Indeed they will. Several times over, in fact!
"You will die, mortal!"
— Shao Kahn (making a promise he'll sure as hell keep)
Midway Games and its Spiritual Successor NetherRealm Studios certainly have a fair share of tough and unfair bosses. There's a reason, after all, Perfect Play A.I. used to be called "MK Walker".
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Mortal Kombat series
The Mortal Kombat series is notorious for its SNK-like sub-bosses, starting with Mortal Kombat (1992)'s Goro and ending with Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance's Moloch. Not only are they super-powerful, but they're unthrowable, unjuggleable (for the most part) and - with later games - immune to projectile attacks. There's a reason Perfect Play A.I. used to be called MK Walker.
- In Mortal Kombat (1992), we had Goro and Shang Tsung.
- Goro had the highest defensive and attack stats of any character, and his stomp could get heavily annoying. He also has an unblockable fireball that comes out very fast, and an overpowered throw that does almost 40% damage.
- Shang Tsung also had unblockable and cheap fireballs, and could morph into any character at random, including GORO! If he just so happens to morph, the character's AI will be at the maximum level, meaning it'll be extremely difficult to land a hit. He's also floating along the ground so sweeps and Sub-Zero's slide special will not work on him.note
- Then came Mortal Kombat II, which introduced us to Kintaro and Shao Kahn (pictured above).
- Kintaro is basically Goro but taken a step further in difficulty. His fireball is slower, but still unblockable. His stomp is more easily telegraphed, but now it has a shorter version which stuns you for a LONG time.
- Should you beat Kintaro, you go on to fight Shao Kahn. The first thing you'll notice is that he has a head start at the beginning of the round, and overrides the "FIGHT!" message from appearing with his taunt (since he's the announcer after all). What differentiates him from the previous bosses is that all of his moves, when blocked, put your character into hitstun, and have no lag time inbetween. The only way to defend against him is to dodge his attacks, which is easier said than done. He can throw an energy spear, ram you with a shoulder charge, Sparta kick you all the way to the other side of the screen, and throw a mean right hook that also sends you the same way.
- However, if you don't mind cheesing your way to victory, you can jump all the way back into the corner as soon as the round starts and immediately block low. Kahn will shoulder charge you which will put you into blockstun and take off a chunk of your lifebar. However, you will recover faster than Kahn does, so uppercut him, which will take off more of his lifebar than he took from you. Repeat until you win. Note that this does not work on the arcade version of MK II.
- Mortal Kombat 3 decided to drop the traditional 4-armed Shokan sub-bosses in favor of Motaro, a demonic Centaur. He easily outshines the previous sub-bosses in cheapness, and is the grand champion of SNK Bosses in the series. Projectiles thrown at him bounce right back at you, he teleports like crazy, his attacks (throw included) do WAY too much damage, and he can fire an infinite number of energy balls from his metal tail in any direction. You'll need an extensive knowledge of your character's bread-and-butter combos in order to win against him (or you can crouch the whole time and uppercut every time he gets close enough - he'll tail swipe you a couple times, but not enough to put you in danger).
- Should you beat him, you will have to once again fight Shao Kahn, but this time he is much different than before. This time he's really pissed off about your defeating him in MKII, and can now utterly destroy you in a few seconds. He button-reads, he's faster than he was in MKII, does more damage while taking less, traded his energy javelin for an unblockable Eye Beam, has an upwards version of his shoulder charge in case of jump-ins, and he can pull out a giant metal hammer which automatically dizzies you regardless of whether you blocked or not. Ditto all the same problems for the Updated Re-release Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3... and even worse in the Porting Disaster Mortal Kombat Advance. Best stay away from that one altogether.
Shao Kahn: It's official: YOU SUCK. - Mortal Kombat 4 has Goro returning for the console versions, where he is arguably even harder than he was in MK1. Here, he is faster, and can now perform jump attacks. He is also given Kintaro's teleport stomp from MKII, which he will use a lot. Like his MK1 counterpart, he also takes half the damage of the other characters. This is made especially jarring, since the game's final boss (Shinnok) is much easier to defeat.
- Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance gave us Moloch, a blue oni that acts like a red oni, with three Glowing Eyes of Doom and a ball-'n-chain strapped to his hand. He takes roughly half-normal damage, and has ridiculous attacks such as a non-telegraphed bum-rush. The worst thing about Moloch is if you win one round against him, he just stands there and roars. If you want the satisfaction of seeing him fall, you need to win the match. Or you could just spend the whole fight circling round him towards the arm with the iron ball.
- Mortal Kombat: Deception introduced Onaga, the mighty Dragon King, and he lives up to his name. The game foreshadows Onaga's immunity to projectiles in the opening cutscene: he walks through sustained fire from Shang Tsung, Quan Chi, and Raiden at the same time. First off, he's bigger than Goro, Kintaro, Motaro, and Moloch combined. Secondly, he breathes fire that causes massive hitstun. Third, he's immune to projectile attacks, and while he can't crouch, his guard is both high and low at the same time. Fourth, he can use his wings (which are even BIGGER than his body) to backdash away from combos, while doing some of his own. And fifth, his throw is really powerful, and cuts off about 40-50% of your health. And if that wasn't enough, the stage where you fight against him has a Death Trap (the spikes surrounding the arena) which you can't knock Onaga into, but he can knock you into it. Your only saving grace is that his weakness is spread across the arena, and if you take down a kamidogu, he becomes immobilized and much weaker. Also, for some reason he takes more damage from Liu Kang than any other fighter, even with the kamidogu in place, so a second saving grace if you know how to play with him.
- Finally, we come to Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, which gives us the fire elemental Blaze as the Final Boss. Some of you may remember Blaze as the fiery-looking secret character from Deadly Alliance. Yeah, that version's gone. Instead we get a giant lava titan that can do a rolling attack, teleport, and do overpowered combos.
- Shao Kahn retakes the throne as of Mortal Kombat 9. The main thing that makes him a pain in the butt is that every single one of his attacks gives him Super Armor - and they tend to come out really quickly, meaning that going toe-to-toe with him a straight fight is an exercise in futility. He has a hammer throw attack that is unblockable and stuns you on hit - and if he keeps using it while you're already stunned, it will hit you three times before Mercy Invincibility kicks in and you can move again. And God help you if his X-Ray attack hits you since it does 54% damage. Oh and all the damage he takes is reduced by 50%, effectively doubling his lifebar. And things are even worse in the Challenge Tower, where you fight him a bunch of times. Some are just straight one-on-one matches (though you don't get to choose your character), but most stack things against you even further, such as making you go solo against Shao Kahn and two other opponents, or go solo against three Shao Kahns on one lifebar.
- Mortal Kombat X sees the return of Shinnok as the game's final boss. Though unplayable normally, he is a secret character who can be unlocked by completing Story Mode. As that implies, just as in MK 4 he appears to be an anti-climax...until you beat him and he transforms into Corrupted Shinnok, AKA his demon form from Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. This version of Shinnok, much like the bosses in MK 9, has super armor on most of his moves and deals higher damage than you, but that's not the worst of it. The worst part about Corrupted Shinnok is that he has a very fast, instantaneous, full-screen laser which you can't jump over (The hitbox is too big and even if you get lucky and jump as soon as he starts it, it lasts long enough to catch you when you drop), deals massive chip damage if blocked and he likes to spam over and over. Said laser also has an EX version, which makes it even bigger and goes through your blocks, ensuring that it hits you and deals massive damage regardless of doing any blocks.
- Mortal Kombat 11 introduces Shinnok's mother and mistress of time, Kronika. Her fights only last one round, but she throws everything, the kitchen sink and a few things that aren't even hers at the player. Grapples, certain specials and fatal blows do very literally nothing to her, where Shao Kahn and corrupted Shinnok could mercifully be affected by X-rays. On top of that, she summons in a, thankfully very weak (defensively) substitute fighter at two thirds and one third health, changes the stage once you kill them and gains a new ability with each shift, and can call down as many charging dinosaurs and meteor strikes as she desires. Her normal specials are actually even worse, summoning multiple homing projectiles, surrounding herself with a barrier of three sand balls and her most annoying ability, an unblockable, extraordinarily fast laser that, should it connect, heavily damages your fighter, rewinds time for them, resulting in you being unable to attack and leaves you frozen in the air for a few additional seconds just for good measure. And while they're being put through the wringer, Kronika can take all the time in the world to warp around, pulling off combos while you're completely helpless to do anything.
Injustice series
- With Injustice: Gods Among Us, there are two examples:
- First up is Regime!Superman in Classic Battle mode, who takes only half damage of whatever you throw at him (Meaning if your character has a Character Trait that gives you a damage boost, turn it on before using a super move, you'll do 100% of the damage for the move), constantly will spam his special moves or combos (Yes, even at Medium). And the real kicker, not only does his character trait (Which makes his attacks ignore armored hits and inflict increased damage for a short period of time) run out slower than normal, but after it runs out, it immediately fills back up. It doesn't help that regular Superman is considered a top-tier Game-Breaker to begin with.
- Lex Luthor in some S.T.A.R. Labs missions will gain a shield for a couple seconds during the match that not only protects him, but acts as an Attack Reflector. He also sometimes uses flurries of special attacks (with or without his shield), killing you very easily.
- The sequel Injustice 2 gave us Brainiac as final boss in the arcade mode. While he doesn't go full-blown One-Winged Angel like Corrupted Shinnok nor has special immunity to certain attacks, here is the catch: the final battle takes place inside his mothership, where he has absolute control of his surroundings and he has access to moves that not even his playable self has, such as summoning giant metallic tentacles/arms from around the arena to attack his opponents which are unblockable and nearly impossible to avoid. One in particular does more damage than most character's supermoves, and executes fast enough to be used as a punish (and the AI is completely aware of this).
Other games
- Mutilator
from Bio F.R.E.A.K.S.. The arena is flooded and full of sharks. Maximilian Dood did a Boss Rage of the game with his friends, attempting to beat it on its hardest mode (as all Boss Rages tend to be). Such usual "Rage" attempts, at their hardest, tend to top out at 50-70 tries (ie, restarting after a game over) to reach and defeat whatever boss they are attempting. BIO Freaks took them 195 tries, with 88 of those tries just getting to Mutilator. - Midway's 1997 War Gods on Nintendo 64 features two SNK bosses in the progressive fighting mode: Grox and Exor.
- Grox was the first big green blob thing, who looks like a joke but takes basically no flinch damage when hit and has a variety of moves which take 15-30% of your health in 1 hit.
- Exor's name is not even given, and he basically has a bunch of moves no other character can perform, others that no other character cannot perform efficiently and also takes no flinch damage, combined with teleportation abilities and a very high speed. Even on the lowest difficulty, this boss is impossibly hard.
- The Ready 2 Rumble Boxing series had Damien Black and Rumbleman as final bosses for the first and second games, respectively. However, Rumbleman, unlike Damien, not only hits all 3 factors of being an SNK boss (Damien is only fought on the Gold class in the first game), but is not nerfed at all for regular play. Here are a few reasons why most tournament players ban him:
- He has the biggest reach of anyone in the game, including Shaquille O'Neal, the tallest regular player in the game.
- His taunts can fill up his entire "Rumble" meter in one go. However, unlike other characters, he will not get letters until he fully completes the taunt, giving time for the player to hit him before it's finished.
- He can grab characters, and pummel them relentlessly, blatantly breaking the conventions of the game, as there's no clinch option.
- Rumbleman can also absorb insane damage. Whilst some of the lightweight characters do have a harder time getting "Rumble" letters off bigger characters, Rumbleman makes it even harder, being able to shrug off the biggest (non-Rumble) combo your character can pull off. And should you actually manage to successfully initiate a Rumble Flurry, he will No-Sell the entire flurry simply by blocking, even low punches. How often the no-sell happens is random, but still frequent enough that you'll either lose all your continues, or break your controller. And that's just Arcade mode...
- The original NBA Jam had a non-standard variation of this: load up the game with the Chicago Bulls (it doesn't matter if it's a one player or 2 player versus game), and play against the Detroit Pistons. While they're not actually the "boss" of the game (you can actually wind up playing against them very early in the game), they go into SNK Boss mode any time they're pitted against Chicago. Once the clock hits the final minute of the quarter, any shot or dunk you try on the Piston's hoop will unceremoniously brick, even if it's a freaking lay-up. This was done purposely by the dev team, who were all Pistons fans (despite their studio being based in Chicago). Complaints from fans caused this SNK mode to get canned in subsequent sequels by Midway, and EA Sports (the current license holder for the NBA Jam franchise).
