Boss/Bosses Appreciation Thread!

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

I used to make my toys fight each other as a kid and sometimes they ended up fighting my hand. That's my canonical explanation for Smash Bros' Masterhand, just a kid playing with his toys.

That makes sense considering the opening scene of smash 64

 

[Gorse]

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I really like this guy's upgraded form from Kirby Super Star Ultra:

He's made of diamonds! I like that you don't really see his body, either – it makes that fight really mysterious and ambiguous. WHAT DOES HE REALLY LOOK LIKE?????? Good boss for a game about exploring dark caves.

Also, gotta love the final boss fight from Sonic 3&K:

You know that you can beat this guy really quickly by revving up a spindash between his fingers? That's a little tip from your ol' pal Gorse.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

I used to make my toys fight each other as a kid and sometimes they ended up fighting my hand. That's my canonical explanation for Smash Bros' Masterhand, just a kid playing with his toys.

AAAAAA!!! So did I! Though, I would usually have my arm included, meaning my hands were like wild snakes with faces that could split apart and stuff.

 

[Yousef Yousef]

Why were they popular in Nintendo games?

I cannot recall many non-Nintendo bosses with that archetype.

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They exist but really hard to name too. I personally can’t stand them.
So I sit.

 

[Raziya The Seeker]

AAAAAA!!! So did I! Though, I would usually have my arm included, meaning my hands were like wild snakes with faces that could split apart and stuff.

I can't quite recall doing so myself, but when you mention snakes? It remembered using a stapler-remover as some kind of cobra-head monster a couple times as a kidlet. Used it to chomp some clay figures I made.

I am so glad West of Loathing had the same idea.

 

[Gorse]

It remembered using a stapler-remover as some kind of cobra-head monster a couple times as a kidlet.

I DID THIS TOO!!! Except I always thought of them as alligators or crocodiles. But still! Those things have the best shape ever.

You know what's also great? Using your mom or your sister's hair-clip things as giant venus flytrap mouths. If these objects ever come to life, I'm screwed.

 

[UnDubious]

As others have pointed out, they were a staple of 2D games in general and not limited to Nintendo. It's really because it was one way to make large, impressive looking bosses within the technical limitations of the time. Most of the boss doesn't move, it's probably a background layer and only the hands are sprites, but you see all of it as the boss. Typically those giant bosses had the simplest patterns. Then it became a classic type of boss that you could do, basically, which is why we still see them.

 

[cjl8336 cjl8336]

Yeah they seem to like this type of boss
Here is another Sonic example

 

[Adrastia]

Bongo Bongo from Ocarina of Time. Nightmare fuel. Imagine waking up to this hanging over your bed at night.



Castoth from Illusion of Gaia. I used to waste so many herbs on him and have to reset.

As others have pointed out, they were a staple of 2D games in general and not limited to Nintendo. It's really because it was one way to make large, impressive looking bosses within the technical limitations of the time. Most of the boss doesn't move, it's probably a background layer and only the hands are sprites, but you see all of it as the boss. Typically those giant bosses had the simplest patterns.

I kinda miss this trend. Hacking away at giant monster hands and waiting for the vulnerable head or other part to pop back out. Some more modern games still have this mechanic though. Like the Ys Origin version of Gelady.

 

[UnDubious]

Speaking of Ys, the main bosses in Falcom's Nayuta tend to be very large and involve some kind of clever method to damage them. They're like a more varied and evolved form of the hand bosses.

 

[trickybus]

Nintendo is a safe haven for secret hand fetishists?

 

[Don Patch]

Bongo Bongo from Ocarina of Time. Nightmare fuel. Imagine waking up to this hanging over your bed at night.

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Castoth from Illusion of Gaia. I used to waste so many herbs on him and have to reset.

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I kinda miss this trend. Hacking away at giant monster hands and waiting for the vulnerable head or other part to pop back out. Some more modern games still have this mechanic though. Like the Ys Origin version of Gelady.

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Came here to post the Illusion of Gaia one.

 

[Bakuma1997]

My 3 guesses:


Intimitadion factor: Your sprite of a One Man Army being the size of the smallest fingernail of a behemoth all of a sudden will scare anyone

Resource saving: Making a simple trio of sprites instead of the whole body of, Say, a dragon, was more time, space and art saving in the long run

And the one that makes sense to me the most, one Nintendo designer was

 

[Advil Lavs]

I don't know why but I really like bosses that are just two hands and a big head. I tried to make one for a GameBoy game I was working on but it didn't end up very well

 

[DunkeyKong]

I don't know why but I really like bosses that are just two hands and a big head. I tried to make one for a GameBoy game I was working on but it didn't end up very well

Damn that's awesome, thanks for sharing man

 

[Ikagura]

And Wham Bam Rock from Kirby SuperStar, who looks very questionable now that I see him as an adult.
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Its Superstar Ultra redesign isn't for nothing...

I kinda miss this trend. Hacking away at giant monster hands and waiting for the vulnerable head or other part to pop back out. Some more modern games still have this mechanic though. Like the Ys Origin version of Gelady.

View attachment 43229

I love how you say "modern games" when Origin is as old as the original Ys was back when Origin just came out.


PS: What is Bongo Bongo even supposed to be?

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I forgot to tell: sometimes they have eyes in their palm (as a weak spot).

I suspect that the Youkai called Tenome may have been an inspiration for it:

Spoiler: Excerpt from the site I took the pic from

Tenome | Yokai.com

手の目 てのめ Translation: eyes on hands Habitat: open fields and gravyards at night Diet: human bones, fresh from the body Appearance: Tenome takes the appearance of an elderly zato, a kind of blind guildsman. Its face has no eyes at all; instead, it has eyes on the palms of its hands. Behavior...

yokai.com

手の目
てのめ

Translation: eyes on hands
Habitat: open fields and gravyards at night
Diet: human bones, fresh from the body


Appearance: Tenome takes the appearance of an elderly zato, a kind of blind guildsman. Its face has no eyes at all; instead, it has eyes on the palms of its hands.

Behavior: Tenome wander through open fields or graveyards at night, hunting for tasty humans. They wait until their prey is very close before attacking. By the time one is able to recognize that they are face-to-face with not a zato but a yokai, it is often too late to escape. Tenome can run very quickly, and while their vision is not particularly strong, they have a powerful sense of smell which helps them follow their victims in the dark.

Origin: Tenome’s true nature is not known, but they are most likely the ghosts of blind men who were robbed and murdered by thugs. This explanation can be traced to a folk tale, in which a man is attacked at night by a monster with eyes on its palms but none on its face. The man flees to a nearby inn for shelter. He tells the innkeeper what he saw, and the innkeeper replies that a few days ago, a blind man was attacked and robbed out in that field. As the man lay dying in the grass, he cried out with his last breath, “If only I could have had once glace at their faces! If I only had eyes that worked — even if only on the palms of my hands…!” The old blind man’s resent-filled death caused him to be reborn as a yokai — with eyes on the palms of its hands, just as he wished.

Legends: In Shichi-jo, Kyoto, a young man entered the graveyard at night as a test of his courage. From out of the darkness, a blind old man approached the young man. When the elderly figure got close enough to be seen in detail, the young man saw that it had eyeballs on the palms of his hands, and it was coming after him!

The young man ran as fast as he could to a nearby temple and begged the priest for sanctuary. The priest hid the man inside of a long chest and locked the lid. Shortly afterwards, the monster entered the temple, sniffing loudly as if it was hunting. The young man could hear he sniffing noise getting closer and closer, until it stopped right next to the chest he was hiding in. Then, there was a strange slurping sound, like the sound of a dog sucking on an animal’s bones. A little while later, the eerie sounds vanished, and all was quiet. The priest opened up the chest to let the young man out, but all that was inside of the chest was the loose, empty skin of the young man. His bones had been completely sucked out of his body!

At the end of the day it's probably old game design being kept

Giant Hands of Doom - TV Tropes

A character, usually a video game boss, who fights primarily with giant hands. Due to the versatility of the human hand, this provides a large variety of attacks, not to mention the inexplicable bombs, missiles, etc. they'll inevitably drop.

tvtropes.org

 

[trickybus]

PS: What is Bongo Bongo even supposed to be?

Design-wise? A torso hanging upside down with the head removed. The neck stump opens up like a flower to reveal the single eye. The hands were once attached—you can see that the wrists end in stumps with the bone partially exposed—but now float freely and are still under Bongo Bongo's control.

Conceptually? Evil spirit.

I suspect that the Youkai called Tenome may have been an inspiration for it

I never thought about it from that angle! That's probably it, honestly

 

[Ikagura]

Design-wise? A torso hanging upside down with the head removed. The neck stump opens up like a flower to reveal the single eye. The hands were once attached—you can see that the wrists end in stumps with the bone partially exposed—but now float freely and are still under Bongo Bongo's control.

Conceptually? Evil spirit.

Honestly this looks nothing like anything we saw in the entire franchise.

Is this creature a dead Sheika who became a corrupted being of revenge by Ganondorf's magic? Is this the actual nature of the Wallmasters and Doormasters?

I feel that the flower head may be important. Demogorgon.

I never thought about it from that angle! That's probably it, honestly.

Either cultural or because it's just the most basic kind of "game" that kids can do (like pretending to have their hands being animals that bite).

 

[trickybus]

Is this creature a dead Sheika who became a corrupted being of revenge by Ganondorf's magic? Is this the actual nature of the Wallmasters and Doormasters?

My memory about the details is fuzzy but I believe there's dialogue in Ocarina of Time that suggests certain things about BB's nature. IIRC, the Bottom of the Well looks like a torture chamber because it was; specifically, it was used by the Sheikah to punish and execute criminals who acted against the royal family. This is also true for the Shadow Temple, the place where BB travels to after he's released from the Well. Both areas share identical themes: torture and death.

Outside of that brief history, everything about BB is speculation. He's most likely meant to be the spirit of a criminal executed by the Sheikah.

 

[Adrastia]

Outside of that brief history, everything about BB is speculation. He's most likely meant to be the spirit of a criminal executed by the Sheikah.

Being that his hands are detached I wonder if his crime was stealing something important.

 

[trickybus]

Being that his hands are detached I wonder if his crime was stealing something important.

This is a common theory in the LoZ community. Some folks think it may have been the Lens of Truth because it's found inside the Well and Bongo Bongo is invisible unless using the Lens. However, that theory introduces a question: why does Dead Hand have it?

 

[Not_Red]

Can't believe nobody has mentioned Mortamor, as a boss not only each part has its own HP but in case you defeat any of them, the right hand can cast a spell that revives at full HP and the left one that revives 50% of the time at 50% HP.

Fun fact, if you beat the postgame super boss in less than 20 turns I believe you get a cutscene of him and this guy fighting and spoiler alert, it goes as everyone expects with the super boss absolutely destroying him as if it was nothing more than a level 1 slime.

 

[Bakuma1997]

Difficulty in bosses comes in lots of forms, from healing, to lots of deffense, to being too sad you don't want to defeath them...¿Wait what?

A boss that you need to kick down, but due to story you know had a rough deal or become a tragic boss, say that dragon that murdered millons, in game is only "Evilor" but if you learn about oficial sources of his lore, he was corrupted by evil energy,
Due to the nature of the question, better rev that spoiler button

Spoiler: Undertale Yellow

Ceroba on Undertale Yellow

The first time playing this awesome fangame (Seven years were worth it, and it annoys me it's free since i would like to pay them for this masterpiece) i met with a colorful bunch called the Feistly Five in a part inspired by Wild West movies, their quirky charm is balanced by Ceroba, a Fox Girl that doesn't mind the oddity, at first i saw her as the game's Only Sane Woman, oh boy, pacifist made me swallow this words

Her story would make Shakespeare look like Dr Seuss, her husband was fired due to his incompetence, he robbed une of the six souls in an attempt to research by himself DETERMINATION, failing and killing him in the process, Kanako, their only daughter, was almost killed by the human with that SOUL, to top it all, Chujin, Ceroba's husband, asked her to not use her research on her daughter learning about his mistake, but Ceroba's Despair made her commit the worst mistake on her life, Kanako never woke up again...
The final battle is Ceroba's final attempt on taking Clover's (Our MC) Pure Soul in a vain attempt to fix her final mistake, however you had a good time with her and her friends, so she shows regret in the battle (The first phase being a clear example), with the battle progressing and her source of power, Kanako's paper mask, in place she becomes DEAD SETR on going on with a fight, as the mask literally and metaphorically breaks, you eventually see a lonely mother that got blinded by her blind faith on a husband that comitted mistakes

The music of phase 2 onwards, A Mother's Love, is not only a banger, but also tells a tale of a boss that doesn't want to do what she is doing as much as you don't want to do it yourself, that scream in the song... MY GOD THE SCREAM, i never felt so bad for a 16 bit clip

A good topping in an already good game, but God, Ceroba deserves all the hugs

 

[Adrastia]

The final boss from Beyond The Beyond. God Bless Annie. She's so much more than a healer. I was down to Annie and almost no items and beat Akkadias with literally one more turn between me and the Big Sleep.

Bosses are supposed to be like a gatekeeper between one section of game and the next. The Big Bad being what stands between you and the ending sequence/post game content. But sometimes they are just ridiculously hard. So if you have to grind for hours then the payoff for that ending better be worth it.

Bosses that can annihilate the whole party in one hit are the worst. If you try to defeat Zio from Phantasy Star 4 without using the psycho wand to dispel the barrier you're toast. Because he will automatically wipe everyone out with the black energy wave after a few rounds. Apparently if you grind up to a very high level it's possible to endure the attack and still do 1 damage per hit. One day I want to try it.

Optional bosses that are crazy hard are at least not standing in your way to glory. Wild Arms has a ton of optional bosses and some are really hard. Ragu Ragla was the hardest in the game as I recall. And you never even have to fight him. Final Fantasy 7 has Ruby and Emerald Weapon. Emerald is just a repetition fight where in order to be the most efficient you need to have a specific set of materia and order of operations.

I find Ruby the worst of the two though. Because he trolls you right out of the gate. If more that one party member is alive he will automatically use whirlsand to permanently knock them out of the battlefield. So you have to go in with two dead party members and only revive them if you need them for a couple of hits. Because they won't be staying long. Ribbons are a must because Ruby can dish out just about every status effect. And Ruby likes to be invincible unless those tusks are sticking out of the sand. I hate those kinds of bosses. Ones that have to have vulnerable parts showing or hide or jump in the air for a few rounds. Ruby will also automatically counter with Ultima if you use Knights of the Round. So your best bet is Bahamut Zero with quadra magic.

Overall Ruby is far worse than Emerald because he's a troll. Emerald has that nifty mechanic where you can mitigate the damage of aire tam storm by equipping bare minimum materia. With Ruby you are almost always on your own and subject to constant barrages of status effects if you forgot your ribbon. If you use Knights of the Round you may not survive to the next round unless you are in perfect health with good stats. I hate Ruby.

 

[Bakuma1997]

The final boss from Beyond The Beyond. God Bless Annie. She's so much more than a healer. I was down to Annie and almost no items and beat Akkadias with literally one more turn between me and the Big Sleep.

Bosses are supposed to be like a gatekeeper between one section of game and the next. The Big Bad being what stands between you and the ending sequence/post game content. But sometimes they are just ridiculously hard. So if you have to grind for hours then the payoff for that ending better be worth it.

Bosses that can annihilate the whole party in one hit are the worst. If you try to defeat Zio from Phantasy Star 4 without using the psycho wand to dispel the barrier you're toast. Because he will automatically wipe everyone out with the black energy wave after a few rounds. Apparently if you grind up to a very high level it's possible to endure the attack and still do 1 damage per hit. One day I want to try it.

Optional bosses that are crazy hard are at least not standing in your way to glory. Wild Arms has a ton of optional bosses and some are really hard. Ragu Ragla was the hardest in the game as I recall. And you never even have to fight him. Final Fantasy 7 has Ruby and Emerald Weapon. Emerald is just a repetition fight where in order to be the most efficient you need to have a specific set of materia and order of operations.

I find Ruby the worst of the two though. Because he trolls you right out of the gate. If more that one party member is alive he will automatically use whirlsand to permanently knock them out of the battlefield. So you have to go in with two dead party members and only revive them if you need them for a couple of hits. Because they won't be staying long. Ribbons are a must because Ruby can dish out just about every status effect. And Ruby likes to be invincible unless those tusks are sticking out of the sand. I hate those kinds of bosses. Ones that have to have vulnerable parts showing or hide or jump in the air for a few rounds. Ruby will also automatically counter with Ultima if you use Knights of the Round. So your best bet is Bahamut Zero with quadra magic.

Overall Ruby is far worse than Emerald because he's a troll. Emerald has that nifty mechanic where you can mitigate the damage of aire tam storm by equipping bare minimum materia. With Ruby you are almost always on your own and subject to constant barrages of status effects if you forgot your ribbon. If you use Knights of the Round you may not survive to the next round unless you are in perfect health with good stats. I hate Ruby.

Uh, the thread is about tragic bosses