Goddamned Boss / Platform Game

• Alisia Dragoon's Stage 7 boss: a Damage Sponge of a Marathon Boss with a very repetitive attack pattern and short vulnerability window.
• The battle with Mr. Patch in Banjo-Tooie, in which the player has to aim at randomly appearing weak spots while struggling with clunky flying controls and trying not to get clobbered by exploding beach balls.
• Kroctopus in the Game Boy Advance version of Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!. It takes 9 hits to defeat (which is a lot for this series, excepting Tropical Freeze), and dodging its attacks usually consists of either waiting on the platform for it to repeatedly extend and retract its tentacles slowly in a different direction or reacting quickly and jumping out of the way as it actually aims them at you, without much in between. It probably doesn't help that it's significantly easier to fight with Dixie and her helicopter spin than Kiddy.
• Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project has the Optional Boss Wozma. It's an immobile green sphere with about ten times the health of any other boss in the game and takes a good half-hour of repeatedly jumping up and firing off rockets at it before you finally do enough damage to kill it. What do you get for your trouble? An icon on your saved game. That's it.
• Trouble Bruin in the tower level of Dynamite Headdy. You climb a tower with little platforms on it, forced-scrolling up. He uses a tool to remove sections from it, so you have to keep moving up. Keeping pace is very easy. Sometimes he will decide to move in (the only way you can get hurt besides falling, which is not instant death in this game), and that's when you can hurt him. It's random whether he moves in or just keeps taking chunks out of the tower, and you can be there for quite a while. Most players good enough to get here could last all day, but it's still easy to get yourself killed out of impatience. The game even gives you a secret bonus point for taking a long time on this boss, as if to say "here's a consolation since the RNG is being so damn mean to you". This, combined with the game's split difficulty, hurts the game's Speedrun appeal significantly.
• Gish has a final boss, Hera. What makes this boss into this category is the fact that you have to grab a box from the lowest floor and throw it upwards. However, Gish is a physics-based platformer where you play as a blob. Grabbing a box and throwing it upwards is quite tricky even when there are no enemies around, let alone with Hera chasing you relentlessly, making it very hard to find the right time to throw the box upwards. Moreover, there is high chance that physics can cause the box to not be thrown where you want it to.
• The Koopa Clown Car in I Wanna Be the Guy. It has three forms. The first two are really easy, but involve sitting through around two minutes worth of animations every single time. And you'll be doing this numerous times, because the third form really is hard. If you die in the room right after the boss fight, you have to do the entire boss battle over again. Hell, even if you do remember to go back, the entrance to the previous room isn't level with the ground, so you'll try to go back and find that you apparently can't.
• Kirby:
  • Fatty Whale: This boss's attack pattern is randomized slightly, making him pretty unpredictable, and his attacks are pretty hard to dodge too! When he gets the palette swap in Milky Way Wishes, he gets even worse, using a few new attacks, including attacks where he jumps across the arena! He's actually much slower in Ultra compared to how he was in the original, but he's still a pain to take out even in that version.
  • Pyribbit in Kirby: Triple Deluxe. While he can be rather dangerous at first, it becomes clear that a lot of his attacks are very telegraphed and follow a clear pattern. But no matter how good you get at the fight, there's nothing that can stop from jumping into the background, and absolutely every opportunity to attack him when he comes down is incredibly short. Can be extra frustrating in Dedede Tour where you not only have to deal with the harder (DX) form, but you're trying to be quick about it, too! This actually applies to most bosses in Triple Deluxe, since this game introduced the mechanic of 3D background layers and every single boss (even minibosses) uses it to some extent, dragging the fights out. That said, none of the others are anywhere near as bad about it as Pyribbit.
  • Robobot's Holo Defense API on its last hit: It zips around the room and does not even attack, but it is so difficult to hit that it can take more time to land that hit than the entire first phase of the boss.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man (Classic):
    • From Mega Man, Fire Man. It's not that he's terribly difficult to beat, but that it's nearly impossible to avoid getting hit a few times in the process, unlike the other Robot Masters. The reason for this is his inconsistent firing pattern which makes it very challenging to time jumps to avoid them, and in some cases makes it quite literally impossible to avoid. He also creates small flames near or even underneath where you're standing or jumping, which can force you to land in a spot where you won't be able to dodge an oncoming shot. Even with hitting him with his weakness, the player is likely to suffer a couple of hits — not so bad when he's the last boss of a stage, but can be absolutely infuriating during the end-game Boss Rush, the only one in the whole series that gives you NO health bonuses after defeating the bosses and forces you to start from the first boss all over if you die during any of them. Of course, if you know a rather cheap strategy of how to beat him, he'll be much easier.
    • Bright Man from Mega Man 4 also counts, as he has an ability to stop time and then body slam you while vulnerable. It hurts a lot. Bright Man is the bane of anyone trying a no damage run.
    • Big Pets, the first Wily boss from Mega Man 5, which if you don't want to waste weapon energy for the Crystal Eye, can often involve switching weapons mid-pattern. It also doesn't help that the pattern to beating it gives you a small window to hit its weak spot, during which it's entirely likely one of its attacks will intercept yours, forcing you to do the entire thing over.
    • The Atetemino from Mega Man 8 frequently disappears into the ceiling, and is also hard to hit with its weakness, the Mega Ball.
  • Mega Man X:
    • Wheel Gator, Magna Centipede, Bubble Crab, Serges, and to a lesser extent Crystal Snail from Mega Man X2. They follow a common trait in that they they tend to be hiding for the most of the battle, whether it's under sludge, seemingly nowhere, in a bubble, behind a barrier, or in a shell. In the SNES version (as compared to the X Collection verison), Serges' main attack also lags the game, which doesn't do much but slow things down and make it take longer. Wheel Gator is probably the worst, though, since using his weakness against him causes him to dive immediately if you don't know how to chain him properly. None of them are excessively difficult, but they fights can feel like they're dragging on.
    • High Max has a gimmick in that only special weapons hurt him. The game's lack of playtesting can mean that you can run into him in an optional boss room...and be completely shit out of luck as you can't hit him. When you do have everything (such as the final fight with him), you figure out his pattern and know what to do but it can take some time for you to even get that opening necessary. Even at that, few of the weapons you have can reliably hit him aside from Mijinion's weapon.
    • The Nightmare Snake from Blaze Heatnix's stage, often begrudgingly referred to as "that stupid doughnut thing again" since it will not leave you alone and you have to fight it a minimum of five times just to get through the stage. It's not overly hard and is fairly susceptible Infinity Mijinion and Metal Shark Player's weapons, but it's annoying to fight and likes to saturate the battlefield with projectiles on higher difficulties which make it tricky to hit so you will hate this thing by the time you've gone through that stage. Its overall goofy appearance that can be charitably described as a draconic doughnut, not to mention its utterly boring and lackluster fight which just consists of it lazily floating around don't win it any popularity contests, nor does the branching path in the level which means you must transverse this stage at least twice and will have to fight this stupid thing ten times at minimum (more if you fail against the notoriously difficult Blaze Heatnix) to get 100% Completion.
  • Mega Man Legends:
    • Guynie Toren of sub-city 2, a massive and heavily armored train-like reaverbot. He can only be damaged when he opens his hatch to unleash Hokkoro and Sharukurusu, leaving a small window to damage him, and he's also a Damage Sponge. The problem here is he gives you little to no reaction time before opening his hatch again, and you'll be too busy dealing with the Sharukurusus, which are among the deadliest enemies in the game (the tactic with dealing with them in ruins is typically to stay out of their reach and run like a little baby). The only thing stopping Guynie Toren from becoming That One Boss is most savvy players will eventually figure out the tactic^note Let him flood one half of the huge battle arena with enemies until he's not releasing anymore. Then let him head to the other end and destroy one from a distance. He'll only release one at a time now which can easily be dispatched between attacks on him which makes him much easier.
    • Bruno who guards the entrance to sub-city 3. Another Damage Sponge who has a very small hitbox (his abdomen), spams the annoying shield-breaking-homing-orb, and can destroy the buildings you use as cover or to stand on to hit his weak spot easier. You can only land hits on his weak spot with a tricky jumping shot, making the fight just drag on and on while your health slowly drains from his attack spam, and more often than not when dodging an attack you'll get blocked by a building or debris and get hit. Tron refers to Bruno as her masterpiece and destroying it makes Tiesel admit defeat and praise Mega Man, and with very good reason: it does not go down without a hell of a fight.
    • Good God, the train boss. It's actually a very easy fight with very easy to dodge repetitive attacks, but the train has so much health that the fight will easily take more than an hour to complete. The battle's last portion, where you're trying to shoot out the engine, is quite literally twenty straight minutes of standing there not moving (except to occasionally dodge an attack) and just holding the fire button down.
• The Khrome Keeper in Pac-Man World is very little of a threat, as all he can do is kick crates at you. The biggest, most annoying threat of the fight? The magnets. To damage the Krome Keeper, you have to hit some switches that are superheated, requiring you to use the Chrome Ball that drops from the crates he kicks to avoid being damaged. This, however, makes you affected by the electromagnets that move around above said switches. Run under one and it'll pick you up, leaving you helpless until Chrome Pac-Man mode wears off or (more likely) drops you in a damaging acid pool, which you can't escape while in Chrome Pac-Man mode and can only escape once it wears off (and you better quickly get out while your temporary invincibility lasts). Now add on the fact that this is all timed, and the switches are randomized and all around the place...
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • Lord Vorselon in A Crack In Time. His attacks aren't particularly hard to avoid, but they are annoying (mostly being variants of Beam Spam), he loves to hear himself talk, he can be quite a Damage-Sponge Boss depending on difficulty (made worse in the first fight with him by your limited weaponry), and he has this nasty habit of turning invisible, during which time he is invulnerable, but can still attack you. Oh, and sometimes he reappears off-camera. The fight with him can degenerate into "Vorselon appears, attacks you while you chip a small sliver off his health bar, then disappears" ad nauseum.
  • The final battle against the Thugs-4-Less leader in Going Commando is a very long tedious fight where you have to shoot at his giant robot via some automated turrets on the roof of buildings. Mostly, you're up in a turret the boss is throwing homing missiles at you which you constantly have to shoot out of the sky to avoid taking heavy damage. These missiles tend to alternate sides, so rather than constantly firing at the boss, you're constantly shooting out the missiles, hoping that in your movement a few shots hit the boss. After a few rounds of missiles the boss will decide to come over to smash the turret with a very telegraphed attack that's easy to dodge. This of course means you have to find another turret to keep doing damage. So long as you keep moving, and can hit the homing missiles you should never take damage, but the high health of this boss means it can take at least ten minutes to do this ^note if you manage to chip the very last points of his HP off with a normal weapon that needs levelling up, that weapon will gain TONS of Exp for the "kill"; very good for a one-shot Exp boost on otherwise-difficult weapons.
    • This is made worse by the fact that if you attempt to use a regular weapon on the boss, the game will lock onto the space between his feet. And no, even though there's a target there, it won't register as a hit. So if you want to throw some Mini-Nuke or RYNO II shots at him to chip off health and break the monotony, you've got to actively fight with the mechanics to get your shots to even connect.
• Master Kaag, the first boss in Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc has only one attack, which is crushing you, but it's a very debilitating one that takes you several seconds to recover from. To damage him, you have to press the buttons on the field 3 times to summon the Shock Rocket powerup then shoot him with it 3 times, but once the powerup is on the field he can simply walk over to it and stomp the center to cancel it out, forcing you to start the process over again. Even if you get the powerup, he can still crush you and it will wear off rendering your efforts fruitless, or the powerup can wear off while the Shock Rocket is in mid-flight. Adding insult to injury, he's a Broken Record that spams the same line ad nauseum.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic 3 & Knuckles
    • The boss of Carnival Night Zone Act 2 is this unless you exploit Sonic's insta-shield move. Before you can attack, you have to wait for him to circle after you, drop a big ball, charge up his tractor beam, outrun said beam, and then, finally, you can hit him once or twice while he retrieves the ball. Then the whole sequence repeats while your timer ticks ever closer to the deadly 10 minute mark since you're at the end of a very long level.
    • Death Ball, the first of the two bosses faced in Death Egg Zone Act 2, is not a hard boss by any stretch of the imagination, but is incredibly annoying and a massive time sink. Unlike every other boss in the game, it's incapable of directly hurting Sonic, but Sonic also can't hurt it due to the bumper on it that always locks on to Sonic's position. The only way Sonic can be hurt is through the mine tanks that the Death Ball drops, which are also the method of hurting the boss. Problem is, there's only two ways that they can hurt the Death Ball, both involving the gravity inversion pods. One is to flip gravity and have their spiked tops hit the Death Ball, which isn't a reliable method due to the fact that both the Death Ball and the mine tanks are constantly moving, neither being in sync with each other. The second is to flip gravity and get them stuck in the ground, then Spin Dash into them to launch them into the air and have them land on top of the Death Ball, which also isn't reliable due to the fact that Spin Dashing into them causes the mine tanks to be launched in an arc motion. Both methods also run Sonic the risk of getting hurt, as direct collision with the Death Ball causes the mine tanks to launch three spikes at Sonic in different directions.
  • Sonic Rush's bosses are often like this, taking their sweet time doing nothing but you can't hit them, or giving you very little room to hit them without being stupid hard, and most of them give you an even shorter window of opportunity when they go into Turns Red mode. Sonic Rush Adventure completely averts this — the bosses take millions of hits, but you can hit them often and they are usually quite short. Even the one that takes just four hits as you have to navigate an obstacle course. At least you're doing something. The Huge Crisis boss in the first game is probably the worst offender: it's basically just like the first boss, only it likes to waste tons of time launching volleys of easily dodged missiles at you.
  • Chaos 4 in Sonic Adventure. He's fought in that waterfall lake in the Mystic Ruins, where he swims around underwater, knocking down lily pads and attacking with energy waves, and is only vulnerable to attack when he pokes his head above the water. When he's down to his last hit point, he seems to spend ages meandering around out of reach, much longer than earlier in the fight, and it can wear on your patience waiting for the opportunity for that final hit. It's worse that you have to fight him in three different characters' stories.
  • The second Sonic vs. Shadow fight in Sonic Adventure 2 is ridiculously easy to not die on, but actually doing damage can be difficult, as Sonic/Shadow is almost always capable of making himself immune to your attacks (and has excellent reflexes).^note Until you notice that he leaves himself completely open to attack for a few seconds after using his special attack. Dodge it, then homing attack or spin-dash quickly to win!
    • On the other hand, because of that, this boss makes great life grinding material due to the umpteen rings on the track.
  • Metropolis Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. In a game where most bosses can be hit several times in a row (and some can be hit the required eight times before it's finished its first attack), it takes an age to beat. It's surrounded by seven flying canisters, which rotate around the boss, meaning you can't just strike at will like most other bosses without risking damage. Doesn't help that it darts along the floor both ways, so you have to jump over it (a full jump as Sonic and Tails, hope and pray your jump is timed so the balls are lower as Knuckles, or you will get hit). It then centers itself, expels the canisters round itself, before pulling them back in horizontally, which is when you attack. After a successful hit, it releases a canister, it opening to reveal a balloon Eggman. Bursting this gets it to start all over. Once you're rid of all the canisters, it tries to fire a laser at you, which is very quickly destroyed in comparison of all the waiting for an opening you would've just endured on the previous seven hits. This was made so much easier in Sonic & Knuckles, where a change in jump physics meant you could get all the hits in after Mecha Sonic Mk. II had gone through that pattern once, unless you were dumb enough to grab the fire shield, which would mean you'd have to do it the long way.
  • The new boss created for the restored Hidden Palace Zone in the mobile remaster is a standout example. Whereas most bosses in the rest of the game have broad hitboxes and could be easily approached for landing hits; the boss for this stage has a smaller, stricter hitbox and constantly floats out of the player's reach. Compounding things was that the only way to land hits on this boss was for the machine to be soaked by its own timed bomb water explosions, resulting the fight also doubling as a Marathon Boss thanks to how lengthy its boss patterns are. The result is a boss that offers only one tedious, very specific way for players to attack. Anyone going into this boss expecting it to be similar to the others is in for a bad surprise.
  • Sonic's fight with Iblis in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) just might be the king of this in Sonic games, if only because of how boring and drawn out it is. Unless you have the Purple Gem (which at this point in the story, you won't) you'll spend about a minute and a half between each attack just standing there waiting for Iblis to expose himself. God help you if you miss an opportunity to attack him. By the way, Shadow has to fight this boss too, and he never gets a purple gem to abuse.
    • Also, Silver's boss fight from the same game. Whenever you get close to him while he isn't jumping, he grabs you telekinetically and throws you into the wall. Not only can he get you in infinite teleport lock if you're up against the wall and keeping collecting the rings you drop, but due to the game's glitchy nature he can throw you out of bounds. At best this means you can explore a completely empty version of the hub while Silver is trapped within the bounds of the area you're meant to be in. At worst it means you don't hit anything and fly through space infinitely.
  • Egg Emperor in Sonic Heroes is just plain obnoxious. He spends most of his time backing away from you just fast enough to be hard to hit, and it has HP in the hundreds, when the most damage you can do in one hit is around four. Of course, to do that much damage, you'll have to find "power cores" that are hidden in various parts of the arena, most of which are risky to try to get to for one reason or another. His attacks are easily dodged, but just disruptive enough to get in your way when you're trying to attack him. He isn't even particularly difficult — he just takes so long to beat that you're practically guaranteed to slip up eventually.
  • The Time Eater from Sonic Generations. Not only is it the glitchiest part of the game, the other characters never shut up.
  • All four of the bosses in Sonic Spinball are Goddamned ones to an extent. While their arenas aren't particularly deadly and the bosses themselves can't kill you, all of them can knock you out of their arena and back to the level (though fortunately they don't heal when they do this), and they all take quite a few hits to kill, which can take forever without some practice. Oh, and most of them can summon flunkies.
• Super Mario 3D World has the Hisstocrat battle. Not the first one in World 3, with the regular Hisstocrat, or the second in World 8, against the pink Hisstocrat. The third battle (found in the third bonus world) has both blue and pink Hisstocrat fighting you simultaneously, which means the battle takes twice as long and you have twice as many things to keep track of. And you don't have time to be patient with the battle, because the stage in which this boss appears is a boss rush, where you have to fight six of the game's bosses with no breaks, and you have only 500 seconds to defeat all of them. Most of the others can be defeated relatively quickly, but the Hisstocrats take forever to bring down, and if you take too long on them, you're likely to run out of time later in the level.

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