fight begins, he blasts you with enormous blue energy balls, which get bigger and bigger, until eventually they're taking up about a ¼ of the screen. Blast it enough, and Rootmars' glass dome will explode and your character (Marco Rossi, Tarma Roving, Eri Kasamoto or Fio Germi) runs off screen.

For the next few minutes you run down a Giger-esque corridor, blasting zombie clones, robots and giant, goo-dripping Martian quadrupeds, to finally escape out of the airlock. As you plummet to earth in a SV-001, you get a nasty surprise - Rootmars is not dead and has jumped out of the exploding mothership after you. The battle then rages on, as you both fall through the atmosphere, as this video demonstrates.

In a series that is jam-packed full of incredible boss encounters, there's something about fighting as you free fall that makes this fight with Rootmars the most extrordinary of all.

MTW

BossFight - Pyron (Dark Stalkers, 1994)

It's Halloween this month, so I thought, why not write about a spooky boss? Coincidentally, on Friday Capcom announced that they are porting Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge and Darkstalkers 3 to home consoles. I guess that means this month's boss fight has to be Darkstalkers' own super villan, Pyron.

Darkstalkers is full of typically Halloweeny characters, from the vampire, Demitri, the mummy, Anakaris and of course the succubus, Morrigan. The final boss, Pyron, bears more in common with the balrog from Lord of the Rings, with his minotaur-like appearance and his penchant for shrouding himself in flames.

A balrog from Lord of the Rings

Pyron, as drawn by Thevilbrain

In case you don't know much about Pyron, the Capcom Database has this to say about him:

"Originally, he came to Earth 65 million years ago and created the army of Huitzil robots to destroy life on Earth. It is unknown why Pyron didn't consume Earth back then, though it is assumed to be his lust for more worthy opponents. In the UDON comic, it is explained that Pyron wanted the Earth to "ripen" before harvesting it."

As an opponent, Pyron is a tricky one. At his disposal he has huge fireballs, body-morphing drill attacks, firey spinning blades, pillars of fire and burning force fields that can trap an opponent. Oh yeah and he's ALWAYS ON FIRE!

Here he is in action on the PlayStation version of the original Darkstalkers: The Night Warrior.

MTW

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Sources:

Capcom Database - Pyron

Boss Fight - Evil MC (Smash TV, 1990)

Over the course of this series I've tried to pick the more interesting bosses to threaten the progress of arcade goers over the decades, be it one of the earliest bosses, a controversial boss, an iconic boss, a down-right crazy boss or whatever. This month I've gone for one of the most unexpected bosses, the Evil MC from Midway's gloriously over-the-top twin-stick shooter, Smash TV.

Video games are often inspired by Hollywood and in 1990 Midway took a whole host of movies based on violent game shows -- not least Arnold Schwarzenegger's classic Running Man -- to create Smash TV. The object of the game was simple: You are a contestant on the titular Smash TV game show. In order to win cash and prizes you have to blast your way through wave after wave of mutants, robots and monsters.

At the start of each wave the show's MC scrolls into the top corner of the screen, with a top-heavy bimbo on each arm and says, "Good luck. You'll need it!" As you progress through the game and take down each boss, Mutoid Man, Scarface and Die Cobros, you have no way of knowing what faces you at the end. When the host himself turns up as a giant humanoid tank, spitting bloody eyeballs at you, the pay off is brilliant -- even if he is very similar to the first boss. As you take him down, you take him apart, limb-by-limb, each of which fires off him all direction. After him limbs, you blast off his shirt, leaving him in just a spotty vest. Next to go is his head, but bizarrely that doesn't stop him. After that you finally blow up the blody, only to find there's a second head on top of the tank and the eye-blasting

In terms of unexpected boss encounters, few can top this surprise. Check out the video below to see the Evil MC in action.

Incidentally, Smash TV is yet another example of a game or movie being set in a far flung future year that is now history. In this case, all this carnage and disregard for human life is supposed to take place in 1999.

MTW

Boss Fight - Pendragon (Raystorm, 1996)

It's my son's 6th birthday tomorrow, so this month's Boss Fight is in honour of my favourite little guy.

Like many dad's from my generation, I play video games with my kids and although his favourites are the Lego games, driving games and anything with Mario in it, I encourage him to play a broad spectrum of games from across all genres and eras. As such he's played a fair amount of arcade games and the first boss we ever faced together was Raystorm's stage 1 boss, Pendragon.

I have a fondness for Raystorm, which is why I play it with my son. At the time of its release Raystorm was a technically impressive game, but as shoot 'em ups go it is a little tame. However, the multi-limbed tank, Pendragon, is a pretty good boss, with lots of tricks up its sleeve. It has a laser turret, missiles and a homing laser and like most bosses it has weak spots you have to target and attack. Raystorm's R-Gray fighters have primary and secondary weapons, but you can only destroy certain parts of Pendragon with each. The challenging part is the way it moves out of view, sometimes exposing one of its weak spots, sometimes shielding them and attacking. If you aren't on the ball you'll either use the wrong weapon or miss your target altogether.

The result of which is that Pendragon takes quite a while to defeat; even if you're really good at the game it can take longer to beat this first boss than the whole of the first level. That is why, despite how average Raystorm is overall, Pendragon is a boss worth fighting.

MTW

Boss Fight - Gigantic Warship (R-Type, 1987)

Last month's boss was an antagonist who turns up time and time again, at the end of every level (albeit in different guises). This month's boss is an entire level! It can only be R-Type's level 3 boss, the Gigantic Warship.

Usually bosses have a couple of weak stops that you have to exploit in order to destroy them, but this monstrosity needs to be taken apart piece by piece -- not just to defeat it, but in order to survive. You approach the warship from the back, which means your first challenge is to avoid the main thruster engine, which blasts out hot death every few seconds, but that's not its only rear armament, there are also twin cannons and multiple turrets. The game then forces you underneath the warship, where there's more turrets and a bank of four lower thrusters, each of which have to be destroy individually and a few trash enemies to boot. Once you're past this you come up and around the front of the ship, only you cannot turn around, so you have to make careful use of your Force (R-Type's detachable weaponised pod) for both your protection and the turrets' destruction. This means you have to make sure you either have to start the level with a Force and not die or make sure you collect the yellow and/or red power-ups that appear while you're facing the warship, otherwise you have almost no chance of getting past this section. Once you've come around the front you've got to get past more turrets to blast the distinctly phallic purple engine unit on top. As a kid I never realised just how much this thing looks like a penis, but look at it! It's a long shaft, with pulsating pipes running up its length and a bulbous purple end, which has a sheath that exposes its most vulnerable area. It also moves in and out, spits out gobs of stuff. A pixel cock if ever I saw one and also the key destroying the whole ship. The best tactic is to get your Force wedged next to the engine and let it do the work, otherwise you have to have nerves or steel and surgeon-like control in order to sneak in and blast it with the R-9's wave cannon. Good luck with that.

To end, here's YouTube user Matrixandraia taking the Gigantic Warship apart on the sublime R-Type remake, R-Type Dimensions. I must admit, this guy makes short work of it, but that's down to practice:

MTW

Boss Fight - Neff (Altered Beast, 1988)

Some games have lots of different bosses, while others have just one boss, who returns at the end of every level in different guises, like Altered Beast's antagonist, the demonic sorcerer Neff (pictured right).

During the game's attract screens we learn Neff has captured a princess -- the fiend! In an usual twist, when you insert a coin and start the game, your character is already dead, but is summoned to rise from your grave by a god (who I always assumed was Zeus, but I have no proof of that).

At first it seems you are ill-equipped to deal with the demonic and undead minions sent by Neff to stop you. It's not long before some suspicious-looking wolf wolves appear, which when killed, drop a floating power-up orb, adding some much needed beef to your centurion. Collect two more orbs and you alter your form to become a beast-man. During the course of the game the hero transforms into a werewolf, a dragon, a bear-man, a tiger-man and finally a golden werewolf, but that's nothing compared to Neff's repertoire of bizarre transformations. At the end of every level, Neff stops our heroes in their tracks, grows to the full height of the screen, then in a puff of smoke he transforms forms into some bizarre monster.

At the end of level 1's graveyard Neff transforms into a pile of corpses, with a orge-like head and body. He attacks by throwing his head at you, which respawns instantly, allowing him to throw half a dozen of them in a few seconds.

Level 2 is set in a swamp and ends with Neff turning into a plant with eye-like spores, which it fires across the screen at you.

Level 3 sees our hero travel underground, at the end of which Neff transform into giant snail with a dragon head. This is the first boss to move, although he doesn't move very much. Not that he needs to, as he can launch shells that loop around the screen and burst into flames.

Level 4 is set inside a Greek building and ends with Neff transforming into some kind of baby dragon, that floats around the screen blasting you with fireballs that emit from its swollen belly. If that wasn't bad enough, miniature versions of the dragon you transformed into in level 2 will sometimes appear and hover slowly around the boss, just to stop you getting close.

Thee fifth and final level is set on some surreal alternative plane and features lots of man-beasts, including fauns and unicorn men. Given everything you face up until this point you would expect Neff's final form to be the craziest of all, but instead it's just a giant rhino-soldier, who charges and punches you.  Nonetheless, this final boss is the toughest of all and takes a lot of punishment to beat.

After each encounter Neff's disembodied head emerges from the ground, robs our hero of his powers and promptly disappears, making the next level a fresh challenge, no matter how well you did before. Between each level you also learn a little more of Neff's plan, which is to use his powerful magic turn the princess into a bird and keep her locked up in a cage. If you weren't dead set on kicking his ass before, you will be now!

To have any real hope of beating any of these bosses you really need to be fully powered-up, especially as you have no projectiles in your base form. Like most arcade games, Altered Beast was punishing and overall not that fun, but we kept hammering away just to see what our hero and Neff would transform into next.

 GW

Boss Fight - Goro (Mortal Kombat, 1992)

What could possibly be worse than fighting a homicidal martial arts master? Only fighting one with four God damned arms! Enter Mortal Kombat's penultimate boss and one of gaming's most recognisable bosses, Goro.

Mortal Kombat's lore is both deep and cliched. If you care enough to read up on his background you will learn that Goro is the Prince of the Shokan race and the Mortal Kombat champion for 500 years. He serves Shang Tsung, the Mortal Combat grand champion, who in turn serves Shao Kahn, the ruler of Outworld who is hell bent on defeating the Earthrealm (i.e. us).

At the time of its release, Mortal Kombat was famous for it's digitised combatants. Goro was also digitised, but from a 6" tall claymation model. This meant he moved like a Ray Harryhausen model in Sinbad or some other 60s fantasy adventure flick. Atari went on to use this technique for all of the prehistoric combatants in their own digitised beat 'em up, Primal Rage, in 1994.

I will be honest and admit I'm not much of a Mortal Kombat fan. For me, it was a pretty primitive game compared to Street Fighter II, King of Fighters or Fatal Fury. Nonetheless, the four-armed monstrosity, Goro, was a suitably ridiculous boss and one which, on paper, was a pretty intimidating figure to have to fight. If you are dumb enough to get within range of his massive arms, Goro will pick you up with his lower limbs then batter you with the upper ones, an act that will rob you of a decent chunk of your health bar. If that wasn't bad enough, Goro can also fire over-powered magical projectiles. Despite these facts, in the original game beating Goro was not as difficult as his forbidding appearance would have you believe. Simple sweep kicks are enough to defeat him. If you play a character that has their own projectiles he's even easier. Sub-Zero always seemed pretty effective to me, as this video demonstrates:

To end this month's boss fight let's take a look at Goro in the terrible Mortal Kombat motion picture. Despite being quite frankly shit, the film is still considerably better than Jean Claude Van Damme's Street Fighter film. This sequence sees Mortal Kombat's movie star Johnny Cage take on Goro and show the brute what happens to people who break his stuff.

MTW

Boss Fight - Giant Cow Mary (Deathsmiles, 2007)

So far we've had one of the earliest boss fights in arcade gaming, my first boss fight and one of the more controvertial boss fights. This month, I'm going to talk about one of the silliest, Mary the Giant Cow from Cave's sublime shoot 'em up Deathsmiles.

As bosses go, there's not much to say. She simply charges the player from the left (which is quite unusual), firing purple bullets from God knows where and conjuring protective cubes. She takes damage where ever you hit her and if you use a combination of our own conjure magic (AKA bomb) and power up mode you  should despatch her in a few seconds. Nonetheless, the first time you see her you will wonder what the hell is going on.

MTW

Boss Fight - Belger (Final Fight, 1989)

For this month's Boss Fight post I have decided to go for what superficially appears to be one of the most politically incorrect bosses encounters in arcade history, the wheelchair-bound final boss of Final Fight, Belger.

After battling their way through the streets of Metro City, Haggar, Cody and Guy discover the Mad Gear gang, who have been terrorising the city for months, are controlled by an invalid bussinessman, living in the penthouse of a luxurious tower block. Worse still, he's holding Jessica Haggar captive and pointing a crossbow at your head(s). 

Invalid or not, Belger must go down, so the team of street fighters set about laying the boot in. His wheelchair promptly breaks, in a scene that would send the average Daily Mail reader reaching for their typewriter. But wait, he's not disabled, it's all a ruse and now he's on his feet, Belger unleashes his crossbow and -- in typical Final Fight style -- more of his goons. When you finally take the final chunk of his life by in the final fight of Final Fight, Belger takes a dramatic tumble through a plate glass window and falls to his doom. 

Well, if he was faking his disability before, he certainly isn't now -- not that you actually see him hit the floor.

MTW

Boss Fight - Tree Stump (Fantasy Zone, 1986)

I started my new Boss Fight feature with the first game to introduce the concept of boss fights to arcade games; this month, I wanted to talk about the game that introduced me to the concept of boss fights. I would love to tell you that boss encounter was some classic end of level guardian, such as Dobkeratops from R-Type or Sagat from Street Fighter, but it was actually the Tree Stump from the first level of Sega's cute 'em up, Fantasy Zone. I first saw this on my friend's Master System console and the idea of one really tough enemy that you fought for several minutes floored me.

Like all shoot 'em up bosses, the Tree Stump had a weak spot: when it opened the hatch in the front, you had a few seconds to fire off a few shots before it sprayed bullets at you. It was a simple routine to master, but since the Tree Stump was invulnerable everywhere else, it was one you had to learn to succeed.

Boss Fight - Mothership (Phoenix, 1980)

For my new Boss Fight feature, I wanted to talk about the game that kick started the whole thing. Unfortunately there is some debate about which was the first arcade game to feature a boss, as I said in my 'What is a 'Boss Fight'?' post. So of the three main contenders, I've gone for the most famous, the Mothership from Taito's Phoenix. This brute turns up on the fifth level of the game and in true end of level guardian style, it's tough and a little bit cheap.

The challenges facing the player were the swarms of minions who attack you, the thick, protective undercarriage, which requires a shed load of bullets to penetrate, the scrolling purple shield, which you either had to survive long enough to blast apart or have the skill to always hit the same spot when it went past -- and all the while avoiding missiles from small alien target sat in the middle. However, if you can land a single hit on the alien, the whole thing blew up and the game started again -- only harder. It's as tough a boss fight as you'll ever face and a great place to start if you want to test your mettle against gaming's most icon bosses.

MTW