I’d love to be able to say that I never saw any of these in the arcade, but that’d be straight up bullshit.
Seriously man, you don’t fuck around when it comes to Dragon’s Lair.
That being said, Don Bluth’s animation was the selling point of the game, and even though these death clips were pretty much all I ever got to see of the game, the animation quality alone led to me never feeling cheated in the arcade.
Pictured: A year old photo of The Azn Badger. I'm lazy, so sue me...
Well, the inevitable finally happened.
As readers of this blog might recall, I dabbled in Magic the Gathering at one point in my life.
Said point took place well after the Ninja Turtles started to suck, and just before Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z would cause Japanese language class attendances and White guy/Azn girlfriend biracial relationships to spike 10 fold.
Whatever man, you know it’s true.
Anyway, as mentioned in previous articles, the bulk of my Magic card pile (I can’t call something I don’t care about a “collection”…) is made of old crap inherited from my older brother and his friends.
Like me, my brother dabbled in Magic cards, though unlike me, he saw fit to dump his inventory the moment he lost interest.
Me being me, I held onto the shit, not because I wanted it, but mostly because I was too lazy to find a proper way to dispose of it.
That being said, one of my friends recently began prodding at me to bust out my old cards and throw down with him.
Given that I honestly haven’t had much to do outside of look for a job and write this goddamn blog, I decided to accommodate him.
Thus began my weekly habit of sitting down to extraordinarily casual games of Magic with my buddy.
By “extraordinarily casual” I mean I play with my outdated, ghetto-ass cards, and basically served up to my buddy as a thoroughly outclassed sparring partner for his future tournament matches.
If ever there was a jobber of the Magic the Gathering universe, it’d have to be me.
Indeed, I am the Brooklyn Brawler of Magic.
While I lose probably 80% of the time, one thing that I’ve gotten out of the experience, besides y’know, fun, is the fact that playing with weak-ass cards has taught me a lot about polishing diamonds out of shit-bricks.
That is to say, I’ve learned to look for, and find value in cards that aren’t inherently valuable.
With this fact tucked away in my mind, last week I bit my lip and decided to tag along with my buddy, and join a Draft tournament.
In case you don’t know already, a Draft in Magic is essentially what it sounds like.
Basically, you buy some booster packs, you take 1 card of your choosing from each pack, and then swap the remainder of the contents of said pack with the person to your left.
From there, everyone takes 1 card from the pile given to them, and then continues to pass the remainder on.
The process continues until every card has been exhausted.
Given the random nature of booster packs, you can probably see now why I (grudgingly) decided to join in on a Draft.
Truth be told, it wasn’t an easy decision for me, as the Magic community isn’t exactly what I’d call “my crowd,” nor is the game really my favorite thing in the world; but sometimes you’ve gotta’ do stupid shit to have fun with your friends… Even if sometimes I just wanna’ scream at the top of my lungs:
That being said, from what I can tell I actually drafted some pretty good stuff, (it’s an Innistrad draft) including my very first Mythic Rare, and at the end of the day I decided to put together a green and red deck.
I don’t know any of the fancy terminology used to describe strategic stances or functions in Magic, but by my reckoning the deck I made turned out pretty badass!
I don’t know if “badass” is the right word, but for what it’s worth, as you may have gathered from the title of this post, I actually managed to defeat my friend in my first match!
I beat him pretty solid both times I won, however I well and truly fucked up during the second round, resulting in one of the face palm-ier moments in my Magic career.
The point is though, I’m a winner today, and it feels good to know that.
By the way, here’s my deck in case you’re curious about what’s in it:
Mountain x 8
Forest x 9
Ashmouth Hound x 2
Kessig Wolf x 1
Feral Ridgewolf x 1
Hanweir Watchkeep x 1
Stromkirk Noble x 1
Darkthicket Wolf x 1
Orchard Spirit x 1
Villagers of Estwald x 1
Grizzled Outcasts x 1
Woodland Sleuth x 1
Ambush Viper x 1
Essence of the Wild x 1
Curse of the Pierced Heart x 1
Traitorous Blood x 1
Brimstone Volley x 1
Furor of the Bitten x 1
Prey Upon x 1
Ranger’s Guile x 1
Moonmist x 1
Spidery Grasp x 1
Spider Spawning x 1
Blazing Torch x 1
I apologize if the massive block of bold text above went entirely over you’re head.
Please understand, winning is not something I experience with much frequency, so just try and play along for tonight.
How I, a lifelong Double Dragon fan, managed to go without hearing of said game’s development until just now, is entirely beyond me.
In case you’re unfortunate enough to be unaware, Abobo is a boss character, and eventual standard enemy featured in Technos’ Double Dragon games.
Oddly enough, the creators of Abobo’s Big Adventure saw fit to design him with a pimp-ass mustache, a detail I personally always interpreted from the original sprite as a massive scowl.
Mustache, or scowl? The world may never know...
Oh well, given that Abobo’s race has never officially been declared, even by his original creators, details such as this are neither nitpick-able nor debatable.
According to Birdy from Street Fighter Alpha, Black people turn Caucasian when they're sick. Yeah, Japan's fuckin' stupid...
That is, unless you’re a canon/continuity obsessed douche rocket.
Coming in bald, mullet-ed, and even green variants, Abobo served as one of the most consistently challenging enemies in the series, despite serving as the very first boss in the franchise.
Doesn't take a genius to know which one's more powerful.
As detailed here, he could indeed be a son of a bitch.
That being said, despite having lost countless lives to the ‘Bo-ster over the years, the thought of him getting his own absurd 8-bit action game puts a smile on my face.
That said game includes not only an absurd amount of NES fanservice, as well as some amazing original sprite work and animations; only serves to sweeten the deal.
Fuck Skyrim, I’ll be waiting in line for Abobo’s Big Adventure…
Well, to be perfectly honest; I have absolutely no fucking clue.
That is, outside of knowing him as the man responsible for composing the first Gears of War soundtrack, I’m really not familiar with his body of work.
IMDb-ing him (IMDb track videogames? Since when?) brings to light the fact that he has some strong ties to Epic Games, in the form of contributing soundtracks to several entries in the Unreal Tournament series.
Despite being familiar with most of these games, I can honestly say their music failed to leave an impression on me.
Probably because I ever recall of the Unreal games, at least from an audio standpoint; is this:
That being said, ever since I first played it, the Gears of War soundtrack, more specifically the main theme of the game; has always stood out to me as one of the better and more memorable game soundtracks out there, particularly in the modern era where games tend to favor ambient tunes over more thematic ones.
If you haven’t heard it before, then you’re in for a treat:
Imagine my surprise when I discovered neither Riepl, nor his brilliant theme music would be returning for any of the Gears sequels.
I may be in the minority on this, but I grew up watching James Bond and Godzilla movies by the truckload, movies that have managed to go 50+ without ditching the legendary themes that helped cement them in our minds as the film classics that they are.
Like many people, I grew attached to those themes and have come to associate them as aspects of the characters they were written for.
Sure, there were occasional moments in time when the themes were cast aside for a movie or 2, but at the end of the day they would always come back somewhere down the line.
While I’m probably wrong, my gut tells me that Epic contracted his services likely due to a combination of their incredible financial success with Gears 1, as well as Jablonsky’s newfound mainstream fame due to his involvement in the live-action Transformers film.
Maybe it’s just me, but in picturing a bunch of newly wealthy videogame nerds getting geared up for their big sequel, I could honestly see them ditching their in-house composer in favor of succumbing to their own dorkiness and hiring “The Transformers Guy” on a whim.
I’m sure that’s not how it actually went down, but I have my suspicions…
Anyway, while Jablonsky did a terrific job with the franchise following Riepl’s departure, in truth I kind of wish he hadn’t ejected the original theme music in favor of his own take on it.
Give it a listen and see what you think:
I would never consider this theme to be anything less than “good,” but there’s just something about it that feels “weaker” and less engaging.
Don’t get me wrong, Jablonsky’s a great composer, but there are just some elements to the style of his militaristic soundtracks that rub me the wrong way.
While it could just be me still being bitter over the complete and utter failure of Transformers 2 and 3 in living up to the even the slightest of expectations, in general I’ve found his work on those movies, as well as the Gears series; to be somewhat pretentious and/or melodramatic.
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel both the Gears and Transformers franchises tried way too hard to insert unwarranted emotion and drama into stories that were truly devoid of any.
I prefer my Gears minus the extra helping of “Dom and Maria” thank you very much.
Dom and Maria: A plot device that allows for many instances of Dom related emo-ness masked as "emotional masculinity."
Back to Jablonsky.
He does a wonderful job of creating a mood and a “feel” to the music in such a way that it seems to fit the “texture” of the imagery it is meant to be played over, but his incessant use of choirs and Dark Knight/Inception style droning really feels a bit overbearing to me.
His soundtrack or Gears 2 was solid, especially in terms of the action cues, but far inferior to the original in terms of the overall strength and memorability of it’s themes.
While I haven’t played the game as of yet, in listening to the soundtrack for Gears 3, I can honestly say I like it better than the second.
Check it out:
The choirs are less, uh, “manly,” such that the music is much more graceful/lyrical, and less like a rehash of the droning Decepticons theme from the Transformers films.
Even so, despite vastly improving his theme for the game, I still maintain that the Jablonsky theme of Gears 3 is inferior to Riepl’s original.
I acknowledge that Jablonsky’s compositions are quite good overall, and that I very likely could just be being a sourpuss about all this; but in my opinion they should have never changed composers.
While the game is populated by a host of tough bosses, each sporting a number of variable attack patterns depending on the approach you take in fighting them; “The Black Ghost” is likely the most difficult overall.
He also happens to have one of the better tracks in the game as his battle theme.
Boasting an absurdly complex attack pattern that is nearly impossible to grasp without burning a continue or 2, “The Black Ghost” is a brutal challenge that is nevertheless, much easier to defeat through brute force than pure skill.
That is to say, coming into the fight with the right weapons *Cough!* Grenade Launcher! *Cough!* is key to victory.
The fact that “The Black Ghost” has a definable and not all that well hidden weakness, is likely the reason he didn’t make the Top 10.
Despite this, his despicable variety of attack patterns, combined with Einhander’s unforgiving gameplay system of only allowing you 1 life before each continue; make a strong case for his presence among the runner-ups.
#4. Isaac Frost – Fight Night Champion
Pictured: Andre Bishop goes toe-to-toe with heavyweight champion Isaac Frost AKA The White Guy.
Designed to be fought in a round-to-round, objective based system; the actual procedure involved in fighting Isaac Frost contributes almost as much to his difficulty as his actual fighting ability.
Possessed of unbalanced punching power, speed, and stamina, Frost holds all the cards from the opening bell, and yet his beastly-ness is further bolstered by the fact that the game forces you to fight him a certain way.
Essentially, throughout each round of the fight you are required to follow a pre-determined gameplan, be it using your legs and hanging back, or landing haymakers to the body.
It’s an entirely inorganic procedure that doesn’t exist outside of the “story mode” of the game, resulting in whatever skills you learned playing the game competitively getting tossed to the curb in terms of usefulness.
To date I have yet to beat Isaac Frost, largely due to his insane attribute bonuses, but the fact that the game forces me to fight him the way it wants me to really grinds my gears to an exceptional degree.
With that, I leave you with this video of Frost obliterating Super Middleweight, Anthony Mundine:
#3. General Akboob/Hitler – Total Carnage
Pictured: Captain Carnage and Major Mayhem do battle with the giant heads of General Akboob and Adolf Hitler.
In terms of pure quarter munching arcade shooter goodness, few games can measure up to Smash T.V. and Total Carnage.
Virtually identical in terms of gameplay, both are exceedingly difficult top-down shooters that absolutely revel in chewing up players and spitting them out.
While every second of these games is a challenge of the most epic variety, the bosses featured in them are quite likely the most difficult aspect of them.
On that note, I don’t think many people would argue with me in crowning General Akboob, the final boss of Total Carnage, as the toughest among them.
His pattern involves filling the screen with projectiles at all times.
Most of his attacks have an accurate homing capability.
And worst of all, he has no less than a half dozen forms, one of which is a giant Hitler head!
I have no idea what that has to do with anything, especially since the very Russian looking/sounding Akboob is supposed to be Middle Eastern, but whatever it was the 90’s.
Anyway, all of this results in a horribly drawn out battle of endurance.
… A battle of endurance in a game where your character dies in one hit.
You do the math.
#2. Emerald and Ruby Weapon – Final Fantasy VII
Pictured: 2 brave parties face down the infamous Emerald and Ruby Weapons.
I just realized this, but there weren’t any RPG bosses on our list of the Top 10 Hardest Boss Fights.
I’m guessing it has something to do with my own (heavily biased) opinions, but the simple fact of the matter is that I really haven’t played an RPG since Final Fantasy VIII way back in ’99.
I did however, play quite a few before that point, mostly of JRPG variety.
That being said, while I’ve heard that some of the Shin Megami Tensei bosses are absolutely balls out insane in terms of their capacity to rob you of hours of your life, I haven’t actually played any of those games, so I don’t really have an educated opinion in that matter.
The point is, from my experiences with pre-1999 RPGs, Emerald and Ruby Weapon were the only 2 bosses that I recall having an inordinate amount of trouble with.
From what I hear, the debate rages on which of the 2 is more difficult, though I got my ass served by both of them equally, hence their dual ownership of the their spot among the runner-ups.
I remember Emerald had, no joke, about a million hit points, and Ruby was able to eject your characters from the fight, making doing battle with either of the pair an absolute pain in the ass.
From what I’ve been told, much of the strategy involved in defeating either of the 2 involves an incredible amount of dedication and prep work, as well as a healthy dose of luck.
When Final Fantasy VII came out, I was barely a pre-teen, so I had neither the patience nor the intelligence to figure out which angle to attack them from.
This resulted in me getting literally whipped to death by Ruby, and sat on by Emerald more times than I’d care to admit.
That being said, here’s a clip of some Narutard beating them both into the ground.
Don’t ask me why he dubbed the Final Fantasy themed J-ballad over it….
#1. Geese Howard – Fatal Fury
Pictured: Terry Bogard blocks a Reppuken from his nemesis, Geese Howard.
Geese Howard was, and always shall remain, one of the toughest bosses in all of fighting games.
Oh yeah, and he’s quite possibly one of the pimp-est videogames of all time to boot.
That’s saying a lot considering how far fighting games have come since 1991.
Possessed of a limited, but utterly devastating repertoire of moves, Geese was tough to beat for all the reasons you’d expect an SNK boss to be.
He was better than you in every way, especially in his capacity to dole out chip damage on par with some of your clean hits.
Despite this, I’d hesitate to call Geese cheap, merely inordinately difficult and just a little bit frustrating.
Much like Sagat from the original Street Fighter, Geese was a fighting game boss who’s bread and butter consisted of brutal and relentless fireball traps.
Perhaps worst of all though, ‘ole Geese also had a counter-throw capable of cancelling most of your melee attacks.
I don’t think I have to tell you that he often employed this technique with pinpoint timing, often using it to ruin your offensive rallies at the most inopportune of moments.
Thus concludes The Azn Badger’s Top 10 Hardest Boss Fights!
As you’ve likely noticed, the past couple of entries on our list of The Top 10 Hardest Boss Fights have both been final boss characters from fighting games.
While I personally feel that the fighting game genre is quite likely the most prominent contributor to the realm of tough-ass boss characters, there is another genre of game that has a similar penchant for ass-raping it’s players when it comes to boss fights.
Yes, this is in fact playable. And yes, it is in fact EASIER than the game featured today.
While occasionally consisting of pure twitch reflex gameplay, the challenge in conquering most modern shoot ’em ups lies mainly in knowing one’s hit box and a healthy dose of pattern memorization/anticipation.
And no, I will not be using the term “shmup,” as it is silly, and the people who came up with it smell like poo.
*ANYWAY* Many scrolling shooters, especially shorter ones; present gameplay challenges of such difficulty so as to be considered downright unfair, if not for the fact that the expectation is that the player will fail numerous times in attempting to slowly “learn” the stages and be able to anticipate them accordingly.
Indeed, the art of the shoot ’em up is a relic of times past, a genre that holds little relevance amongst the 10-20 hour technical marvels that largely represent the current age of gaming.
I don’t remember where I read it, but the best description of shoot ’em ups and old-school action games I’ve ever heard went something like:
“It’s learning how to play a small game well, as opposed to merely experiencing a large game.”
Let’s just pretend I was responsible for the quote above, ‘k?
Like many nostalgic lifelong gamers that grew up in the 8 and 16-bit era, I enjoy playing modern narrative driven games; however I often catch myself longing to go back and play some of the simpler games of the past.
That being said, today’s entrant on our list of the Top 1o Hardest Boss Fights does indeed come courtesy of a shoot ’em up, however it by no means what I’d call a “simple” game.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that today’s boss comes from perhaps the most sophisticated (and difficult) shoot ’em up of all time.
#2 on our list of the Top 10 Hardest Boss Fights is:
#2. Tageri and Ubusunagami Okinokai – Ikaruga
Pictured: A brave pilot faces down the bullet spewing final bosses of Ikaruga.
Ikaruga is one of those games that I want so badly to love, but I suck so badly at it that I just can’t…. Â ‘Cause it’s stomped my ass into the ground more times than I’d care to admit.
I love shoot ’em ups.
If it scrolls and it involves planes/dragons/fairies with unlimited ammo, chances are I’ve played it, or failing that; want to play it at some point in my life.
Unfortunately, I’m quite far from skillful when it comes to, well, shooting things up.
I’m usually good enough to get 2-3 stages into a shoot ’em up before dying, but as we all know; that’s usually not nearly good enough to beat the game in the arcade without dumping $5 into the machine.
Money I likely would've preferred to have pumped into Aliens vs. Predator.
To date, I have yet to beat the console version of Ikaruga.
You see, unlike an arcade game, the console version of Ikaruga restricts the player to making use of 3 lives per stage; meaning there’s no continuing from the middle of a level.
Basically, if you can’t beat the last stage with 3 lives, then you’re sunk.
While it’s an almost obnoxiously beautiful game, both in terms of art and design; I can think of no other shoot ’em up that requires as much memorization and focus as Ikaruga.
There are in fact harder shoot ’em ups out there, mostly of the bullet hell sub-genre; but in my mind there are few that are better.
That however, does not change the fact that I’ve never beaten the final boss(es) of Ikaruga.
As you may have noticed up above, I actually named 2 bosses as entry #2 on our list of the Top 10 Hardest Boss Fights.
While some might call foul on that, in my mind both characters serve as the final boss of the game.
Tageri, a biomechanical monstrosity with a literal yin and yang core, serves as the penultimate challenge of the game, and boy is he a douche-rocket of an asshole:
Don’t let the INSANE skills the player in the clip above fool you, Tageri not one with whom to fuck.
You see, Ikaruga’s main gameplay innovation is the implementation of a black and white based polarity system for every attack and enemy in the game.
At the touch of a button, the player is able to change the color polarity of their ship back and forth from white to black, allowing them to harmlessly absorb enemy fire sharing their color profile and convert it to power a homing laser attack.
At the same time, enemies struck by fire of the opposite polarity take twice as much damage, making the bulk of the game an ongoing high-speed puzzle of matching polarities for survival, and opposing polarities for quick kills.
Like all of the bosses in the game, Tageri’s attack pattern involves both of the above tactics, however in a much more straightforward and confrontational fashion.
In essence, the fight with Tageri pushes your rhythm, memorization, and polarity matching skills to the limit; as his attacks never let up, and are almost impossible to avoid, forcing you to defend yourself almost exclusively absorb bullets as your only form of defense.
That’s the one element of Ikaruga that’s perhaps the most difficult to embrace, even as a veteran of shoot ’em ups:
In Ikaruga, you’re not only expected to run into enemy bullets; at many times it’s to your advantage.
In a genre where the one steadfast rule of the gameplay is to not touch the bad things, that’s not an easy pill to swallow.
That being said, the “dot eating” aspect of Tageri’s attack pattern is a nerve-wracking experience that as mentioned earlier, I’ve yet to conquer.
All of the bosses of Ikaruga are tough, but Tageri is one of the only ones that forces you to basically stand your ground and eat every bullet on the screen throughout the duration of the fight.
This involves keeping an eye on the half dozen or so sources of fire at all times, and accounting for which color bullets are going to hit when.
That's a direct quote by the way.
The fact that you only get 3 lives, many of which can easily be exhausted before you even enter his chamber, coupled with the information overload produced by Tageri’s maddeningly aggressive attack pattern, has resulted in me never quite getting to a point in which I’d say I were “comfortable” in fighting him.
Despite this, I have managed to beat him once or twice, though I did so with little tact, and at the cost of nearly all of my lives.
Which brings us to the “other” final boss of the game, the Ubusunagami Okinokai, or “The Power of God:”
Awr?...
Not actually an enemy to be fought, Ubusunagami is actually just a diamond shaped object that shows up after you’ve defeated Tageri, and then proceeds to fill the screen with bullets for 60 seconds.
Indeed, you read that right.
Immediately following one of the hardest bosses in gaming, with one of the most brutal and oppressive attack patterns imaginable, you then have to face down the diamond-shaped embodiment of “The Power of God” for an entire minute.
Before the dark times, before the Empire, THIS is what Ubusunagami looks like.
Remember when I said Ubusunagami wasn’t really something to be “fought?”
Well, what I meant by that wasn’t just the fact that you’ve gotta’ have Korean-level gaming skills and APM to win against him, but that you also can’t fight him period.
That’s right, after encouraging you throughout the entire game to eat like colored bullets to survive, the game basically forces you to put that newly developed gaming instinct to the test and survive, without the option to fight back; for one whole minute.
THIS. FOR AN ENTIRE MINUTE.
While that’s admittedly a very bold and, frankly, “cool” way to force players to truly excel at the game in order to be rewarded with an ending, it’s sadly a test I don’t know I’ll ever pass.
As mentioned earlier, much of Ikaruga is based around the concept of memorization.
It’s a well known fact that Ikaruga players are among the hardest of the hardcore.
The fact that the ultimate source of pride in playing the game is not simply beating it, as few mortals can ever hope to do; but to do so with a high-score should tip you off to how dedicated they can be.
Doing so that involves killing enemies of the same polarity sequentially to string combo multipliers, or in some cases, beating the game without firing a single shot.
Yes, it’s possible, though not for this poor shmuck:
I’ve beaten games like Demon’s Souls, which involved a great deal of trial and error and persistence, but the level of memorization and timing required to beat Ikaruga straight through, are such that I’d probably have to sacrifice my ability to recognize simple shapes to free up space in my brain.
Who am I kidding, if I sat down and forced myself to be an expert Ikaruga player, I’d probably end up an autistic and incontinent husk, capable of nothing but playing shoot ’em ups and counting cards.
Huh, if I could get Tom Cruise to take me to Vegas, that probably wouldn’t be too bad a deal…
A recurring subject in our list of The Top 10 Hardest Boss Fights thus far has been the important distinction between bosses that are genuinely hard, and those that are merely “cheap” or “broken.”
In my mind, no other bosses in gaming embody both of these definitions with as much ease as fighting game bosses.
Given the limited functionality of fighting game play mechanics, fighting game bosses are often some of the more difficult in gaming due to the head-first manner in which they must be dealt with.
There are no switches to be flicked, or items to be used; it’s just you and them, one-on-one.
Often possessing movesets consisting of absurdly quick and high profile maneuvers, as well as enhanced attributes, fighting game bosses typically boast every conceivable on-paper advantage over the standard player characters.
What’s more, in most cases bosses in fighting games have a tendency to “stretch” the rules of their respective game’s mechanics I.E. being able to execute special attacks without charge time or possessing a few unblockable moves.
...Or in the case of Nancy, totally break the standard mechanics of the game.
These “unfair” advantages make most fighting game bosses an easy target to be labelled “cheap,” however in some cases, I actually welcome the challenge they represent.
Let me just stress the use of the word “some” in that last sentence.
Fighting games are usually won through knowing your arsenal and being able to anticipate your opponent with precision.
In games like Street Fighter, all it takes to block an attack is to hold back on the d-pad.
In that sense, the unfair advantages owned by fighting game bosses shouldn’t be looked at as straight up cheapness, but rather padding to the computer’s (hopefully) human-like AI.
The best fighting game bosses are the ones that are challenging, but human in the way they occasionally make mistakes or overextend themselves.
The hardest fighting game bosses are the ones that boast absurd attributes and flawless, frame-by-frame AI routines.
Today’s entrant on our list of the Top 10 Hardest Boss Fights occasionally shows glimmers of the former in his behavior, but most of the time he proudly embodies the latter.
‘Cause he’s an epic, diaper-wearing douche-hole.
*AHEM!* That being said, our #4 is:
#4. Gill – Street Fighter III: Third Strike
Pictured: Ken Masters lying at the feet of Gill following a narrow defeat.
Let me just get things started off here by saying that Gill is an anus sucking turtle-fucker.
Seriously man, as far as fighting game bosses go, few others have carved out a spot for themselves on my naughty list as emphatically as Gill has.
*COUGH!*Â Now that I’ve gotten that ugliness out of my system, I feel I’m obligated to mention the fact that Gill also happens to one of the better designed fighting game bosses in gaming history.
That should give you a good idea of how many “good” fighting bosses there have been over the years.
Gill’s natural on-paper advantages over you, the player; are extensive, to the point in which it’s hard to deny the cheapness of his design, however his AI, at least on the mid to mid-high difficulties, veers a little closer to “fair” on occasion.
Close to, but still nowhere near fair.
What I mean to say is:
Gill is a blue and red BEAST of the highest order.
He does more damage than most of the characters in the default roster.
His attacks generate an absurd amount of stun damage.
Most of his attacks strike from troublesome angles and have priority and reach advantages.
He is able to execute charge moves without charge time.
His projectiles strike twice, ensuring that he’ll win any exchange of fire.
His durability and speed are both well above average.
To fight Gill is to enter the room outgunned and outclassed from the very start.
In essence, this screen is a forgone conclusion.
While I’d never consider myself much more than an experienced novice at fighting games, to date I’ve only been able to beat Gill twice.
Once using a brute-force strategy with Hugo, and once using defensive tactics with Ken.
Both times it took several continues to achieve the serendipitous task that is defeating Gill.
You see, despite all the nasty traits of cheapness that I mentioned above, Gill also brings to the table a pair of utterly devastating super combos that do wonders to ruin his standing as a “great” boss in my eyes; and make beating him a feat often times a feat equally attributable to luck as to skill.
Allow me to clarify.
Gill’s greatest asset as a fighting game is his inherent fallibility.
While his moves and stats are all better than yours, I have to admit that Capcom did well to program Gill with the occasional human-like lapse in his concentration.
He never acts silly, or outright dumb, but there are times when Gill slips up and takes a hit he shouldn’t have, or fails to capitalize on a round winning opening.
Gill’s greatest success as a boss is that he’s difficult enough be one of the hardest bosses in gaming, while at the same time easy enough to be fought with some degree of success on every occasion.
Nothing is worse than a hard boss that doesn’t even let you get a hit off every time you continue.
I'm lookin' at you Duriel....
Nearly every time I’ve fought Gill, I was at least able to take his health down considerably, or on a good day; beat him one round.
That said, Gill’s AI generally behaves with stunning precision, making use of his high priority moves to counter most of your attacks; making him a stiff challenge most of the time.
Which brings me to the aforementioned game breaking super combos:
With a full super meter, Gill has at his command the power to instantly reverse the outcome of a round.
The gameplay mechanics of Street Fighter III restrict the players to selecting and utilizing only one super combo in battle.
Gill is the only character in the entire roster that is capable of making use of all 3 of his super arts in one fight.
One of these moves, Meteor Strike; is relatively harmless.
Meh. I've seen worse...
The other 2, are utterly devastating.
First is the fearsomely boosh-tastic Seraphic Wing:
Sprouting Wings: A sign that shit has well indeed, just got real.
Seraphic Wing is a move that drains about a third of your life bar when blocked, and virtually all of it when landed at close range.
While it can be stopped preemptively, in most cases the deployment of Seraphic Wing usually means the end of the match in Gill’s favor.
If that’s not a kick to the boner, I don’t what is.
Oh wait, there’s one more move!
Gill’s other dick slap of a super combo is his Resurrection ability:
Awr?...
Basically, Resurrection is exactly what it sounds like.
Imagine this scenario:
You’ve just spent the past hour battling Gill, continuing over and over again while cycling your way through the entire roster numerous times.
Finally, after countless attempts, you’ve managed to get the upper hand on Gill and are only a precious few hits away from victory!
The tension is palpable.
Your eye twitches involuntarily.
With the clever use of an EX attack you manage to upset Gill’s impeccable timing and rocket a Shoryuken into his chin and straight towards the realm of victory!
His life bar depleted, Gill collapses in a heap on the ground in slow-motion.
Throwing up your arms in victory, you are shocked to hear the familiar sound of a super art being deployed.
Suddenly, Gill beings to levitate, and immediately his life bar begins to rapidly refill!
Pictured: What happens when you poke the bear.
You quickly fire a Hadouken, only to watch as it is harmlessly repelled by the powerful vacuum generated by the Resurrection field.
Eventually, Gill’s health is restored in full, leaving you to fight him with what little you have left.
Exhausted from the historic effort you put forth from getting this far, ultimately you lose to Gill in the third round as you have on every occasion prior.
Such is the epic douchey-ness of Gill.
He’s better than you from the start.
He’s pretty damn smart, even when he’s stupid.
And to top it all off, he can take all of your hard fought efforts, and render them irrelevant with the use of a mere super combo, one of which he doesn’t even have to be alive to use.
To this day, I still hate Gill, however I do retain a certain level of respect for his AI design.
On a side note, I’m pretty sure Capcom was the first to make a genuinely incongruent 2D fighting game sprite, but that’s besides the point.
Gill: An atypically hard boss that has the gall to max-out his douchey-ness by holding back and shitting on you when it hurts the most.
Alrighty folks, I’ve been a lazy motherfucker over the past, uh, month; so I figured it was about time I buckled down and committed to cranking out some real posts for the blog.
That being said, I can think of no better source of motivation, than to start up another epic Top 10 list!
As you’ve probably guessed from the AWESOME banner at the top of this post, this time around our list is focused on a subject that is very near and dear to my heart: videogame boss fights.
For better or for worse, boss fights have been a staple of game design for nearly as long as the medium has existed.
Perhaps a product of the “quarter munching” aspect of arcade games, boss fights were at initially characterized as a clash with a unique character, who’s attack pattern and/or attributes often caused them to represent a significant spike in the games’ difficulty level.
Nowadays, what with the advances in technology and a fairly consistent trend towards favoring narrative based gameplay, boss fights have become increasingly irrelevant.
Hell, I remember reading an article on Kotaku awhile back positing the possibility that boss fights may be an unnecessary artifact carried on from a bygone era of gaming.
Despite being a fascinating read, the viewpoint of said article largely applied exclusively to story driven games, games that boss fights would feel “tagged on” or extraneous in.
Pictured: A good example of a boss fight that meant well, but ultimately didn't need to happen.
For whatever reason, I can’t find the article in question, but oh well; you get the gist of it.
Personally, my background in 8 and 16-bit gaming has left me with nothing but fond memories of battling big baddies at the end of every level.
Maybe it’s just the old school gamer in me, but I play most games expecting there to be big ugly dude with a bloated life bar at the end of every stage, level, chapter, episode, or what have you.
For me, boss fights are both the final obstacle prior to advancement, as well as, on occasion; a reward in and of themselves.
Good boss fights represent some of the finest moments in gaming history.
Bad boss fights can be anywhere from disappointingly shallow, to controller smashing-ly hard.
The latter, largely represents the contents of this list; though not entirely.
Tough boss fights are just another part of gaming, as natural pressing the “A” button to jump, and the “B” button to kill.
That being said, let’s get this party started as we delve in to the 10th hardest boss fight:
#10. Yellow Devil – Mega Man
Pictured: The Blue Bomber chucking a Thunder Beam into the cyclopic eye of The Yellow Devil.
I don’t know what it was about him, but for whatever reason the Yellow Devil from the original Mega Man game always stuck out to me as one of the hardest bosses I ever fought on my NES.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played plenty of harder games, especially on my NES, however in terms of hard boss fights; few put fear in my heart the way the Devil did.
Ninja Gaiden’s Jaquio and Jashin were tough, as was the sequel’s Ashtar; but I managed to beat both of them in my youth.
Encountered in the first stage of Dr. Wily’s fortess, the Yellow Devil was a wretched beast that kept me from beating the original Mega Man until well into adulthood.
Fighting the Devil was a fairly straightforward experience, but one made difficult by the tedious nature of the bosses’ pattern, as well as his fearsome attack power.
Basically, the original Yellow Devil only had 1 attack in his pattern, but it was a real pain in the pass.
Check it out here:
Disassembling his mustard-y yellow form into a series of cubes, the Devil launches his body, piece by piece; from one end of the room to the other.
While in flight, all of these pieces serve as dangerous projectiles that must be avoided by the player through careful jumps of varying heights and timing.
The actual pattern of the pieces’ dispersal isn’t quite random, however it’s complicated enough to the point of being easier to dodge through reflex than memorization.
The real problem with this pattern, is the fact that damage can only be dealt to the Devil one shot at a time, for only a brief moment following the completion of his reassembling phase.
Many bosses throughout gaming history have employed the annoying as fuck pattern characteristic of, “You Can Only Hit Me After I’ve Slapped You With My Dick For 5 Minutes” but few have done so with the audacity of the Yellow Devil.
With a rather potent weakness to Elec Man’s Thunder Beam, the Yellow Devil doesn’t take all that many hits to kill, however the time one has to devote to frantically hopping about in order to get into position to deliver said hits; more than compensate for any weaknesses he may have.
I was usually good enough to get close to taking out the Devil in Mega Man, but it wasn’t until I was much older, wiser, and entirely less interested in achieving victory that I would actually conquer the beast known in the states as the Rock Monster.
That being said, I feel the Yellow Devil’s #10 slot on this list is entirely warranted, however imagine my disappointment when I stumbled across the glitch/exploit featured in the video below:
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