Summary
When video game fans have memories of playing their favorite games, they more often than not reminisce about challenging boss fights or narratives that spoke to them. As video games have advanced, boss fights have grown from a simple challenge at the ends of levels to culminations of a player’s experience or what they’ve learned throughout their journey.
These iconic boss fights from gaming history aren’t just memorable for their difficulty, they’ve also taught players valuable life lessons that they can carry into their everyday lives. From impactful character development to near-impossible battles, here’s what fans can take away from these infamous video game antagonists.
Zelda 2: The Adventure of Linkis one of the more unique entries in Nintendo’s iconic fantasy franchise. However,its final boss should be pretty familiarto fans of the series' later games. After players have spent the entire game leveling Link up and gaining stronger abilities, they must come face to face with their greatest challenge yet: fighting themselves.
Dark Link serves as the last enemy to fight before completingThe Adventure of Linkand uses a lot of Link’s own moves against him. While it’s easy for players to be focused on making themselves stronger, this final battle proves that none of it matters if they aren’t conscious of their weaknesses, which are necessary to learn in order to defeat Dark Link and beat the game.
The originalPunch-Out!!for NEShas one of the most iconic video game bosses in Mike Tyson, the real-life world heavyweight boxing champion. As the protagonist Little Mac, it can feel like a real triumph for players to take down the virtual Tyson, but it won’t be easy. Players will have to adopt a much more laid-back approach to defeating Kid Dynamite.
While other matches inPunch-Out!!may encourage players to seize every opportunity to strike, fighting Mike Tyson is a different story. The windows of time to knock him down are minuscule, so players may spend a lot of the fight biding their time and staying on defense. This is all practical for the real world, as people should be careful to think things through before diving into something headfirst.
Pokemon Gold & Silverushered in the second generation of thePokemonfranchise, following up the commercial success ofRed & Bluein the West.For the game’s final boss, players will have a blast from the past as they encounter Trainer Red, the protagonist of the first generation games, whose team includes Pikachu, Venusaur, Charizard, Blastoise, Espeon, and Snorlax.
As far as Pokemon teams go, Trainer Red’s is pretty balanced, meaning players will have to prepare for this fight more than usual. His highest-leveled Pokemon, Pikachu, is level 81, meaning a player’s party should all be approximately level 80, and they should have some good counters for these Pokemon types. Suffice it to say that this battle will teach players to be prepared.
Thisboss character fromMetal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eaterhas an infamous secret. The 100-year-old sniper is encountered by Naked Snake in the Sokrovenno forests, where the two engage in a long-ranged duel. However, players can avoid this boss fight altogether if they’re willing to wait for a very long time.
If players save their game in the middle of the boss fight against The End and wait at least eight days in the real world before booting it back up, The End will die of natural causes. However, if they reboot the game before this, The End will sneak up and tranquilize Naked Snake instead. As in real life, sometimes it pays to be patient!
The final boss fight against GLaDOS in the firstPortalgame is one of the creepiest boss fights in video game history. Throughout the puzzle game,players are taunted by the A.I.’s voice, which gets increasingly more sadistic and aggressive as they advance through the test chambers of Aperture Science. By the end of it all, GLaDOS has deceived and attempted to kill them.
To defeat GLaDOS, players will have to isolate personality cores from her robotic body and incinerate them. While there may be some empathy players feel towards the uncontrollable robot, at the end of the day she was someone not to be trusted. By the end ofPortal, hopefully, players have learned to be more discerning as to whom they decide to trust.
Since its release in 2015,Undertalehas become one of the most popular indie games of all time, and that’s mostly due to the charisma of its characters. One of those characters, who is initially encountered as a boss, is Papyrus. However, like many of the game’s characters, the player has the choice to spare Papyrus, or even romance him if they so desire.
However, Papyrus ultimately admits to the player that they don’t have romantic feelings for them and want to just remain friends. Later on in the game, if Papyrus remains alive, they will help protect the player from being killed by Flowey, showing his true colors. It goes to show that, if a romantic relationship doesn’t work out, it’s always beneficial to be amicable.
Shadow of the Colossusis a game full of boss battles, where players control Wander, a young man taking on sixteen massive golems roaming the land. The 16th and final colossus, known as Malus, is the most intimidating of them all, stretching over 200 feet into the sky without the ability to even move. Defeating it doesn’t come easy, and not without a heavy price.
Whilethe narrative ofShadow of the Colossusreveals a sinister undertone to Wander’s journey after defeating Malus, it’s hard not to see taking it down as a massive achievement. Players may walk away from this fight feeling like they can do anything, as they just controlled a small human and successfully killed a massive, god-like figure all by themselves.
Porky is a minor antagonist in the SNES gameEarthbound, revealing himself to be an ally of the entity Giygas to his neighbor Ness and his party of heroes. In one of his taunts to Ness and his friends, however, Porky encourages them to go cry to their parents. As it turns out, this is the exact lesson Ness needs to learn in order to defeat Giygas once and for all.
By using the “Pray” command with Paula nine timesduring the final battle with Giygas and Porky, the call is answered by many of the characters Ness and Co. encountered during their adventure. It might seem a little cheesy, but the love of Ness' friends and family saves him in his greatest hour of need, which is perhaps the greatest lesson a video game can teach a player.
