These boss fights caused a lot of kids to give up. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the top 10 nostalgic bosses that our undeveloped brains struggled to find a way to beat.
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00:00 - I can see into your mind.
00:05 So, you like sweet cotton.
00:09 - Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down
00:13 our picks for the top 10 nostalgic bosses
00:15 that our underdeveloped brains struggle to find a way to beat.
00:18 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:29 Number 10, Kulix, Super Mario RPG, Legend of the Seven Stars.
00:33 He can see your past.
00:43 He can see your future.
00:45 And in both time periods, we lost to this hidden boss.
00:48 Just finding Kulix was tough enough.
00:50 But once we uncovered this 16-bit nightmare hiding away
00:53 in Monstro Town, we still had trouble taking him down.
00:56 Surrounded by a group of crystals, all of which
00:59 attack you independently, Kulix and his minions
01:01 boast some of the most broken attacks in the game
01:04 and have more HP combined than the final boss.
01:06 Lots of wipes eventually taught us to take down
01:16 those crystals first, starting from right to left,
01:19 though anything that can hit all of them is helpful.
01:22 That Final Fantasy victory theme that plays upon his defeat
01:25 is sweet.
01:26 But was little heard.
01:27 Number 9, SA-X, Metroid Fusion.
01:33 Metroid protagonist Samus Aran is often her own worst enemy,
01:43 literally.
01:44 And for many of us, we share her enmity
01:46 with her alien clone, the SA-X, immune to most of your weapons
01:51 with only the charge being being able to damage it.
01:53 Plus, this creepy doppelganger can use plenty of your own
01:56 weapons against you.
01:57 Even touching it does massive damage.
02:06 Oh, and it has multiple phases too.
02:09 So just when we defeated one, another
02:12 popped up to ruin our days.
02:13 Trial and error does eventually reveal repeated behaviors
02:16 that make for good exploits.
02:18 But it was hard to discern when holding onto our Game Boy
02:21 advances for dear life back in the day.
02:23 Number 8, Lavos, Chrono Trigger.
02:32 This giant tick from outer space haunted our dreams as kids.
02:43 The apocalyptic creature is central to every time period
02:47 in this time travel RPG.
02:48 Lavos can be challenged at several different points
02:51 in the story.
02:52 And depending on when you challenge it,
02:54 the fights can range from incredibly difficult
02:56 to downright impossible.
02:58 The multiple stages of Lavos are each brutal in their own right.
03:09 One imitates previous bosses in the game,
03:11 while another hides its true 4-minute appendages,
03:14 which was very confusing as a kid,
03:17 since the main body kept regenerating.
03:19 But hey, it's not like losing against Lavos
03:21 was the end of the world.
03:23 Oh, wait.
03:24 Number 7, Psycho Mantis, Metal Gear Solid.
03:32 One of the most infamous gaming bosses for good reason,
03:42 Psycho Mantis messed with our heads growing up.
03:45 The mad psychic dodged every attack we threw at him
03:48 and even somehow knew our play history
03:50 by reading our memory card.
03:51 I see that you enjoy Konami games.
03:54 The way to defeat Psycho Mantis is so outside the box
03:57 that almost no one figured it out on their own.
04:00 What kid unplugs their controller
04:02 and plugs it into the player 2 input?
04:04 It was so obtuse and bizarre that it's
04:06 no wonder none of us could beat him unassisted.
04:09 You used the other.
04:10 I wasn't able to read the future.
04:16 Number 6, King Crusher K. Rool, Donkey Kong 64.
04:20 Donkey Kong's nemesis is always tough,
04:30 but the Kremlin King's N64 bout is one we never
04:33 managed a knockout punch on.
04:35 To defeat King Crusher K. Rool, you
04:37 must face him in a boxing ring with all five playable
04:40 characters in five rounds.
04:42 Normal attacks and special weapons
04:44 don't work for the most part.
04:45 And it was all down to us to figure out
04:47 each round's unique gimmick for hurting the boss.
04:49 Oh, and if we didn't complete each in three minutes,
04:58 we had to start a round over.
05:00 And starting over too much meant redoing the whole thing.
05:04 Figuring this all out on the fly required so many do-overs
05:07 that many of us just took the 10 count and gave up.
05:10 Number 5, Shao Kahn, Mortal Kombat 2.
05:22 In the annals of cheap final bosses in final games,
05:32 none of them included quite as many rage quits as Shao Kahn.
05:35 The evil overlord would hand us our butts as soon
05:38 as he descended from his throne.
05:40 Each of his attacks does a third of your health bar,
05:43 while your own attacks feel heavily nerfed against them.
05:45 In addition to testing our might,
05:54 Shao Kahn tested our patience and mental fortitude.
05:57 He just wouldn't go down, and he keeps taunting you.
06:00 There are few reliable ways to cheese Shao Kahn,
06:02 but figuring them out, particularly on the arcade version,
06:05 took more endurance and quarters than many of us had as kids.
06:09 Number 4, Death Egg Robot, Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
06:19 Dr. Eggman/Robotnik has created plenty
06:29 of malevolent machines to terrorize Sonic
06:31 and the youngsters controlling him,
06:33 but the Death Egg Robot is one that gave us all a hard time.
06:37 What makes it so difficult is that there are no rings
06:40 to collect beforehand, which means that if you take a hit,
06:43 you're going to die, and die we did, a lot.
06:47 The Death Egg Robot swings its spikes arms around
06:57 and tries to crush you beneath its feet.
06:59 Hitting this thing 12 times without getting hit yourself
07:02 gave you major bragging rights on the playground.
07:05 Number 3, Whiz Pig, Diddy Kong Racing.
07:13 In both of Whiz Pig's races, the magical porcine jerk
07:22 outspeeds you by a mile most of the time.
07:25 His thundering footsteps will forever torment us.
07:28 In most races, boosts are more of a suggestion
07:31 than a requirement, but against Whiz Pig,
07:33 not only are they essential, but you basically
07:36 need to perform a maneuver with them
07:38 that the game never explains to you to stay ahead.
07:40 Figuring out that we needed to let go of the accelerator
07:50 as we hit them to go faster was impossible when we were kids,
07:54 unless it was by accident.
07:55 Still, even if we never beat him,
07:58 Whiz Pig's theme is quite the beat.
08:00 Number 2, Yellow Devil, Mega Man.
08:08 This boss may have been made by Dr. Wily,
08:17 but we're pretty sure an actual demon
08:19 had a hand in its creation too.
08:21 A late and extremely difficult boss,
08:23 the Yellow Devil disassembles and reassembles itself
08:26 on different sides of the screen,
08:28 forcing you to dodge its small body blobs
08:30 as they shoot towards you.
08:31 Getting hit even once will knock you back
08:34 and make it more likely that the others hit you too.
08:37 Without perfect timing, most of us
08:38 found it impossible to overcome.
08:40 A select few found a way though, mostly
08:50 by exploiting a glitch that happens when you pause
08:53 while using the Thunder Beam.
08:54 It may have bested us in the past, but not today, devil.
08:57 Before we unveil our top pick, here's an honorable mention.
09:08 Majora, the Legend of Zelda, Majora's Mask,
09:11 three difficult phases that require using every item.
09:14 And mask just right, no problem.
09:18 [SCREAMING]
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09:43 Number one, Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out.
09:47 [MUSIC PLAYING]
09:50 Experimentation usually led us to success
09:57 against most of these bosses.
09:58 But against Kid Dynamite, there was
10:00 nothing we could do but fail over and over again.
10:04 For the first part of the fight, all he throws
10:13 are one hit knockout uppercuts, which
10:15 means you basically have to memorize his patterns by trying
10:18 over and over to beat him.
10:20 Even blocking isn't practical, since it still
10:22 does a ton of damage to you.
10:24 As kids, many of us felt like we stood a better chance
10:27 challenging the real Mike Tyson than overcoming
10:30 his 8-bit counterpart.
10:31 Well, we might be getting a little bit beside ourself.
10:34 Is there a boss fight that traumatized you
10:43 as a kid that was so tough we blocked it from our memories?
10:47 Share your favorites in the comments below.
10:49 But try to go easier on us than they did.
10:51 And don't forget to like and subscribe
10:53 for more WatchMojo videos.
10:55 Compared to you, I'm not so bad.
10:58 In the mood for more awesome gaming content?
11:00 Be sure to check out this video here on Mojo Plays.
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11:09 [MUSIC PLAYING]
11:12 [CHILDREN PLAYING]
11:16 (upbeat music)