SNK Boss / Other Fighting Games

Other Commercial Fighting Games

• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Fighting Edition has Ivan Ooze: he's unaffected by gravity, can't be thrown, has a normal attack which knocks the opponent clear across the screen if not blocked, his other moves (3 normals and 2 specials) are all projectiles, with the specials being multiple homing projectiles (with priority over all other fireballs), and one of his specials makes him invincible for about 2 seconds. So what's supposed to offset these advantages? He can't block, and he has no super. Too bad his invincibility special more than makes up for not being able to block, and his specials do so much damage that he doesn't need a super.
  • To wit: Ivan Ooze can do his invincible DP out of hitstun. You HIT him — and he hits you right back.
  • Lord Zedd, who you fight before Ooze, could simply teleport whenever he wanted, even when he's blocking or being hit, meaning combos and hypers were useless against him.
• And speaking of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers fighting games, the Game Gear rendition of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie has its Final Boss, the Ivan Ecto-Morphicon. The Ivan Ecto-Morphicon only does one thing — close-up fighting — but does it really well, with its attacks being both fast and powerful. Meanwhile, the character you have to use for this fight, the Ninja Mega Falconzord, doesn't have good ranged options (meaning you pretty much have to fight close-up), and it is not nearly as good of a melee fighter as the Ivan Ecto-Morphicon. Many of the Ninja Mega Falconzord's moves are nigh-useless in this fight, as they'll just leave you open for a painful combo from Ivan. Oh, and to top it off, you have to beat this guy twice (though if you continue after losing in the second fight, you at least don't have to do the first one again).
• Alpha-152 in Dead or Alive 4, a superpowered Kasumi clone made of... something (Jello? Cool Mint Listerine? Just plain energy?). She's unplayable and has a unique move set including combos (both combo melee attacks and combo grabs/throws) that can take down 2/3 of your health in one shot; even on "Easy" difficulty she takes serious players multiple attempts. She also has the annoying tendency to teleport out of your combos and launch into one of her own.
  • Certain characters have an easier time fighting her than others. Quicker characters and characters that are difficult to read (Helena, Brad) can adjust to her teleport attacks quicker, not to mention the ability to just rush at her and get a few moves off before she teleported again.
  • The worst part about her, not yet mentioned, is her abuse of attack range and Perfect Play A.I.. She stays just out of range of your (standard) attacks. When you try to hit her and your attack falls short, she'll nail you for the aforementioned 2/3 of your health while you're in cooldown. If you (try to) run in and attack, she'll either nail you before you get to the "attack" part, or teleport away. If you sit in defense, she'll move forward in a split second and hit you with a similarly overpowered grab combo before you have a chance to hit her.
    • This makes the best way to beat her a (partial; she's still not stupid) A.I. Breaker - attacks she doesn't think can hit her at the current range, but actually can. Typically, attacks involving some form of lunge. Strafing sideways before running in can also trip up her ranging avoidance.
  • How bad was she? When Alpha-152 was brought back in Dead or Alive 5 as a playable character, the only way to make her kit balanced was to split it across two characters. Alph-152 keeps her amazing combo options and zoning potential with her damage scaling duly scaled down, newcomer Phase-4 inherits a moveset based around Teleport Spam (although her possible exit options are more limited and much more easily countered).
  • Before Alpha, there was Tengu in Dead or Alive 2. He returned in 4 as a balanced secret character, but in his original debut game he was a bastard. His AI was almost completely omniscient and would counter everything. His moves did tremendous damage, yes, but he had one move that skyrocketed him to boss territory: he charges up and creates a giant gust of wind around himself, knocking the opponent away, meaning he's the only character in the game with a ranged attack. In the Updated Re-release, Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate, he gains a new CPU-exclusive move for his exclusive stage which cannot be accessed: he can change the weather. While it is visually impressive-looking, it's also really distracting and it can hurt your eyes if you're not prepared for it. And while he's doing this he can charge at you freely.
  • After Tengu, Ayane's foster father Genra/Omega made his debut in Dead or Alive 3. First, you fight him in a really weird camera angle. Secondly, the fire around his stage makes everything super-blurry so you can't see his attacks. Finally, one of his attacks has to be jumped over, which is easier said than done. Trying to use a throw on him lowers YOUR health. Also, if he gets hit and falls, he unleashes a short flame wave, which takes some of your health, if not blocked.
  • This all falters in the face of Dead or Alive: Dimension's brand new "Tag Challenge" mode. It starts off innocuous enough, but the final five fights have you play against a beefed-up Kasumi clone named Kasumi Alpha, all of the bosses in Dead or Alive history, AND a brand new boss in the form of supreme Mugen Tenshin clan badass and father of basically every ninja in the game, Shiden, who pulls so many moves out of his ass it's sheer baffling. Add to everything that they take majorly reduced damage and can take away up to 75% of your health from an accidental tag, and the fact that you have two characters to even the odds barely matters.
• Bushido Blade 2 has, if the player plays the story mode as a Shainto clan character, the penultimate boss Sakaki, who instantly teleports away, without a scratch, if 'hit'. The only way to kill him is to keep making him teleport, as each time he does, he reappears closer and closer to the player, and you have about a second-long window to gut him before he stands up and readies himself. Of course, if you die (which is easy, since your character is a potential One-Hit-Point Wonder) the process starts over. Almost as if to make up for this pain-in-the-ass opponent, the Shainto's final enemy is an unarmed girl who doesn't even fight back.
  • All characters, Shainto or not, eventually have to go up against Katze, who has a revolver, while the player has only a melee weapon. Katze was in the original Bushido Blade as well, and had this irritating tendency to backflip away if the player got close. The trick was simply to run around until he'd fired six times. Guns need reloading, swords don't, and his defense is pathetic. But be warned. The first time you fight him, he will Just Shoot You.
  • Comparatively, the other gun-wielding character in the second game, Tsubame, totes an M-16; resulting in a much slower fight for you and her as you try to make her reload.
• Power Instinct:
  • Groove on Fight has Bristol, the final boss. His first form is fairly harmless - does high damage with leg-based attacks, but nothing too terribly nasty. Then he turns into a demon after being KOed. And things get worse, as he gains a slew of attacks that have incredible priority, come out monstrously fast and do entirely too much damage. His Super does a ton of damage and can chip you away if you block it. To make matters worse, he proceeds to steal your partner, so you're outnumbered two-on-one. And he buttonreads. Welcome to Hell.
  • Matrimelee, the revival installment of the series, has the not even less 'cutie' Princess Sissy. A seemingly harmless young girl, she can conjure many different things from her magical box. One of her most annoying tactics is constantly bringing out Abubo from Rage of the Dragons that swings his fists around, so they would get you in both air and ground. She regularly does this when the opponent is anywhere nearby her. This guarantees that you will be unable to get close to her unless you keep trying incessantly, are a pro and/or exploit her rather simple AI. But it doesn't end on Abubo. She also has chainsaw boots, a purple bomb, an uncancellable frog projectile and even a sword. And, to finish your attempts to marry her off once and for all, Sissy's arsenal includes a FUCKING annoying and unblockable (Although, you know... it's overjumpable, thankfully) super where she shoots a raygun at you and turns you into a FROG. ...oh, and she's unhittable when she attacks.
  • The fifth game, Goketsuji Ichizoku, has Shinjuro Goketsuji, who at first appears to be a short old man before turning into a massive demon. His melee attacks have absurd reach and his projectiles not only cover half the screen, they also take a long time to disappear. And then there's one of his supers, where he pummels you with lightning balls while he himself is invunerable. Notably, he's the only boss character in the series to be unplayable.
• Super Smash Bros.
  • Downplayed in Melee: Giga Bowser was designed to be an SNK Boss, as his attacks have far greater reach and much larger hitboxes than what any other character could throw out while hitting even harder than Ganondorf's attacks, he's completely immune to all grabs (including special grabs), his shield can not break (which makes his immunity to grabs even more broken), his recovery move covers great distance while having extremely large hitboxes and significant amounts of invincibility that makes it near impossible to edgeguard him (on top of him being far heavier than the playable cast to make killing him even more difficult), and many of his moves have effects to significantly improve their effectiveness (such as his massive Fire Breath that doesn't shrink in size, and his Whirling Fortress that attacks with the aforementioned abnormally large hitboxes and invincibility). However, while he is very difficult indeed, especially in Event 51, he has relatively poorly exploited AI, meaning that very skilled players can exploit it and decimate him when they learn his flaws.
  • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U introduces a legitimate example through Master Core, Master Hand's terrifying One-Winged Angel. The battle consists of 4 different forms, all with their own set of fast, overwhelming attacks (not counting a "joke" fifth form that can kill you in one hit). And in the Wii U version, it gets an additional form that comes in the form of an actual fortress. Thankfully, you only get to fight it by playing on higher difficulties.
  • Train and feed any Amiibo fighters enough and you will essentially turn it into this trope. A fully powered Amiibo can basically read attacks, have near perfect frame data, soak nearly twice as much abuse than they normally would before they can be reliably KO'd, and each and every one of their attacks easily does 30% damage or more to normal fighters... Oh, and they never stop learning from your playstyles... Have fun!
  • An interesting inversion in Ultimate: Terry's Classic mode is a series of Stamina Battles where the player has 50% more health than the enemies they face. This essentially makes Terry a playable version of this trope.
• ARMS
  • Hedlok, a giant, Multi-Armed and Dangerous skull-like mask that implants itself on the head of combatants to destroy anyone that looks at it funny. In Grand Prix, playing on Level 4 or Higher will cause Hedlok to hijack the downed Max Brass' body and challenge you to a fight. He has six arms, can take quite a punishment, and has a Rush that is a projectile (as opposed to Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs) that deals 500, sometimes 600 damage, which is just half a 1000-health life bar. And in multiplayer when you fight him with two player-controlled allies, he has even more health.
  • Update 3.2 introduced Springtron, a robotic replica of Spring Man that shows up before the fight with Max Brass in Grand Prix Mode if you're doing too well (as in, you haven't lost a single round) on Difficulty 4 or higher. He's slow and weak under normal circumstances, but his signature ability is a shockwave that, in order, disables your incoming arms, charges his arms, and makes him really fast, as well as the traditional deflect shockwave that the original Spring Man has. Good Luck. If you're playing Co-op mode, you'll fight TWO Springtrons!
  • You thought Hedlok on Max Brass was a challenge? Update 5.0 replaces Max Brass with Doctor Coyle on Difficulty 6-7 of Grand Prix Mode. Coyle's ability to stay airborne for a long time, block while airbone and turn invisible, as well as her default ARMS having more debilitating elemental variety (explosive, electric, and freezing) and homing capability that Max Brass lacks in combination with what makes Hedlok so dangerous on every fighter makes for a long and dangerous fight.
• Pokkén Tournament gives us Shadow Mewtwo, the Superpowered Evil Side of everyone's favourite Blood Knight Olympus Mons, Mewtwo. While normally a Glass Cannon with only 480 HP at most when playable, when fought as a boss in Story Mode it becomes a different story; specifically, it starts every fight going into Burst Mode and stays that way throughout the fight as well as having twice as much health (1000 HP?!) in comparison to everyone else. It can also predict your grabs and counter attacks and will turtle through your combo and knock you out with a counter if you play too aggressively. What makes the HP issue worse is that every time it's fought in Story Mode, its health also increases so that by the time you face it for the final time it will have 3000 HP!! Oh, and during said final battle it's basically invincible for the second round, though that one's more for dramatic purposes so that when you lose that round you get a Heroic Second Wind and gain a permanent Burst Mode of your own to turn the tide with. Unfortunately, this also means that if you lose the first round, it's game over.
• The eponymous Eternal Champion from the Genesis fighter game Eternal Champions. Not only is he as strong as him being on this list would imply, you have to beat him five times in one round, and each time he uses a different (but equally painful) move set.
  • And if you were lucky enough to get ahold of Eternal Champions CD, the Sega CD version, you had to do it not once, but twice. Then you also went up against the Dark Champion, who had the same annoying multiple-self-resurrection abilities, complete with moves relating to natural disasters with which he just wouldn't let up at all. Oh, and that's without mentioning the fact that the computer in the last game can ignore the game's rules by spamming their special attacks, despite having an apparently functional "Inner Spirit" gauge, which was thankfully taken out in the second game. The Champions in particular like to repeatedly Insult you, destroying your ability to use special attacks while using their own invincible-ground-sweeping abilities... over and over and over.
  • Getting to the final set of fights on Champion mode leads to the Dark Champion kidnapping the Eternal Champion. You get to fight the Dark one as the Eternal one in what can be an absolutely epic fight, were it not for the Dark Champion being damn hard. The worst part is you only get one chance to win the last battle, or you have to start the whole game again.
• From the Arcana Heart series:
  • Mildred Avallone. In her first form (from story mode), you have one round to beat her or lose. She doesn't actually move, but she effortlessly attacks you from across the screen with massive knockback attacks that are undodgeable (but, fortunately, not unblockable) and has an insanely high defense — if you can actually manage to get close enough to damage her beyond projectile chipping. If you lose against this form — which is essentially inevitable if you have a character/arcana combo that has useless projectiles or none at all — you get a second form where she has access to all the best moves in the game, (including giving her regular special moves that are supers for anyone else that uses them) she has a dangerous new super that does nearly half a health bar in damage if not blocked and hits the entire screen, she has mid-air and ground recovery that instantly leaves her standing up on ground level, she starts with a full super meter and she has a defense nearly as good as the first form. Oh, and you can't win via time-out. Otherwise, she merges the two worlds, resulting in the implied deaths of millions. Of course, you can avoid this just by setting the game timer to infinite. A catch, though: if you do beat the first form, you instead get... the exact same battle, but the boss starts out with an empty super meter instead.
  • Arcana Heart 2 gives us her somewhat less frustrating sister Angelia. In arcade mode, she simply plays like a smart computer opponent (including her annoyingly effective but technically sound "Halo Dash->Halo Super" tactic) and doesn't seem to use her arcana at all... but she still doesn't seem to have charge her halo dash attack, since she can and does use it constantly (especially during attack clashes). In Story mode, on the other hand, she uses the same tactics, but her arcana (Mildred, incidentally) is always active, meaning Mildred launches attacks on her own pretty much independently. In addition Angelia also has a certain unavailable-to-players super where she... drops a building on you. Seriously. Needless to say, it's unblockable and does over half a health bar of damage, though she thankfully only uses it infrequently.
    • In Sugoi! Arcana Heart 2, players can use Angelia's building drop super. Also, in Story Mode, there is a new hidden boss named Parace L'Sia, who makes Mildred from the original look like a gigantic joke. She fires projectiles with reckless abandon, has absolute priority on all of her moves, regenerates damage, and most of her supers are a One-Hit Kill! One of her supers is a projectile that goes off five seconds after it hits you, suddenly dealing insane damage and putting you into hit-stun - even when you're in the middle of a combo or blocking a multi-hit attack. Just to make things worse, she continuously regenerates her super meter, and has another move where she goes into a cocoon to accelerate its regeneration. The cocoon move only ends when her super meter is completely filled (at nine stocks) or if you attack the cocoon enough times to break her out of it - and none of your attacks will do any damage during this time. And she's still regenerating her health. She goes well beyond a typical SNK boss and acts more like a horribly overpowered MUGEN character.
  • Arcana Heart 3 tops it off with first having you fight mid-boss Scharlachrot, who plays like Hazama with robot wolves that fire beam spam cannons. To wit, she attacks really aggressively, her Arcana (said robot wolf) can interrupt your combo by shooting you in the middle of it and set her up to combo you (and it will happen often). One of the Arcana supers are to fire a super powerful bullet capable of wiping out nearly 50% of your health, and her Arcana Blaze is to fire a frigging huge beam that goes upwards and will take out 50% even in chip damage. Oh, and beat her in the first round and she goes to activate PERMANENT Super Mode with boosted attack and defense (although that can be avoided if you had the round count set to one). And did we mention that her Arcana bar usually regenerates at an unusually fast rate so you'll find yourself often facing that near-50% health powerful bullet?
    • Did you manage to defeat her? Then prepare to fight Ragnarok, a Humongous Mecha bent on destroying Japan and plays differently from the rest of the game on a 3-tiered battlefield - if you do not understand how to fight bosses like Onslaught, you're pretty much done for, and his main offense are two annoying flying funnels that constantly fly around you and interrupt your acts, not to mention Bullet Hell gallore or a beam rain unblockable. Much like Mildred, this is Do Or Die - run out of time and Japan gets blown sky-high. In short, the final boss is essentially made (overly) difficult not by its moves or its strategy, but by the fact that it basically converts the game into a side-scrolling platformer, while you're still saddled with the control scheme of a fighting game. If the spam attacks don't get you, the clock will simply run out while you're trying to jump up and hit that last weak point. Thankfully the Six Stars update replaces it with newcomer Minori Amanohara (or Weiss if you're playing as her), who, other than gaining an increase in offense and defense when in her Super Mode, is somewhat more manageable to beat.
    • And if that wasn't enough, Parace comes back in the Score Attack mode of the Arcana Heart 3 console port. The good news is, she doesn't do nearly as much damage this time around (no more one-hit kills, at least). The bad news is, she doesn't need to because now she teleports around the arena like she's on crack, and can (and will) do long combos that will take out a huge chunk of your life! Worse, her AI is even more aggressive than before and she seems to button-read as well, since nearly any attack you do will be met with a better one that will set you up for a long combo. Fighting Parace in this game is like fighting Rare Akuma. The only good thing about this fight is that if you actually manage to somehow hit Parace, you'll find she takes more damage than usual, but can still auto-regenerate her health. Its safe to say that Parace manages to take this trope to Serial Escalation levels, and considering most of what SNK themselves does with their bosses, that really says something.
• Chaos Code gives us Celia II (an Evil Twin of the original Celia) and Kudlak Aimar (a necromancer with Bloody Murder powers).
  • First off, a quick rundown of the gameplay basics: when selecting a character you can choose two additional moves that you can use in battle out of four (two special moves and two supers). You'll also have to pick your dash option (either run or step). Both bosses have access to all of them. Both bosses also have 5 super meter stocks as opposed to 3. As for dashing, Celia II is locked to run while Kudlak is locked to step. Now onto the bosses:
    • Celia II possesses a really aggressive AI, often chasing you down with spinning blades (including one that goes diagonal), a Psycho Crusher-esque attack, lasers that go fullscreen, a projectile-negating and damaging shield, boob missiles(!), uppercuts (including a tornado variant as a super), some painful command grabs (especially the super one) and a super that if it hits you, WILL obliterate you (the fact that it's also unblockable doesn't really help matters). She also packs an Ashura Senku-style teleport move for when you least expect it. Some actually consider her to be tougher than Kudlak. Speaking of which...
    • Kudlak meanwhile isn't as aggressive, though he more than makes up for it by dumping gross Body Horror traps all over the place and picking you off with his zoning skills, including one super that hits you from afar and low, always catching you off guard (he also has a lunging attack, but who cares about that?). He also has a super that if it lands will steal your health and add it to his. His step function also acts as a sort of teleport, meaning that chances are you'll end up missing him as you attack. Oh and he also has a super that hits FULLSCREEN and will take off buckets of your health.
    • And in addition to all this, both are playable as regular characters albeit nerfed for competitive play (Celia II KAI and Kudlak-Sin, respectively) and curiously enough with different palettes (KAI is much more vibrant, whereas Kudlak-Sin isn't as pale as before, this is presumably to differentiate them from their boss counterparts). However, both their boss forms are unlockable and can be used. Cue the salt.
  • As of the console release of New Sign of Catastrophe, it seems that FK Digital have been taking notes from BlazBlue and its Unlimited Characters because there are now boss versions of everyone else! There's a good chance that you'll have to fight them every now and then in the game's Survival mode and chances are they'll screw you over. But first their traits:
    • Like Celia II and Kudlak, they have access to all their special and super moves. They also deal much more damage (especially their Destruction Chaos supers) and are more aggressive. However, unlike Celia II and Kudlak, they only have a maximum of three per super stock like normal characters and their palettes become white, blue and gold/red (probably as a nod to Guilty Gear and its hideously broken Gold characters). As for the characters:
    • Boss Hikaru's (locked to run dash) Blue Sphere Break now hits for three hits as opposed to one, his heavy High Grade Knuckle can now go fullscreen, his Quake Crushing Fist is now capable of causing a wall bounce if near the corner, his Spinning Tiger Assault Kick now goes much farther (and probably through you if he's near enough!), his Swoop Charging Kick causes a massive shockwave upon landing, his Sky Break Thunderstrike Kick hits much, much, MUCH harder and his Splitting Break Touch of Curse will make you take more damage upon a successful hit. He also has auto-regenerating health and super meter too, just to rub the salt into the wound.
    • Meanwhile, Boss MG Hikaru (who's locked to step, and his dashes go pretty far) loses the regenerating super meter and health, but in exchange his forward dash can parry and his Burst God Fist can cause a wall bounce near the corner.
    • Boss Kagari (who's locked into run) can now vanish all over the place and her specials and supers can now poison you.
    • Boss Celia's (locked into run) dash goes much farther and faster than normal, she can now place two Prankish Bombs instead of one as well as fire two Mischievous Missiles and five Prankish Missiles instead of three, her Welcome Boost does more hits and her Bashing Rain Extreme spews out more missiles at a faster rate than usual.
    • Boss Rui (locked into step) has a lightning-fast dash that will definitely cover ground and her Titanic Star Slide also covers a lot of ground.
    • Boss Bravo (locked into step) has a rather crummy backstep, but his forward dash goes much further, his Sublimating Frying Pan grab can potentially cause a wall knockdown and his Rage! Evil Ways Fast Food super can go all the way across the screen.
    • Boss Vein's (locked into run) Lightning Insanity projectile deals out two hits per damage, his Scorching Purple projectile goes very fast, his Infernal Devotion grab will rob you of basic movement and his Fatal Finale can be performed without having to counter anything.
    • Boss Hermes' (locked to run) Humiliating Bind lasts longer, her heavy Awakening of Gaia deals out more hits, Piercing Thunder sends down more lightning bolts, both Bursting Desire and Blazing Jealousy are capable of knockdown and both Scorching Pleasure and Raging Blizzard deal out more hits than usual.
    • Boss Cerberus' (locked into run) bullet stock now refills much faster, his heavy Dual Slicer goes much farther and faster, his heavy Slash Beat can cause some serious wall knockdown, his heavy Smashdown Arrow now has a followup upon successful hit, his Passionate Slicer WILL send you into the wall and his Dancing Storm now fires his bullets in a circular motion.
    • Boss Catherine (locked into run) can now send out two Bells of Happiness instead of one, his heavy I'll Support You! goes much further, the cat that appears at the end of his Meow Meow Miracle Dynamite can now actually hurt you, his The Truth in the Mirror super will knock you back into the wall and his Love of Phantom super now lasts much longer.
    • Boss Cait & Sith's (locked to run) Forgive Me, Little Sister Decoy Attack followup deals out more hits than usual as does their Parent and Daughter Special Attack Swooping Daddy Balloon super.
    • Boss Cthylla's (locked into run) light Hounds of Tindalos fires out two lasers followed up with a tongue attack, her heavy version of the same attack sends out two drones to tackle you, her Ring of Papaloi does more hits, her Tulzscha (when launched) goes quite far, her Shadow of the Dagon super will catch you if you're on the ground and not blocking in time and her Incarnation of Darkness super lasts longer and deals out more painful projectiles than usual.
    • Boss Ray's (locked into step) I Won't Stop Even If You Cry special covers more ground than normal, his AP meter fills up faster, his Try and Take This projectile goes farther and does more damage and his Okay, Your Time is Up super can take more hits before starting.
    • Boss Lupinus (locked into run) moves way faster than normal and her Raijin super can knock you into the wall if you're not careful.
• In Nitroplus Blasterz Heroines Infinite Duel at the end of Arcade mode (and the After Story) you'll have to fight Al Azif Ex Mortis, an Evil Twin of the original Al Azif, and she's certainly tough. While she mostly possesses the original's moveset (namely her normals, her Shoryuken and her sword-throwing super), she also has a few nasty original attacks. For starters, her projectile is a large-ass Energy Ball that deals several hits and makes jumping over it a right pain and can follow it up with a crystal attack that sprouts up from beneath you, possesses a lightning-fast counterattack that if hit creates shards of glass that then attack you, packs a super that's basically Mugen's assist on steroids (four energy balls instead of two and they don't even damage her!) and her Lethal Blaze is a black hole that you must steer clear of. If you don't, then you get dragged into some weird dark dimension where Ex Mortis then proceeds to pummel you with more energy balls before finishing you off with an energy beam. Trust us, it pays to avoid all this crap in order to beat her.
  • On the other hand, she does have one weakness that makes the fight (somewhat) easier: her AI isn't really very smart. For instance, she will often allow herself to be hit over and over again by Ouka's dashing attack as well as always doing an aerial recovery when knocked down, meaning characters like Saya can repeatedly juggle her with her tentacle-creating attacks until she randomly decides to do an air dash after recovering. In this case, it becomes less about skill and more about exploiting her AI to win.
• Battle K-Road claims "Super Real Fighting". And who do you fight at the end of this game which features takedowns and such? A bear. Yes, a bear. Named Mr. Bear. Who has a Dragon Punch. And can knock most of your life off in one hit. Where's Tekken's Paul Phoenix when you need him...?
  • Similar is Fighter's History Dynamite's hidden boss: you fight... an ox. And like Mr. Bear he'll likely stomp your rear end.
• Greed from The Rumble Fish. The game and the character have to be described before going further. In The Rumble Fish there are two main gauges, Offense and Defense. The Offense gauge fills up as you attack, once it's maxed out you can initiate an Offensive Art. You can also do Advanced Attacks, which takes half of the gauge and allows you to extend a combo. The Defense gauge fills up passively or by blocking attacks and Defensive Arts are initiated from said gauge. It also allows for Impact Breaks, which is basically a counter, for half the gauge. Once both gauges are maxed out, they merge and become the Critical Gauge. That allows for Critical Arts, which are really strong super moves. Greed's Offense Art allows him to combo his special moves into another one for a short period of time. Once you encounter him in Story Mode, he's just like his playable version. Until he literally Turns Red. From that point on, his gauge turns into the Critical Gauge and is in a permanent state of his Offense Art. Cue the SNK Boss: He can counter any of your attacks if he feels like it, combo from said counter with an Advance Attack and shell out a lot of damage by chaining his special attacks. Oh yeah, and he can also chain his Critical Art from his specials. And if you corner him, he can just Wall Jump his way out to safety.
• Dural, in any given Virtua Fighter. On one hand, it still counts if you beat the game without defeating her, but if you want to see the good ending, you have to win, and in 4 you only get one shot.
• The Jester from Ballz 3D: teleporting, attacks from a long range, various tripping moves, and he resurrects himself when you knock him out once.
• The Dynasty Warriors series' Lu Bu averts this trope in the same way that modern Akuma does — he's an example of That One Boss, but the only gameplay aspect unavailable to players is "Hyper Mode," which is not exclusive to him.
  • His A.I. in DW3 is actually worse than average: while he knows to use his first charge attack to make you stumble, almost every time he waits so long to attack you again that you can recover first. (Then you need only have low health for free Musou and the victory.)
  • In Dynasty Warriors 4 they also start his incredible weakness to arrows (they murder him). This actually extends to the AI where in one situation he actually turned away from the player controlled max level Zhao Yun to brutally murder a random bodyguard that shot him in the back of the head with an arrow.
  • Warriors Orochi series seems to make Lu Bu's A.I. even stupider. In the first game, he can easily be tricked into giving up Red Hare, and any decent player should have the cavalier up high, making your basic attacks against him pretty good. In the second he's worse as he will start laying into the Red Shirts following once you've dismounted him, stolen Red Hare and given him distance. He'll use up Musou on these guys before coming at you.
  • In Dynasty Warriors Online, every Musou general, the playable characters from the Dynasty Warriors games rather than a custom character, are SNK Bosses for their unique bonuses, which are all achievable by players but not all at once. They are horribly dumb, and don't really pose a threat by simply being on the map, making it much calmer when they are around, but when you face one it's hell. Every single general has at least three advantages: 1) they all have at minimum hyper armor, meaning they only flinch at Limit Breaks, and some have stronger, like Lu Bu, that means they don't flinch at even that; 2) their stats are through the roof, they cause massive damage and can take attacks great, making them really lethal to be around, as they don't flinch easily it's hard to keep them from attacking and they are damage sponges; and 3) they have flunkies that are not as powerful as them but still have the same resistance and rather upgraded stats for a mook. After all of that, they are hard to defeat, but they do have weaknesses, such as not having any special resistance to elements allowing them to be forcibly stunned or pushed. They can also be distracted easily, and you can get them off you by running into a crowd of either your own or bandit (hostile to both sides) mooks.
• The prototype of all 2D Fighting Games, Karate Champ. Once a player reaches 8th Degree Belt level, the computer-controlled opponent becomes practically unbeatable, anticipating and countering a player's every move with frequency only a literal god of fighting could be expected to pull off.
• The final incarnation of Rahu in the GameCube Custom Robo. Rahu takes only ~20% damage a typical robo would take, so right out the gate it effectively has almost 5 times the HP of any other robo. On top of that it's a Lightning Sky model with 2 Airdashes instead of usual one, so it can literally fly loops around the massive Arena on a single jump, making it a pain to hit and allowing easy hit and runs. It's gun does ludicrous damage with such a massive AoE that's nearly impossible to avoid unless you use one of the four pieces of cover, and it's Pods are 3 ground hugging seeker missiles that last a long time, forcing you to keep moving lest they knock you out of said cover. To top it off, it's "nearly" immune to Knockdown so you cannot knock it out with your gun to negate it's massive AoE rounds as you can any other Robo. Actually, the only way to knock it out is with your melee ranged charge attack, which not only requires you to get up close and personal with something that outruns and outguns you several times over, it's also the worst thing you can do. It recovers instantly from all knockdown effects and recovering from knockdown grants a few seconds of Mercy Invincibility. Rahu still gets all the benefits and is immune to the stun time normally associated with knockdown. Even outnumbering it three-to-one your chances of victory are slim. If he decides to focus on your allies, he'll quickly stomp them then when he comes for you, you'll be powerless to stop him one-on-one. And as if THAT weren't bad enough, if you wind up dying, your teammates just give up fighting, even if they're still healthy enough to continue!
  • Any enemy with illegal parts can count as this to varying degrees. In-universe, illegal parts are illegal because they apparently put too much of a strain on the user's mind. Gameplay-wise, though, they're illegal because they're purposefully broken and unbalanced (naturally, every part used by Rahu's different stages are all illegal parts.)
• Chaos from Dissidia Final Fantasy is a great example of this trope. He attacks faster than any other character in the game by a wide margin, his attacks massively lower your Brave and increase his own, he chains his Brave Attacks into his HP Attacks, and while most of his Brave Attacks are "melee", they send out shockwaves that exceed the size of the area where you fight him. When he uses Divine Punishment and Scarlet Rain, once he starts the attack, he becomes invincible. His Demonsdance attack chains together a massive string of bonecrushing hits, with several HP Attacks in the combo! He also gets the Shinryu Summon, which, unlike the player's Summons, can be called as often as Chaos wants and his effect varies, because Shinryu mimics the other Summons in the game! And he also has three forms, fully recovering HP each time while you're left at the amount you had. There's a catch, though: there's a flaw with his A.I. that makes him unable to avoid the final hit of Sephiroth's Octoslash HP Attack, he'll dodge every slash except the one that actually does the HP damage, so if you feel like going slow and steady against him, you can turn even his Inward Chaos form into a joke.
  • The second game features Feral Chaos as the penultimate boss of the story mode's extra scenario, he defines unbelievable, most of his attacks have huge hitboxes, making them difficult to avoid, and only one or two don't crush your guard. As if that's not enough, in a game where 9999 damage is the most you'll ever be able to do, he has 60 THOUSAND HP, and naturally, you can't use any of your items in the gateway you encounter him in, so cheaping it out is impossible. His HP attacks drain your EX Gauge to emptiness, so using it is difficult. The real kicker comes after you finally manage to beat him: the first fight was just a manikin and you have to fight him again! This time he has more moves, an Assist, and 125 thousand health! (ironically, this form is actually weaker because he doesn't have as much defense). To top it all off, he's unlockable. And in a frustrating case of The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard, the playable version has all of the same limitations as a player character usually does, and more (no Assists, EX Gauge, and Brave constantly depletes until you get abilities that fix that).
• General from Taito's Global Champion versus a Guilty Gear XX champion from Japan. Even SSFII Turbo's Shin Akuma isn't comparable to him. This guy is basically the hardest boss throughout all fighting games since its release. Observe. For further proof? Even the writers from game magazines gave up on writing strategies against him. Later it was discovered that he has an A.I. flaw — simply going for lows, especially using Wulong, could do the job to defeat the General. This video shows Mikado's successful attempt (in 2014), though by the narrowest of margins, to finally defeat the self-proclaimed PERFECT SOLDIER. Justin Wong took a stab at him and lost 65 times before he managed to somehow beat him for good.
• Ohga from Technos Japan's Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer is bastardly. He has absurdly quick recovery time. His basic special moves consist of a very damaging triple uppercut, a teleport that causes damage if your character is in his path (and you will be), and a Kaiser Wave-esque projectile. This projectile is quite large, and can only be blocked or jumped over; attempting to cancel it out with your own projectile will cause it to burst into five seeking fireballs. Jumping over it also leaves your character to be a sitting duck for his triple uppercut. And his defense points are bigger than any normal characters and he may even do a sweep-triple uppercut combo which may as well take 80% of your health. Ouch.
• Rumble Roses. When you play through the story mode of any character, eventually you fight someone called Lady X. Which looks like a woman in a pantsuit with a metal mask and metal gloves. While she's obviously strong, has strong moves and is hard to humiliate (yeah, that's part of the game); she's not overpowered. Then when you beat her, the pantsuit comes off... and you realize it's a cyborg. Now Lady X Substance is suddenly way stronger and almost impossible to humiliate... and can do weird cyborg stuff. She has unique moves that other characters couldn't do as they involve her upper body turning 180 degrees, her fist can detach from her arm and let her do a ROCKET PUNCH... and here's the worst part: All characters have "taunts" which build up their special meter a little but cause no harm to the enemy. HER taunt involves her body turning around like mad (and playing an alarm) and she quickly runs around the ring. If she touches you, you fly off with HIGH damage... and all you can do is avoid her. AND the taunt fills her meter completely.
• Young Toguro is the final boss of the generally substandard YuYu Hakusho: Dark Tournament, and has powers to match. Bear in mind that the previous fights were against very strong characters, but ones with normal restrictions. Toguro has insane speed and power, about a two-head height (and therefore a very large reach) advantage, a three-kick counter, and at least two combos that can put you down in no time flat. Both include low blows, forcing you to block while crouching - a difficult position from which to retaliate. And once you deplete his first health meter, he powers up with a second one and becomes much more aggressive.
• Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2. Dragon World mode and Kid Buu, who among other things, was pretty much unblockable.
  • It got worse in Budokai Tenkaichi. Kid Buu has a Blast 2 move which is a long and crazy combo with nasty priority that the AI LOVES to spam in BT2. Then there's Android 13, whose super form has a normal Blast 2 that is XBOX HUGE, there's Broly who is surprisingly fast for a huge guy, Syn Shenron/Omega Shenron/Yi Xing Long, whose attacks have vicious priority and worst of all, Cell, who is just plain horrible.
  • In Budokai 3 Kid Buu not only gains an Ultimate Attack, but the new Ki system means he starts with 6 bars (whereas you generally start with 3). And to top it all off, to unlock Uub, you must fight him down to 1 bar (difficult itself on later difficulties), then go back to Kaioken or base form (unless you'd been fighting there the entire time. Again, difficult), and THEN use the Super Spirit Bomb technique and WIN the power struggle. Note: If you lose the power struggle, he dies anyway. And you don't get Uub.
  • Most boss battles in Battle Of Z are 4-on-1 fights where the boss is alone. However, the game gives quite a few advantages to the boss, such as a 1000% boost on their HP, massive boosts on all his stats (wich makes them even sturdier while making their moves strong enough to down you in seconds), and the ability to simply disappear and appear in the other side of the map. The main problem are the two other bonuses: infinite Energy and Super Armor. Not only bosses can throw in their super moves at will (wich will deal massive damage and they are completely invincible while doing so), as they can break out of your attacks and start a combo on you. They can also tech recover from anything, meaning that if the boss wants, he can break out of pretty much anything you might be doing. against it.
  • Dragon Ball Xenoverse: the Super Sayian bosses, compared to SSJ used by the player (including using actually those characters). Normally, SSJ transformaton allows you to use supers and ultimates for free while draining your Ki bar by itself, while if you play a "permanent" SSJ version of the character it is purely cosmetical and you need to activate a higher stage to get the benefit - however bosses with those forms permanently on do not have it run out and can use skills with impunity. The worst case in Parallel Quest pitting you against the whole Son family - if you linger in one spot for even a moment after entering the zone, you will be instantly beam spammed to death.
  • Supersonic Warriors 2: Maximum Mode's Mania difficulty has the juiced-up Perfect Cell, Broly, and Super Saiyan Goku fights, where the characters are made insanely fast with powered up supers that cost basically no Ki, as well as the ability to grab the player from about half a screen away. Goku is especially notorious for having basically no startup or recovery time on his supers (Cell and Broly at least telegraph theirs), meaning he can easily combo you to death whenever he feels like it by spamming his Kamehameha.
• Naruto is also no slouch when it comes to bosses in fighting games, such as Gaara from Clash of Ninja 2, who, among other things, could not be staggered. No, not by any hit. No, not even then.
  • Then, in Clash of Ninja Revolution 2, we have Kabuto as the final boss. He staggers. SOMETIMES. He'll usually knock you out of any combos, and even when you DO make him stagger (usually a low or high attack does it) he'll Substitute out of it, THEN combo YOU! Also, not mention he has a Healing Factor, which is actually normal, but the fact that he can't be staggered DRASTICALLY increases the effect of it, since usually the amount of HP he can recover goes down upon waking up from knockdown. Also, you need to finish him with Rasengan, which is hard to hit with and surprisingly weak.
  • And Kabuto again in Ultimate Ninja 2. Fucker heals himself, stays out of your reach and god help you if you're using Kakashi, who as of the game's storyline, is unable to use any of his ultimate jutsu.
  • And then we have Deidara from Clash of Ninja Revolution 3. You play as One-Tailed Naruto, which sounds like it should be easy, but it's not, because you're health goes quick and Deidara likes to spam his bug "art", which does a lot of damage. And if you're on hard mode, prepare to eat your Wiimote. And unless my copy is glitched, you have to beat him WITH your Ultimate, which means you have to be close. If you kill him with any thing else, you still lose! Damn it Deidara!
  • In Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2, we have surprisingly, the Boss fight with Kakuzu, and the last phase of the boss fight with Pain:
    • Kakuzu starts off relatively easy, but then he goes One-Winged Angel, and you have to be able to reach up to him while he's attached in between two trees, while he's spamming projectiles, like wind blasts, fire balls, and tentacles made of his Earth Grudge Fear bloodline that pop out of the ground really quickly, then finishes off with a Fire and Wind combined technique that's basically a Humongous LASER that can do a severe amount of Multi-Hit damage if it hits. And the fact that it takes much longer is more Dragged out than the other boss fights before it shows how hard it is. Unlike Pain, who's supposed to be hard as a final boss, Kakuzu's Surprise Difficulty also makes him That One Boss.
    • For Pain, the full amount of difficulty really starts to show. Pain is now in full awakening mode, but to tap it all of, because Bosses have infinite chakra, they can spam Substitution Jutsu as many times as they want, as a Substitution bar didn't existed until Generations, and unlike the previous boss battles, he will take advantage of this. His attacks also do ridiculous amounts of damage, and his AI goes up several times in level regardless what difficulty the AI is set on. He gets even harder when you loose Sage Mode, and your attacks start doing less damage.
  • The final opponent in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations, in Killer Bee's story, is Kisame, with +100 attack. This roughly equates to all his attacks having the strength of an Ultimate Jutsu. Your best bet is not to let him hit you at all. And don't think you can relax once you've gotten his health down to 50%: his Awakening is... nasty, to put it mildly.
  • And then Storm 3 tops them all with the Reanimated Second Mizukage. Yes, Trollkage is the game's SNK Boss, and his nickname has never been more fitting than in this game. Unlike the other characters above, he's an explicitly unplayable boss character, so the devs didn't even need to balance him. He basically takes all the annoyance of Deidera and Itachi, combines them, and somehow manages to makes them WORSE! He loves to spam streams of long-ranged water projectiles that go on far longer than any other ranged barrage (to the point where trying to block the the whole thing will break your guard). Think you could stop that by getting close to him? Think again. He has an exploding Water Clone jutsu that works a lot like Itachi's (basically a moving barrier that explodes if you touch it), only it gets bigger the further it goes, and it can chase you the entire length of the arena. And he also has a second clone attack that's easier to dodge, but much faster. The one saving grace the game gives you is that he does not appear to have an Ultimate. To top it all off, you have to fight him in essentially the middle of a Boss Rush with the other revived Kages, who are only marginally weaker than him. And after that you face (with no oppertunity to save)...
    • The real Madara Uchiha, who has near Perfect Play A.I. and some devastating attacks. Then again, this guy is practically an SNK Boss in-canon, so it's justified in his case. In fact, he's actually LESS of an SNK Boss in the game compared to in-canon, considering this version lacks multiple massive meteor drop, instant knock-out plant pollen, and other moves.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny has Unbreakable Dark/Yuri Eberwein in her Final Boss form. Her attacks have ridiculous priority and do serious damage, her melee attacks have more reach than most of your characters, her ranged attacks cover a wide area, both her melee and ranged counters hit fast and hard, and unlike the player, her Mana Meter isn't drained by dashing or casting spells. The first round is particularly brutal as her game-best defense is augmented by a Super Armor that grants her a Mana Shield and makes her Immune to Flinching while it's up, giving the player a sudden and overwhelming urge to introduce their PSP to the floor the hard way. The second round is a bit easier since it starts off with U-D without the Super Armor, but once you get rid of her life bar, she replenishes her health to full and gets her Super Armor back with two mana bars to blast through this time, and she's effectively invulnerable for several seconds due to being in Full Drive mode. However, the game shows some mercy at this point, as she has paper-thin defenses on this part of the round so the player could take her down before the timer runs out.
• In Daraku Tenshi: The Fallen Angels, you get the wonderful chance to play against two powerful bosses. First, you've got Trigger, who has a gun. Keep in mind that only two playable characters have projectiles... but only ONE can use it infinitely, so just dealing with him alone can be a pain. And finally there's Carlos, who has a huge freakin' sword that can kill you in three or four hits alone. And if he hits you with his super, it's basically instant death. Yeah, did you know that people who worked on this game went to work on The King of Fighters '99-2003? Not surprised?
• Rouge from Ranma ½: Battle Renaissance on PS1: Not only do her attacks have priority, but she has two degrees of a normal special attack where she flings countless projectiles at the player along the entire vertical axis. These WILL carry you up and back across the entire screen. Good luck surviving long enough to even get back into attack range.
• Asura Blade has the sub-boss, Curfue. The best way to describe him is Cable on massive steroids and crack. He's got a laser rifle, grenades, a combat knife and at least two sidearms, and he uses them all to horrifically great effect. On you. A typical battle with Curfue is not unlike playing DoDonPachi - there's so many lasers, bullets and apocalyptic explosions rocking the screen and turning you to ash, you have trouble figuring out what's going on. As if the chaos wasn't enough, Curfue's most damaging move must be blocked low or it'll wipe you out, and he's got a massively damaging close range grab that can take off nearly half your health. And he can use his super attack in midair, too, which is bad since it has no startup and comes out of nowhere.
• Kron, the final boss of PSX Fighting Game Cardinal Syn, is a particularly ruthless example. The final form of the game's Big Bad, Syn, Kron is a freaking huge dragon who, in addition to sporting ridiculously powerful attacks (fire bombs, anyone?), possessing the ability to fly, and being so huge and powerful she takes much less damage than any other character, she also has a one-hit kill move (in which she bites the player character in half) which she tries to utilise quite frequently. Also, the stage in which you fight her has an infinite time limit, which means that the player is unable to be a cheap bastard by simply getting a few hits in and staying out of her way until the timer runs out, out of pure desperation.
  • Even worse, Kron can be unlocked as a playable character. And when she's unlocked, the player can face her in any play mode. Including Survival Mode. In which she's just as frustrating to fight as she is in Arcade Mode. Yup. Just try getting a good Survival win rate when you're facing her.
• Bloody Marie, the final opponent of Skullgirls. She can't block and she can't move while over 50% health, but she has permanent super armor, meaning her attacks don't stop even when she's hit, she can't be grappled and soaks damage like crazy. But the worst is that, when very low on health, her hitbox becomes minuscule, to the point that you can't hit her with most standing attacks and specials, which is a very big advantage for her since most of her moves are good anti-airs making a nearly impossible boss to beat with most characters (except Peacock fittingly enough) in the Pre-Patch version of the game. Even after the patch, however, which adds hitstun, and more visibility to her attacks, she remains a difficult boss to defeat.
  • This is made even worse with Marie 300% in Encore, as she has triple her starting health, and is locked to Nightmare Difficulty.
  • In Fukua's story mode, the final opponent is Filia, the character Fukua is cloned from. Filia has at least twice (possibly three times) the health you have for this fight (and this fight alone, of course), is locked to Nightmare difficulty even if you started the Story Mode on Easy and starts the match with five bars of Dramatic Tension (the game's super meter) while you start with the usual one. And the timer on this fight does not decrease but stays at 99 throughout, meaning you have to win outright. Then of course there's the minor issue that Filia is also one of the best characters in the game even normally and regularly tops the tier lists. That said, there's a good reason why this particular fight's so tough: Filia's basically fighting for her life at this point against a murderous clone who wants to kill and replace her.
• Metal Sonic of Sonic the Fighters will grind you into the steel floor of his stage. Faster and stronger than regular characters, his grab involves dropping you from the air to take out a little more than a quarter of your health, and he even rips off M. Bison's Psycho Crusher for devastating effect. Think you can cheese your way past him by breaking all of his barriers? Doing that only pisses him off to the point where he spams the aforementioned Psycho Crusher (which is unblockable, by the way). Makes it all the more satisfying when you achieve Super Sonic and smash his face in. Robotnik? Anticlimax Boss.
  • Oh, yeah, and he has an attack that takes off half your health in a single strike.
    • Metal Sonic is made slightly easier when you realize that most of those attacks are very noticeably telegraphed and can be sidestepped, but you still need to be at a fair distance in order to sidestep far enough to not get hit. It's still not very much help against his throw move and he STILL has a chest beam that only has a split second of warning before execution... that is, YOUR execution because you'll be dead.
  • Interestingly, Robotnik (or "Robotonic" by the intro) actually has some devastating moves, as evidenced by using a cheat device to unlock him. His status as an Anticlimax Boss may have actually been a case of Artificial Stupidity. This is explained as being because Robotnik has never used this particular machine before, so he doesn't know the controls yet. You also have only 15 seconds to beat him or you get a Downer Ending where the Death Egg blows up with you inside it. They had to make him a joke in order for it to be possible to win.
• In an interesting subversion, Sonic Battle lets you create your own SNK Boss in the form of Emerl. A couple of character battles pit you (as Sonic/Shadow/Cream/etc.) against the little fighting robot equipped with all of the best skills (or you can reset his skills back to his default attacks for a pitifully easy fight). However, it's played straight during the final story, where you, as Sonic, must take down Emerl with ALL of his Ultimate Skills equipped, whether or not you unlocked them all, and despite Emerl's skill point cap preventing that from happening.
  • Even before that, you have to fight Dr. Eggman, who's an annoying combination of this and "Get Back Here!" Boss. He spams missiles that sting for 20% damage each hit, and his bomb could be a One-Hit Kill if not dodged fast enough. He's out of reach most of the fight, so you'll have to rely on air attacks to attack him ^note most air attacks in the game being near-useless, and unlocking skills being a Luck-Based Mission, so you could go the whole game without getting one worth its skill points, and he has ridiculous health to boot. And much like his creation Chaos Gamma, he explodes if KOed, and it's guaranteed to take you down as well.
  • Chaos would be this as well thanks to his scary good reach, good defense, and very strong attacks. Only problem? He's too... damn... slow.
• In the SD Hiryu mode from the N64 RPG/Fighter hybrid known as Hiryu no Ken Twin / Flying Dragon, there's a boss known as Shin Ryumaou. Not only is his moveset cheap (featuring a speedy fireball move and a triple jump kick that almost always counters your combos), he's also equipped with a rare item that can hit you no matter where you are, is unblockable, and absorbs your HP. It doesn't stop there, because he also has three forms, and his second form is the worst. In his second form, he cannot be stunned half the time, none of your combos work on him, and above all, he revives nine times. Granted, the amount of HP restored decreases after his first revival, but this guy is an unbelievable hassle.
• Felden, from Galaxy Fight, was totally unbeatable. All his attacks had absolute priority and he could hit you from a character's length, while taking good chunks of health off.
• Makaitaitei Fernandez/Fernandeath from Waku Waku 7. While he was a big target, he could hit you from a distance with all his attacks and they all hit hard.
  • While all other characters had to charge their Hara Hara (unblockable max level super) attacks, Fernandez's Hara Hara comes out instantly, and he will use it whenever he feels like it.
• In Battle Assault 3: Featuring Gundam Seed, we have the Final Boss, Rau Le Creuset and his Providence Gundam. Now you fight him on the stage before, but you had an ally backing you up and it was just him with no time limit. This time however, you have no ally, there are about 4 of the strongest enemies preceding him and you have a time limit of around 2 and a half minutes. Oh and just like the many examples above if you time out against him, even if you have more health than him, you lose because the GENESIS fires, destroying the Earth. And even though he himself isn't SNK boss material, albeit he does love to use Beam Spam with his funnels and frequently uses his more powerful attacks, the fact that by the time you kill the previous enemies you're already scrambling for time and likely to make mistakes fighting him, causing him to kill you easier.
  • The previous Gundam Battle Master/Battle Assault games were no different.
    • The first, Japan-exclusive title, The Battle Master had Big Zam, Neue Ziel, and Psyco Gundam Mk. III. Big Zam and Neue Ziel were giant, and had a large laser, but were otherwise no problem. Psyco Mk. III, however, had large range for most of its attacks, including its Beam Saber and a full body beam attack. It also had an uppercut that could take out half of one of your three health bars.
    • In the first released to the US, Battle Master 2/Battle Assault, all these bosses returned, and Psyco was made even harder. Though it lost its full-body beam, it still had its uppercut and Beam Saber, which, due to the way sabers work in this game, was now unblockable. And if you dodged it, you still took some damage due to the way the dodge system works in this game; don't dodge it and you took even more.
      
      And when you beat Psyco, you entered a match with the Hydra Gundam. This one had a laser attack that didn't use up energy unlike all the other lasers in the game, homed in on your position, and fired twice in a row. It also had a Beam Saber attack which came out immediately, while all other Beam Saber attacks had a delay to offset their unblockable nature. For its super move, it had a combo attack that ended in a saber slice, meaning you had to dodge the last hit.
    • Battle Assault 2, the US exclusive, had all the previous bosses with no changes, plus two new ones from the Non-UC series included.
      
      Gundam Epyon was a melee only suit, which means a lot of unblockable attacks, including its super move.
      
      But the grand champion in the series is the Devil/Dark Gundam, which not only was giant like the Psyco, had attacks with a large amount of range, including an unblockable, full length laser attack.
• Divekick features S-Kill as the final boss of story mode. He is playable normally, but the boss version has permanent Kick Factor, granting him infinite access to his Trick and Parry special moves. Trick instantly teleports him to the most optimal angle where his kick can reach you, while Parry allows him to block your attack and get a guaranteed Headshot, which dizzies you in the next round. Fortunately, his Kick Factor is temporarily disabled with a headshot just like everyone else's.
• The licensed games of Kamen Rider Dragon Knight
  • In the Nintendo DS version of the game the final boss of every mode is Xaviax. He is constantly protected by a shield that reduces the damage of all of your attacks by over 50% and prevents him from flinching when you attack him and he has 3 super moves where he fires giant lasers at you that are nearly impossible to dodge. His third and most powerful laser attack WILL kill you in one hit. He fires five lasers; the first knocks you down- the other four hit you while you're down and helpless. Fortunately Xaviax can be unlocked for use without any decrease in power when you use him.
  • The Wii version of the game will almost always have a fight against a Rider who is always in Guard Vent mode near the end of the Mirror World mode- the Rider in question will almost always be Strike or Sting; sometimes Thrust. Enemies in Guard Vent mode take half the damage from your attacks and never flinch when hit by your attacks. If you throw a punch, they will throw a punch without stopping and before you can react. Summoning your Advent Beast or using a Strike Vent card (if your character has one) can cause an enemy to flinch while in Guard Vent mode, but doing both requires using a lot of your special gauge and the latter can only be done once per fight.
• The Undertaker, from the "Defeat the Streak" mode of WWE 2K14 definitely qualifies. The match starts out normal, but the more damage you hit him with, the more powerful he becomes. Examples of this are the lights going out, 'Taker Teleporting after being hit with a finisher, countering pins into a chokeslam (as Retro 'Taker) or the Hell's Gate submission hold (as Modern 'Taker) and losing all damage inflicted to him. Fighting him with Batista, Shawn Michaels or even Diesel is difficult as it is; trying to take him down with King Kong Bundy is damn near impossible.
  • Retro Undertaker is slightly less SNK Boss-like than modern-day Undertaker — he only counters pins into a chokeslam (as mentioned above) and can, in fact, be beaten in less than 10 minutes — but the current Undertaker is damn near impossible. Oh, and both 'Takers can easily hit you with a finisher REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT YOU HIT R2 TO COUNTER a microsecond after picking you up off the mat. Oh, and he's also just a smidge faster than Modern 'Taker, so it's truly a case of Pick Your Poison—-especially if you intend to unlock all the WrestleMania photos by beating him with Triple H, Edge, CM Punk, Big Show or King Kong Bundy.
  • Oh, and for those of you thinking you can just beat Retro 'Taker instead of Modern 'Taker to earn the alternate attires you get for ending the streak? You HAVE to beat Modern 'Taker with either Diesel or King Kong Bundy to unlock Retro 'Taker. Yeah...have fun with that.
• In Aquapazza, the final boss of Story Mode is Ma-ryan and a main character of her choice depending on who your main character is. In addition to her normal partner attacks, she has Super Move variants of those attacks that she can unleash at any time. Her partner is an emotionless shadow clone of one of the main characters and doesn't experience any fluctuations in strength during the match like your character does. Finally, if she winds up on the losing end of a beatdown that would otherwise decide the match and has 3 or more stocks of Super Meter, she can rewind time to recharge her main fighter's health to 50% to delay/deny your victory.
  • Then you face Chizuru in Another Story mode, who is by far the strongest Lightning Bruiser in the game. One of her special attacks even involves a textbook Speed Blitz. If you're not careful, she can combo and fling you all around the screen to your death in a matter of seconds. On top of that, her health and Super meter constantly charge throughout the battle.
• Eyedol, the Final Boss of the first Killer Instinct. All of his attacks have insane priority, his block catches both high and low hits, he can use his club to deflect projectiles back or sometimes fires three projectiles in a row to counter yours, and all of his combos deal wicked amounts of damage (in the arcade version he even had an infinite). But most insulting of all, he has a taunt where he repeatedly stomps the ground to recover health at a fast pace, and could keep doing so even between rounds, only stopping when the "READY" sign vanishes. He can be unlocked as a playable character via a cheat code, being slightly nerfed here (he doesn't hit as hard and can't regenerate health), not that it matters because he still retains his absurd priority and the ability to block in one way, remaining still a broken character.
  • Later was Shadow Jago, the True Final Boss of Killer Instinct (2013)'s Arcade Mode. To even get to him, you must first have all three of a character's endings unlocked. After that, do an Arcade Mode run on Medium with that character whilst scoring as many Supreme and Ultra victories as possible - not as easy as it sounds. Get to him and get ready for a hell of a fight (even on Medium), as Shadow Jago's adaptive AI properties allow him to react swiftly to repetitive strategies. His AI is so unfair that he actually leans more into the Perfect Play A.I. trope, but since his attacks all have buffed damage and frame data as a boss, he still counts.
  • Think Shadow Jago was hard? Enter Gargos, the boss of Shadow Lords mode, and an example of this trope done very purposefully. He has a 3rd Strike-style parry, he can summon both of his minions at once with just one summon, he constantly has the super armor from his Instinct Mode on without being in Instinct Mode, he regenerates every single one of his meters (health, Instinct, AND Shadow meter), and whenever he hits you his regeneration accelerates. To top it all off, his AI is always set to Killer difficulty much like Shadow Jago, no matter what difficulty you have the game set to. He is so hellishly difficult that the entire point of Shadow Lords is weakening him, as he loses some of these traits the more strategically you play the map. The developers themselves stated that they designed this Gargos to be "the cheapest fighting game boss ever made".
• Dark Heart in the VR Troopers fighting game. One of his specials basically renders him invincible. whenever he wants (not just invincible, but even touching him, melee attacks included, damages you.)
• From Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters, the Final Boss of the Super NES version, Karai, is this. She's fast, hits hard and has many moves that are difficult to avoid. This video shows her in action while being used by a human player, and gives some idea of how overpowered she is; the only opponent that gives the player any significant trouble is Karai herself, when the player is trying to fight "fair".
  • The Genesis version is already hard on its own, but the bosses section is a nightmare to go through and you are already shown the horrors right in the first part with Triceraton. He's a Lightning Bruiser that is likely to close in and then start chewing on you as his throw, which would end with your character jumping backwards, which enables him to move forward, then throw you again. This would look normal, the Turtles Leonardo and Raphael also have this kind of throw. In case of Triceraton, however, due to Perfect Play A.I. and this being his only throw, Triceraton WILL spam this move once he ever grabs you in his throw, until you die. The next boss, Krang, is actually much easier... and then you have to face Karai, who pretty much adopts Triceraton's trait and strategy about throwing (while her throw doesn't force you to jump backwards, it puts you in a close enough distance so she can just walk shortly and then throw you again, the same kind of throw that Casey Jones and April O'Neil have) and being the Final Boss, she's even more aggressive about it. Bottom line, if they ever grab you for a throw, you've got about 90% chance of losing instantly. (And did we mention that you have to defeat Karai in the highest level of difficulty to get the ending??)
• Hilda Rize of Vanguard Princess is a projectile-heavy character in a game where most characters have few projectiles and are not really designed with countermeasures to them. In the Japanese version of the game, this is balanced by her AI being fairly easily confused, but in the English translation, it's combined with a Perfect Play A.I. who can spam projectiles that take fireball-motions or other such tricks in human hands. She can force you into the corner and whittle down your health, and punish you severely whenever you try to get close.
• Draglade, being a platformer/RPG/Rhythm/Fighting game hybrid, has always one boss that manages to provide a hardcore challenge to everyone except the most hardcore and diverse of players. Even so there are a few that stand out.
  • The 2 Gorilla Variants of either mission done in Oakland or Raiden are the 2 biggest cases of this. They have high HP and probably require at least 500 hits before being taken down. They have high attack, which means that you will usually die in 5 hits. To top it all of they have high speeds and can combo you easily since their huge sprite do not force them to travel a long distance. If you know that they also can defend themselves, have a fake defense move designed to lure players in an attack of theirs and a move that boosts their attack and damages the unfortunate player trying to attack him from the air you understand that they are monsters so huge that it is rare to find a player that beats them without level grinding a lot.
  • President D. Unlike other bosses he has 2 forms.
    • His first form is centered around massive speed. He can teleport around the ring and fire projectiles that have a huge hitting window or just simply attack you from behind. Later on in the battle he will also gain a move that creates 2 spirals of death, which if used in combo can do as much as 700 damage. The fact that he has 4500 HP also means that it will take a while to beat him.
    • In his second form only his floating head takes damage, which means that your ground-based rhythm combo is useless and that you can only really give him 75 damage points unless your spells can hit stuff in the air. His attacks are fast and cover almost the entire screen and he even spawns enemies that do knockback damage which will leave you standing still for long enough that the boss can spawn its own attacks on you, which again leaves you open for knockback damage by the enemies. To top it all of he has 6000 HP. What starts as a special kind of battle will quickly turn into a pinball party with the player character being the ball.
• Fighting Masters has the resident Big Bad, Lord Valgasu: His lifebar is slightly longer than anyone else's (Even Xenon), he has long range with his normals and moves very fast, making it very probable that he grabs you; his grapple moves deal unforgiveable amounts of damage and, if you're unlucky enough, he'll grab you again without giving you any chance of escaping, effectively emptying your lifebar in a matter of seconds. Compared to him, the previous battles feel pretty easy. Fortunately, he suffers the same AI issue as the other characters, making him relatively easy to defeat if you know how to deal with him.
• The final boss of For Honor, Apollyon, is a big cheater. For starters, she has more health than any opponent in the entire game. In phase one, she has back up (she has back up in phase 2 if you are co-oping as well), but she really doesn't need it. She is very strong, taking chunks out of your health with every blow, hard to block, and in phase 3, it becomes ridiculous as she gains a unique charging move that will impale you for heavy damage and knock you down that's very hard to avoid and she can activate revenge at basically any moment, even moments after exiting it. Pretty much your only option when she does is to run as fast as you can away from her in the (rather cramped) arena. And to top it off, balls of fire are raining from the sky. And (on hard mode at least), if you die at any phase in the fight, you start the entire fight over again.
• The Godzilla fighting games Godzilla: Battle Legends and its sequel Godzilla: Monster War both have Super Mechagodzilla. The former game has six possible final bosses the player can chose depending on their score, with Super Mechagodzilla requiring the highest score to face. As you would expect he is easily the most difficulty opponent, with a number of strong projectiles, fast and powerful close range moves, and the ability to absorb projectile attacks use an attack the fires all the damage he would have taken over the course of the fight. But by far his worst attack is one of his grabs which depletes half of an opponent's life bar, at the cost of no energy.
  • In Monster War Mechagodzilla II and Super Mechagodzilla exist as separate characters, who are overall the same character except that Super Mechagodzilla has some extra moves from having Garuda attached. And that alone manages to push Super Mechagodzilla to this status. Mechagodzilla II normally a Mighty Glacier, he is powerful at a distance and up close, the ability to absorb and fire back damage from enemy projectiles, but lacks speed and combo ability, and the damage for his grab was Nerfed for balance purposes. His lack of speed isn't a huge weakness thanks to a special move that allows him to quickly move in any direction. Super Mechagodzilla can detach Garuda use it to launch attacks in conjunction with it, but is overall more dangerous with Garuda attached thanks to the move it gains from it, which aside from anti-air projectile from Garuda's cannons, includes a double jump that lets him cross the entire stage, and also helps set up attacks. Having Garuda attached also grants a second Super Move which takes off half an opponent's lifebar.
• Lethal League gives us Doombox, an Ax-Crazy boombox-bot who reveals himself to be the boombox at the bottom of the screen before facing you at the end of challenge mode. The first thing you might notice that Doombox is twice as large as your character, which gives him a bigger reach for hitting the ball (and admittedly makes him a bigger target). There's also the size of the aforementioned ball, which is way bigger than usual, making it likely that you might get smacked by it before you know it. Another thing to notice is that while you gain one bar of special energy per hit, Doombox can gain two, allowing him access to his special earlier. Speaking of which, said special allows him to send the ball flying right towards you, regardless of how he hits it. One more thing is that if you manage to hit him it won't knock him out; you have to completely empty his health meter before he truly bites it. And to make his SNK Boss-ness even more apparent, he can only be selected by a cheat code, and even then he gets one or two Nerfs.^note Gets One-Hit KO'd just like everyone else, for example. By comparison, his appearance in the sequel as the boss (which has him Promoted to Playable into a regular character, though he has to be unlocked first) isn't quite as overpowered other than hitting the ball harder than usual.
• Mighty Fight Federation has Hyperion as the Final Boss of the arcade mode, who normally is a mostly-balanced character with the gimmick of a Mana Drain and EX Special Attack moveset. Once you defeat him however, he decides to get serious. Enter True Hyperion, now bigger^note which is especially notable when fighting him as another Hyperion, shirtless, glowing purple and ready to ruin your day. The first thing you'll notice is that his Hype meter now slowly but steadily fills up, which, combined with the aforementioned Mana Drain thing, means that he can now easily fill it up to max while attacking you, depriving you of your meter and making it harder to do a Combo Breaker (which needs the hype meter to be at least half-full to pull off) out of his attacks. Also, he can now deal out more damage and take less than usual, meaning that you'll have a rough time fighting him on your hands. And that's not to mention that he also has access to a Counter-Attack and an attack that lets him teleport to you and do a suplex right in your face. The one concession you get is that he only gets one stock while you get two, meaning it's possible to defeat him before he can take you out.
• Spectral vs. Generation has Holy God Earth, a powered-up version of regular character Earth sans the blindfold^note Storywise, he wears the blindfold to conceal his full power, making it a case of The Coats Are Off, but with a blindfold. If Orochi and Dizzy were ever spliced together, this would be the unholy result. Most of his attacks do high damage and he can gain super meter just by moving around, as well as having an unblockable projectile, a super that's basically an effin' huge laser beam and another super that hits FULL SCREEN. See him in action here and you'll see what we mean.
• Indie Pogo features a final boss battle against Crow from Nefarious. Not only does he have 150 HP, three times as much as the playable fighters, but he also can't be defeated by ring-out and is almost entirely Immune to Flinching, with only a few attacks from specific characters able to break his guard. His own attacks hit hard and often don't behave like those of the other characters: He can toss out multiple bouncing bombs and homing missiles at once, all of which are tough to avoid. He can float through the air and attack with a high-speed drill rush, which can combo into itself and quickly drain a fighter's health or throw them off the stage. And he can perform a Ground Pound that exposes the sparking circuitry beneath, which will damage any fighter that touches it except himself. And if that wasn't enough, the game's Challenge Mode features a challenge where he has a whopping 500 HP. No small feat, to be sure.
• The Simpsons Wrestling has several ridiculously powerful opponents you have to face in the League modes:
  • Smithers possesses ludicrously quick, high-damaging melee attacks, an Assist Character who can instantly knock anyone down in Blinky the fish, and a ridiculously powerful nuke attack (courtesy of Mr. Burns) that can come out at complete random.
  • Ned Flanders has fast melee combos, a projectile that homes in on enemies no matter where they are on the screen, an extremely strong lightning attack capable of depleting an entire health bar and can Auto-Revive once per round, meaning he essentially has twice as much health as any other character.
• Survival Arts from Scarab and published by Sammy, is a Japanese Mortal Kombat-Klone. And it has an MK powerhouse boss in Dantel. This robed Power Metal reject can do a Spam Attack with a very long sword, has Eye Beams, can do a Blanka/Kano Rolling Attack and shoot a machine gun stream of bullets out of his finger!! All these abilities including the last one, is pure woowah skill! And all of them hit for insane levels of damage (as in 75% from that blade spam) in a game that has no super moves. Even blocked, those attacks still do noticable damage. But whether it's bad programming or the makers wanted to give a little mercy, the guy cannot crouch. So make him eat those high attacks.
• Virtual-On Ontario Tangram has the titular Tangram as its final boss. She attacks in waves, with the first wave consisting of various projectiles and the second phase consisting of her eye shooting several high damage blasts at you as well as a laser beam that will leave you in dire straits, if not finish you off outright. What really puts Tangram on this list however is that is that she requires you to Attack Its Weak Point during the second phase as attacking the shell she's in during the first phase will result in Scratch Damage... and and you can't win by time out or you'll get the bad ending. Over the course of the 90 second match, Tangram exposes her eye twice, meaning that if you can't inflict at least 50% damage to her both times, you're better off intentionally losing so that you can try again rather than having to start all over. If you haven't gotten the hang of Turbo moves (or realized that they exist), you will if you want any chance at defeating Tangram.

Doujin Fighters/Fan-made Games

• Eternal Fighter Zero, an otherwise very balanced doujin game, has Kanna as the final boss. Her melee attacks have immense range and her projectiles are fast and cover a lot of area. Her AI is also incredibly skilled at blocking attacks, making it difficult to land any normal hit. Her character is available to the player as well, without any nerfing at all, which is why she's banned from tournament play.
  • Kanna's only banned because players acually use the insane damage, comboability, and priority of her attacks, whereas the AI only defends well. Unknown/Mirror Mizuka/Eien no Mizuka, however, has been a source of frustration, as she (in her boss mode) takes full advantages of her moves' invincibility frames and spams high-priority projectiles that do almost as much damage blocked. (Thank god for the fact that you can't be chipped to submission in this game.)
• Super Cosplay War Ultra's Zenka, based on the (in)famously badass Sanger Zonvolt, has full screen specials, supers and EX Super (some of them unblockable or do massive chip damage), high priority, is much faster than her range would imply and tends to exploit these advantages to the fullest.
  • Next, comes Zmega, based on Rugal Bernstein, but in Story Mode, he's weaker than what you'd expect from a Shout-Out to one of the greatest SNK Bosses out there. Still, the game plays it cruelly in that there's only one round against him: should you lose, you automatically lose the game, but given the stand in Zmega's difficulty compared to Zenka, it's rather relative. However, this trope applies to his form taken at the end of Battle Royale Mode called Shin-Z, so much that even if you have an allied CPU still standing to fight with you, his sheer tendency to combo his specials directly to a super absurdly well, no thanks to crazy priority, turns frustration and keyboard breaking up to eleven. Should you lose against him, you have to engage a survival battle against 5 enemies first before he pops out again.
  • Finally, in comes Alpha, based on The Four Gods from Super Robot Wars. The True Final Boss in Story Mode, Alpha carries the WORST use of super and EX Super spamming possible, moreso than Zenka. In fact, he will often combine them in a normal combo or interrupt them in the worst timing possible, but that's not to mention Alpha can interrupt during your combo into his supers. Said supers are like taking the full brunt of Zenka's supers (though Alpha's EX Super is far worse than Zenka's).
    • Alpha has two EX Supers, one of them doing about 75% damage and being unblockable, the other doing less damage (only 50%!,) but still being unblockable and the only true full-screen attack in the game, meaning you have to be either knocked down or in the middle of some kind of teleport move to avoid it.
    • The newest edition of the game now gives Alpha Gill's Resurrection super (full hit point restoration, unless interrupted), provided Alpha's POW bar allows him to use it if KO'ed for the round.
    • It's worse than Gill's Resurrection. With Gill, you could just stand in front of his body and jab repeatedly to interrupt it and easily leave him at 25% health. But Team FK apparently took notes and made it so Alpha's Resurrection pushes the player away to keep that from happening, making it harder to hit him quickly.
  • The most recent version of the game gives us "Evil Doraemon", an evil, buff version of Japan's favourite robot cat. Just look and see for yourself (skip to about 5:00 minutes in the video to see him in action). Also, what the video missed is that Doraemon took tips from Gill: If you beat him when he has 300 Super Meter, he just simply resurrects himself to full HP. If you somehow got to unlock Zenka and used her full screen special, Doraemon will then No-Sell it and counters with his own version of Wings of Light from Gill (fills the screen with multi-hit attack).
• Nightmare Cat, from Azumanga Fighter (a doujin Fighting Game based on Azumanga Daioh), is a permanently Burst Moded version of Kamineko. Now bear in mind that Burst Mode normally has to be triggered manually by filling all 5 bars of the special gauge, AND being at low health, but that gains access to that specific character's ultimate move, and having infinite uses of the super moves. Kamineko is one of the more annoying (but balanced) characters due to its height (it's a cat, as opposed to the rest of high school aged cast), however Nightmare Cat fires off super moves rapid fire, and uses its short height to its advantage, ensuring you can barely land a hit. Fortunately, win or lose you progress to the next battle anyway.
• The flash game South Park: Tokugawa has a final boss that is essentially, if not completely unbeatable, though this is in part due to poor game design in general, all of the unblockable moves and teleporting don't help.
• Shizuru in My-HiME: Fuuka Taisen, when fought in Natsuki's Story mode. Shizuru loves to use her Super Special summon less than ten seconds into every battle, which fills the ground with slowly-advancing Kiyohime snake heads that are very hard to block, and will keep going indefinitely until they reach the edge of the screen. In addition, her "evil mode" lacks a block animation, which makes it complete guesswork to determine whether or not your hits connect, and has no problem spamming her whirling spear attack up close or whenever projectiles come her way. So, in essence, she's almost like her anime incarnation. Good thing her "good side" is an unlockable character.
  • Natsuki may be better since she has ranged attacks. Consider Haruka the headbutt-main fighter...
• M.U.G.E.N, the fighting Game Maker, obviously has several hundred of these. It's a good place to find most of the other entries on this list. There's also an entire cottage industry devoted to producing overpowered, nigh-invulnerable characters, many seemingly written for the express purpose of beating and/or having flashier moves than someone else's overpowered, nigh-invulnerable character. This makes for an SNK Boss Arms Race of sorts. Some of the most noteworthy examples include:
  • Depending on the creator, a character's AI can be written in such a way that any character (even existing SNK Bosses and/or Other Fighting Game Bosses) can turn this trope up to eleven.
    • Muteki's Guilty Gear characters are built with an aggressive AI that fully exploits the computer's natural advantage against human players. It blocks most attacks without a second thought and links together very long strings of attacks and supers to make sure that the human player can't fight back for more than a second; combined with the extremely fast gameplay of the franchise, this tends to turn anything not incredibly fast-paced into chowder. And some characters can death combo you to pieces!
  • Z Hyper Gogeta by Supermystery, with his screen-filling Kamehameha.
  • The Legendary SSJ3 Nightmare, probably one of the more infamous examples. Broly has a minute long intro of him powering up that knocks the opponent down and into a wall. If you've managed to survive that you have to deal with an annoyingly sturdy shield, shitloads of ki blasts and noisy shouting. And when he wants to, he can go straight to SSJ4 where he becomes literally invincible and coats the screen with explosions.
  • Master Geese by Cannon Musume, an MVC-styled version of Geese Howard that has been nicknamed "Master Cheese" for his unblockable and cheap super moves. Not to mention his Deadly Rave is a One-Hit Kill.
  • Hyper Neo-Kamek by Kamek, who gives a new definition to the phrase Beam Spam.
  • Nega Peach by Big Eli King (the other Super Mario-related boss), who spams lightning that spins around her like a shield, she dash attacks you, the tornado super move that takes shit amount of damage and similar to Kamek, the Bob-Ombs that fellows you to no end and they are unblockable.
  • Light Yagami from Death Note who, well, has a Death Note. (and CAN READ HIS OPPONENT'S NAME FROM THE TOP OF THE SCREEN)
    • Mitigated slightly by his low defense. Doesn't excuse him from this trope, though.
    • Also leads to a couple of moments of rage, where he shouldn't be able to tell the name. For example, Fate/stay night has a character in Mugen called Archer, only his real name is Shirou Emiya, only that isn't his birth name, and is actually the name he was given after the grail fire of Fate/Zero wiped out a large portion of the city he lived in, with him as the only survivor who can't remember anything before the fire. Meaning Light can kill characters using an alias of an alias of a completely unknown name.
  • Dark Reiko Hikari by Kamek, a crazy, blisteringly fast teenage girl who also hits you with a bus, and has TWO OHKO moves. Voiced by Flonne.
  • The Rox Howard Clones, who turn a one on one into a one on seven.
  • Just about any 'Evil Ken' type (a wide variety of Ryus, Kens, Akumas, and Dans which began, apparently, with a certain build of Ken), who all try and outdo each other with ridiculous priority moves, combo capacity, and overpowered super moves.
    • Combine this with a lot of impressive chemicals and crank it up to eleven, and you have Rare Akuma.
  • Hyper Akuma also deserves a mention. To break it down completely, he has:
    • Ability to almost completely ignore attacks from other characters.
    • Ability to gain energy from being hit.
    • Insane attack speed. Racking up combos into the double digits is common when he is in play.
    • Very high strength. With the right moves he can wipe out an opponent within 10 seconds.
    • High movement speed. Capable of traversing the screen very quickly in a single leap.
    • A move which lets him cross the screen within 1 second and usually ends up behind the opponent. Also, he cannot be hit when using this move.
    • Another move which lets him cross the screen quickly. When he passes his opponent, it counts as a 7-hit combo. Spammable.
    • Projectile attacks which act as 8-hit combos. Also spammable, especially in air.
    • A healing factor that would put Wolverine and Deadpool to shame. Heals through super attacks.
    • Supers which often cover the screen, cannot be interrupted, have combo numbers ranging from 20-999, and eat up at least a third of the opponent's health bar. In addition, some of the Supers cost very little energy and some even recharge your energy bar.
    • Ability to SPAM super moves by mashing buttons at the right time while a super move is being performed.
    • And to top it all off, an aura which can reduce the opponent's health bar to nothing in seconds. Hyper Akuma has this on BY DEFAULT.
  • Neo-Reaper Isabeau SSJ9, for an unblockable near-insta-kill fire attack.
  • Sephiroth, whose melee attacks cover half the screen, has 200% health as well as 220% defense, has three instant-kill moves (two of which are unblockable and unavoidable), can teleport with invulnerability, as well as charging his super energy invincibly, and is un-comboable.
  • What about the Toa Mata? Instead of being something like Pain from Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm, each button is a different Toa attack. But Only Tahu is playable from the start, and pressing a button while the Bar is at halfway will summon a different one. This is not the end however:
    • You have to hit Tahu in order to damage them, and he is usually elbow deep in his spamming teammates.
    • So many ultimate attacks, that you don't understand the meaning of cheap.
    • Each Toa has an ultimate, which is telegraphed by a a white sheen, and usually takes chunks of health off of your bar.
    • Then using the TAUNT button, you cause them to do ALL their supers, at once. The textbook defeinition of bad Sportsmanship.
    • Then there are fusion attacks, where two Toa do a new super attack, which again, takes chunks off your life (Tahu and Lewa = Fire tornado, Gali and Pohatu = water stream with a rock, Onua and Kopaka = ice shard blast, then a earthquake launching up MORE ice spheres). And they take it up to eleven by going into a Kata form, where elemental fury is rife.
    • Though they need their supers to do most of the afromented, a palette allows they to have all six pre-summoned, and with a constantly full bar. You may soil your clothing now.
  • And while we're at it, there's Gustav Munchausen from the K.O.F. Memorial game, who features insane chip damage, full-screen supers, and a brutal AI, and gains super energy ultra-fast. Most critically, unlike most SNK bosses which reverse your moves with one hard-hitting move, Gustav opts to execute a 15-hit melee combo that fills his super bar, then uses one of his energy pillar supers for half your health!
    • The midboss Psyqhical is widely considered to be even more broken than Gustav himself. He possesses all of Gustav's traits, but also has full-screen specials, abuses counter moves that do ridiculous damage, can slow time down, and even trap you in a cube to take out 80% of your health. To top things off, the rest of his moveset is basically Beam Spam.
    • Someone thought it would be a brilliant idea to fuse the above two bosses, producing the edit known as Gustav M Type-F. He has a combination of both bosses' moves, and those belonging to Gustav have improved juggle qualities. But what makes him stand out is his infinitely chainable, lightning quick, invincible teleport which can be canceled from and into anything - a counter, a throw, even his highly damaging grab super! Worst of all, his AI really knows how to juggle and knows an infinite with his anti air strings move and his energy pillar supers, and it will happily abuse it!
  • The second K.O.F Memorial game brings us Element. Element moves at absurd speed, possesses several annoying grabs and slashes that take off large sections of your healthbar, spams a variety of multi-hit infinite priority projectiles, can summon explosions UNDER YOUR FEET and best of all, has White's instant-kill desperation move, complete with fake KO message!
    • In addition, Element is less a unique character than a class of extremely broken Iori edits. Since he was introduced at the ending of the first K.O.F Memorial game, people started speculating about him and making their own versions. This class of bosses has very flashy super moves that tend to revolve around elemental attacks, and when they get a hit on you, they will empty their extended super bar on you for an instant kill.
  • A Japanese imageboard took it upon themselves to make a Mugen game starring practically all their memes; as you may have guessed, insanity ensues. Still, nothing can prepare you for the final boss, Hato Sabure. To start, it's what appears to be a giant chocolate peep with Glowing Eyes of Doom. Who can fly via a jet engine and drop on you to deal massive damage, randomly counter physical blows by knocking you to the other side of the room, and is an absolute master of projectile spam-it has eye lasers, bombs, missiles, and fireballs, which all fire out of mechanical hatches that appear from its body. Fortunately, as with the rest of these bosses, the wide variety of characters allows a huge amount of ways of beating him to death.
  • Akame counts when computer-controlled. Due to her advanced AI, she is quick to pull off her moves, and she reads you like a book, meaning she can block many of your own moves and counter with her "Barrier Burst." Some of her specials can even KO you instantly!
  • Gold Ayu Tsukimiya. She's a little angel girl. The first fight with her is like fighting a tough (but not horrible) AI opponent. Take her out once though... and she gains a massively fast regenerating super bar, regenerating health, and I-no's infamous Megalomania attack.
  • Cheap Boss Type, is a parody of these. You think fans would know better than to complain about it given the name. Also brings up the question of why M.U.G.E.N. players simply don't delete crap characters and move on to better ones.
  • Zeeky H. Bomb, if only due to the fact that all his moves are strikers bar two. The saving grace of this fight is that Zeeky has no custom AI, and as such will constantly move randomly back and forth, leaving himself open.
  • Don Drago has made Geese, Yashiro, Takuma and Goenitz, and has a habit of including all their movelists into seperate modes. Do the maths.
  • Omega. He's very well put together and seems fair compared to the rest, sure, but the thing is, in the original games he appeared in, you could run away and take advantage of his Ax-Crazy fighting style. This time, you can't. This is no Platform Game but he gains Mercy Invincibility from anything, which makes him practically immune to combos; and he can easily heal himself anytime he wants. On top of that, he has new, very powerful, supers. Oh, Crap!. The only thing he can't do is stunlock you by rapid firing his Z-Buster. Because that would be cheap, says his manual.
  • And then there was "Mecha Scorpio". Even the author is now ashamed of it! Here's all the things wrong with it-
    • Short, making it hard to hit with high attacks.
    • Huge damage with its infinite priority claws, tail, fire and earth based attacks, as well as fast power gain from just using them.
    • It could poison the opponent for the round every time it hit with its stinger tail, causing them to flinch and take damage every few seconds (the poison effect was stackable too!). Worst of all, the poison never went away!
    • Countered all grabs with a powerful move, not only did it take off a quarter of the opponent's health, it also gave them the poison status too.
    • A One-Hit Kill that it WILL use if it got up to max power, and it could only be avoided by crouching and blocking. If the opponent didn't do so, they would be sucked up by a sandstorm, dropped into the middle of a desert, crushed with four rock pillars, then blown up.
    • Finally, if most of the above-mentioned Game Breakers were used against it, it would turn invincible and all its attacks would become One Hit Kills!
  • Chuck Norris. If anything, the internet rumours understated his power.
    • He's way beyond SNK Boss. At least the player has a small chance to defeat an SNK Boss... as for fighting against Chuck Norris, no such luck - The Heart Attack Button doesn't even work on him! If you didn't think to place Norris outside the normal fighting order, the jig is up when you run into him.
  • Most Touhou Project characters can become this if their movesets are ported directly. The original fighting games are built around Bullet Hell as opposed to melee and movesets are balanced accordingly, giving each character massive barrages and means to counter the same. Contrast this with the average fighting game character who is almost melee exclusive.
  • Finally, speaking of edit characters, many of the above mentioned SNK bosses have been ported into MUGEN. Some authors will port them exactly as they were in the original game. However, many authors will edit them to tack on new supers and special moves, making them an even worse pain in the rear to fight. Using the King of Fighters Memorial edits as examples:
    • Goenitz gets a couple of screen filler supers where he fills the screen with tornados and a version of Yonokaze that travels towards his opponent and combos them for 8 hits.
    • Orochi receives several Marukare variants, solely for the purpose of being cancelled into each other to obliterate his opponent's lifebar. It is also almost impossible to see when he uses his counter moves!
    • Krizalid gets a Megaton Punch super that does serious damage, souped-up versions of Desperate Overdrive, a super grab and a MAX move where he fills the screen with explosions.
    • Original Zero and Clone Zero have their movesets combined, allowing the former to use both his strikers and Clone Zero's Shadow Arts. As with Orochi, he receives a couple of variants to his Black Hole.
    • Igniz gets a full screen version of Chaos Tide (the quad-energy blast), a screen filler, Krizalid's End of Heaven super, the Zeroes' Black Hole and a super where he charges up a large energy ball that is an instant kill if not blocked.
    • Sinobu returns, but several times as cheap; he uses lightning and wind element attacks simultaneously, has TWO 4-hit one frame projectiles and is very fast on foot. Most critically, remember those orbs that surrounded him in his official appearance? They're now a super that forces you to block, allowing Sinobu to back you into the corner and chip you to death!
    • Not even the relatively balanced midboss Kusanagi is immune. He's mostly the same... except that he now runs at 50 miles an hour for continuous mixup pressure. Have fun escaping the corner!
  • As these videos can attest, a few Kamen Rider characters ported into M.U.G.E.N easily qualify:
    • Kuuga, from Ruina and Azuma is an absolute BEAST, and God help you if you beat him in the first round. And woe betide you if he hits you with the Rider Kick—-anything below 60% health, and you're done. And he can do all of this in UNDER. TEN. SECONDS. Even better? His sixth palette, Ultimate, gives him an INFINITE POWER BAR AND REGENERATING HEALTH. Have fun.
    • Faiz and Kaixa: Faiz is lightning-fast, and if he's not shooting at you from across the stage, then he's slashing you in the face until you die. Ditto for Kaixa—-who also runs you over with his ride if he feels like it.
    • Kickhopper and Punchhopper, brought to us by Jaki, double-team you. You can only hit one of them at a time, but they'll BOTH go after you—-you'll be focusing on Kickhopper, for instance, and then Punchhopper will appear behind you and start bashing your head in. Kickhopper also has the nasty habit of knocking you to the floor and stepping on your face. Oh, and just like with Kuuga, they WILL kill you in Rounds 2 and 3 if you beat them in Round 1.
    • Gills and Another Agito, both made by KEI 166, are described in their readme files as unstable. It's not an understatement. Gills will piledrive you into the floor, whip you around and stomp on your head—-and that's BEFORE you get hit with the finishing move. Another Agito, meanwhile, just stands there at first—-until you get a centimeter too close to him and he busts out a seven-hit combo, grabs you and throws you to the floor like a sack of dirty laundry or turns his back on you and THEN counters into another seven-hit combo.
• In the first renditions of Melty Blood, we had Aoko Aozaki. She was pretty much a Fighting Game version of a Touhou Project character, Beam Spam included. She was later balanced as a normal character and given a new moveset. There was also the secret boss Giant Akiha, who was a parody of Apocalypse, who did an insane amount of damage. A later revision replaced G-Akiha with Neko-Arc, a small, deformed cat version of Arcueid which had attacks with absolute priority. Also, she was small and very hard to hit.
  • Act Cadenza introduced White Len, an alternate version of Len that easily takes Aoko's former place as the SNK Boss. She had a drastically different moveset than in the Ver. B update, and most of her attacks had absolute priority and did a lot of damage. Neko-Arc also got an alternate version called Neko-Arc Chaos, who parodied Nrvqnsr Chaos' moveset but with the same attributes as the original Neko-Arc.
  • Ver. B of Act Cadenza introduced a new hidden boss: Neko-Chaos Black G666. Created by Kohaku in an alternate story mode for Neko-Arc, this is a true successor to G-Akiha who loves to abuse Beam Spam, but also has other attacks like a drill and a missile arm. It's extremely hard to beat due to the large amount of damage it does. At first it can only be fought in Neko-Arc Chaos' secret story, but if you beat it you unlock Giant Attack Mode, which lets you beat it with any character. The catch with Neko? He's pretty susceptible to multiple-hit attacks after he attacks, so you can pretty much punish his moves with a combo or two.
  • Actress Again gives us Dust of Osiris, only available to certain characters. It's an alternate-reality version of Sion, and it's pretty cheap in its own right. Look it up on YouTube and see for yourself.
    • And then Current Code made her even worse: She now has an Arc Drive, which makes her invincible for a few seconds, after which, she nukes the entire screen with an unblockable attack. It is possible to dodge/shield it, but you need a good timing.
  • Also in Actress Again, if you beat Boss Rush mode without losing a round, well... you get to fight Archetype Earth, who can kill you instantly. And is then unlocked as a playable character... with all her moves and damage intact.
  • Speaking of Archetype Earth, Current Code makes her an SNK Boss in mook clothing. In this version, she receives brand-new sprites and is now a playable character, but she sometimes hijacks your arcade run as a murderously overpowered character with her unique Eclipse Style which gives her auto super meter gain + 0-cost supers. Supers which include screen-length projectiles which she can spam with gusto. The only saving grace is that if you do run into her and lose, you still continue with your arcade run.
  • All versions of Actress Again feature Boss Rush Mode, which has you fighting a sequence of SNK Bosses, all in Eclipse Style, and even confined to its own story arc. So now, you get to fight all of the previously mentioned bosses, plus a few unique ones like Eclipse-Wallachia and Eclipse-Koha & Mech, in chronological sequence.
• In EN-Eins Perfektewelt (a sequel to Akatsuki Blitzkampf), Valkyria is this (a Palette Swap of Tempelritter, but with a black outfit), and you'll have to use the Reflector/Parry efficiently. The fight is similarly structured like End of Deathbringer from Battle Fantasia; for example, like EoD, she too has an infinite super meter and can use her level one supers without the cost of meter, though her level 3 super requires 1 meter. Her biggest EX/super however is her "Messhin Zan", which is similar in a sense to Bison's Final Psycho Crusher from SFA 3, except that it comes out quick and will display the words "Achtung" across the background. Eat it, and it'll take about 30-40% of health. Block it, and it takes 70% of your guard meter. Reflecting it however, requires precise timing, along with her other lv.1 supers. Doing so will gain you extra super meter and guard meter, which will make the match significantly easier if you pull your moves off correctly and initiate a level 3 super on her back, for example.
• Robo in Acceleration of SUGURI, appears as the Final Boss of the "Falling Wonder" storyline, and an Optional Boss in the Arcade Mode. It's essentially a Humongous Mecha that covers the entire circular arena. Robo doesn't move at all, so its Heat counter never rises, and takes minimal damage. It also has three phases, much like the bosses in the first Suguri game, and gets more aggresive with each one, spamming lasers in all directions, or placing obstacles that can't be flown through. When low on energy, it fires a massive blast that deals huge damage, even with the Heat counter on 0, so the best chance to defeat it is to treat it as your typical Shoot 'Em Up boss instead of a Fighting Game boss.
  • In the sequel Acceleration of Suguri 2, we have Sumika as the Final Boss of every character's storyline in the story mode. At first she has a few annoying attacks (homing feathers, ricocheting lasers, bouncing circus balls(?) and a barrel that can trap you inside and lead her to fill you up with lasers if you're not careful), but is ultimately manageable. However, bring her down to her last bar of health and she'll undergo a transformation eerily reminiscent of the final battle with Star Breaker in SORA. Cue some of her most unbearable attacks such as Bullet Hell, tendril-like things that slam into the sides of the arena damaging anything caught in their path, homing lasers, shields that block your attacks until you destroy them, even bigger lasers and the aformentioned circus balls. This can be especially bad if you're playing as Kae as she needs to get close to her opponents in order to damage them^note and that's not even getting into the fact that some of her moves turn her into a Glass Cannon, making things worse for her, and guess what's between you and Sumika? That's right. Like Robo before her, the best way to take her down is to treat her as a Shoot 'Em Up boss instead of a Fighting Game one.
• Touhou Project (fortunately the Touhou fighting games avert this trope in multiplayer by keeping story mode spellcards separate from multiplayer):
  • In Touhou Suimusou ~ Immaterial and Missing Power, technically every character counts as one in Story Mode. While the first two stages only give bosses two spellcards, it keeps increasing until Stage 7 boss has six (although Stage 6 and 7 bosses are the same for almost everyone). Each lifebar will have a spellcard which can be either a way stronger of the playable version's spell card, or a completely new one. Unlike the player character, however, the AI is not limited by the usual limits and will keep using it until that lifebar is drained, and sometimes just straight up having massive damage reduction and being Immune to Flinching outside of specific parts of the spellcard cycle. Depending on the spellcards the character has, this can range from somewhat annoying but still rather fair (such as Marisa spamming Stardust Reverie or Alice's Artful Sacrifice throwing multiple dolls) to things that feel like they were meticulously hand-crafted just to burn an entire life (Youmu's Double Wheel of Pain, Remilia's Queen of Midnight, Yukari's Infinite Speed Flying Object or Suika's Night Parade of One Million Demons).
  • Tenshi Hinanawi of Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody eventually fits this trope. While at first she's only a little stronger than most of the enemies you've fought so far, her final attack is absolutely brutal. If you don't knock her out before she starts doing it, she starts spamming almost impossible to dodge lasers. Oh, and if you get hit by one, she starts another one before the first one finishes, so if you ever get hit by one of these lasers, there's a very good chance that you'll just die.
    • In Lunatic mode, she fires 3 at once which actually is quite unfair. However due to the limit system it will only do about 3k damage, which is still a lot but not enough to kill you. The gimmick to this spell is to bait her lasers on 1 side then graze though them. Also, this attack will guard break near instantly; if you accidentally started blocking, border escape immediately.
    • Yukari Yakumo is also a brutal example (again). Her very first spellcard may not look like much but the projectiles move in a specific pattern that makes it impossible to counterattack. If you're hit once, the next projectile will get you the precise moment you recover, leaving no time to block. If you attack after a successful dodge, you will have no time to block, and once you're hit before your attack connects, it's negated. And it doesn't get any much better later; out of the 3-5 spellcards that she uses, the only one that is even remotely fair is the second one.
  • Touhou Hyouibana ~ Antinomy of Common Flowers gives us Shion Yorigami unleashing her full power as the Final Boss, fought in three phases:
    • The first phase has her gaining Super Armor and floating around the arena, spewing out projectiles that go all over the place. Deal enough damage to her and she'll mix things up by going to the center of the stage and start firing them in a triangle arc. After losing enough health, she'll then fire them in a square arc before following up with a burst. Defeat her then and the fun truly starts...
    • The second phase has her drag you into some creepy void where she will then send projectiles in various patterns at you, eventually leaving little-to-no-room to avoid them all. You can avoid getting hurt from them by dashing through or firing projectiles at them, but that's pretty much all you can do. Since you can't hurt Shion in this stage it's more about surviving her onslaught than anything else. You'll know you're making progress by the crack that appears in the middle of the void, which gets bigger and bigger as time passes...
    • The final phase has her firing her projectiles all over the place, including some particularly big ones that will No-Sell your bigger projectiles. At this point though, the game decides to take pity on you and grant Reimu (the character you're using for the fight) an 11th-Hour Superpower that grants her an automatically-filling super meter, allowing you to spam her super with impunity. You WILL need it for this fight, especially on Lunatic or Overdrive.
  • Speaking of Overdrive, most of the characters fought on that particular difficulty become SNK Bosses in Story mode, but two in particular stand out:
    • First is the scenario where you, playing as Sumireko and Doremy, fight against two other Sumirekos. On Overdrive, they'll gain an extra phase where they'll start floating around in various patterns with a bunch of debris tied together with electricity and start pummeling you with it. Touching said electricity can and will also screw you up. Sometimes they might also drop black/purple crane-like structures on top of you as well.
    • The second is Tenshi Hinanawi (or rather, her dream self) as the True Final Boss fought in Joon and Shion's scenario. While she's tough enough on her own, on Overdrive like the above she gains an extra phase where she hops onto the back of a gigantic catfish and flies upwards to the sky. Cue Unexpected Gameplay Change where you have to fight her in a Shoot-em-up style. What makes this fight tough is the fact that she often flies all over the place throwing lasers and bullets wherever she goes, making hitting her with your attacks a pain. There's also the fact that you can't use your dash to just plough through her attacks, and the fact that your projectiles don't exactly have much in the way of range. Oh, and did we mention that the catfish has a hitbox of its own and flying into it will damage you?
• Act Cadenza Strife, a fan-made Tales Series fighting game, has several boss characters such as Dhaos, Synch and Nebilim, Hugo and Barbatos, and Shizel. All of them have at least one ridiculous gimmick that makes beating them a pain (for example, at low HP Barbatos will use a completely unstoppable move that instantly kills you no matter what), but in general it's not too hard unless you're doing a boss rush. However, that's because those guys are all playable (though the CPU versions have benefits the playable versions do not, such as the aforementioned instant kill move). However, the game also has several unplayable completely ridiculous secret bosses that fulfill this trope.
  • First of all is Yggdrassil. His main attack, Yggdrassil Laser, hits everything in front of him for a ridiculous amount of damage, makes him invincible during the entire animation (including when he starts it), and is often spammed. He also has two uninterruptable and unblockable moves that he can bust out if you get too close. His other attacks are almost all spells, which normally require a casting time of some sort. Yggdrassil instant casts them. Did I mention that his version of Photon counts as a grab, so it can't be blocked? And that it can hit you no matter where you are on the field? Even worse, his Limit Break can be used for a piddling amount of TP, does massive damage (about a third of the average lifebar), and the only way to avoid it depends entirely on your luck? And as a final Screw You, at low HP Yggdrassil uses a completely unstoppable attack that hits the entire screen for a decent amount of damage, which will probably kill you.
  • Next is Nereid. She(?) has a ridiculous amount of immunity frames, namely every time she casts a spell. Oh, and almost her entire movelist is spells. Spells that she will spam like crazy, usually causing the player to literally have to wait until her AI makes her use a spell that doesn't leave you completely helpless for ten seconds. Aside from that, she is fond of casting a spell that causes rocks to shoot out of the ground in front of and behind her. These rocks can not be blocked, and during the entire animation Nereid is completely invincible. And that's not even counting her Limit Break, which does a large chunk of damage and has a tendency to break your guard with the initial (weak) hits, allowing the final (strong) hit to rip into your HP. Finally, she also has a low HP desperation attack that hits the entire screen. Unlike Yggdrassil, though, Reid Hershel, the main character of Tales of Eternia, can counter her desperation move with an attack that instantly kills her as a reference to Tales of Eternia.
  • Last, but not least, is the living incarnation of bullshit: Alexei. This asshole spams spells that hit the entire field, such as the infamous Tidal Wave. Unlike Yggdrassil and Nereid, however, he's actually open for attack while casting—or he would be, but because he's an asshole his spell guard (basically, whenever you cast a spell in ACS, your character will not flinch for a certain number of hits. This allows a caster to actually cast a spell, but also means that melee attackers can interrupt the spell if they reach the caster fast enough) is miles above other characters', with the end result being that even if you attack him for the entire period of his spellcasting you can't stop the spell. When he's not casting, Alexei is usually doing one of three things: either he's attacking you with his ridiculously long-range melee moves, using his Limit Break that is just as absurd as it was in Tales of Vesperia, or going into Overlimit 2 so he can kill you faster.
• Umineko: Golden Fantasia (A spin-off game of Umineko: When They Cry) has one of these after beating Arcade on Hard difficulty without losing a single round. In it, you get a Final Battle "to end the game", where you have to fight against two Black Battlers on the same team. As if the difficulty level isn't enough, he also gains life from damage dealt (which is usually a 100% heal), recovers life over time, takes little damage, does gigantic damage, crushes defense within a few hits, has infinite Special Meter and auto guard (can block while attacking or even while taking damage). And while you need to change your character using a usually risky and highly-punishable move to activate one of your two special abilities for a short period of time, Black Battler has eight of those special abilities ALWAYS active.
• Little Fighter 2 has Firzen and Julian. The former is one of the fastest characters in the game and has a large range of hi-damage homing attacks, including a powerful ice/fire explosion that can't be interrupted, has a massive attack radius and fires homing projectiles. Julian has a Wave-Motion Gun special with absolute priority, extremely powerful basic projectiles with slight homing abilities and another massive explosion, and he also has to be hit twice in rapid succession before he'll take damage or even flinch. In Stage Mode, you fight both of them with a small army, and even then your chances are slim.
• Tough Love Arena has two bosses who fit this trope: Mystery Meat and Secret Spice, black versions of regular characters Pork and Garlic.
  • Mystery Meat is arguably the most blatant of the two, being much bigger than even Beef and Pork, and hits like a damn truck while taking less damage. His massive size also gives him greater reach, keeping you from closing in on him. He also has a small-jump version of his dropkick that neither Beef nor Pork can do and can use his shoulder charge outside of a combo.
  • Secret Spice, while not a giant like Mystery Meat is, is more nimble and able to cancel his attacks into different follow-ups, meaning that he can potentially trap you in a neverending combo. He can also cancel his teleport into a grab in a way that Garlic can't.
  • Also, both deal more damage than usual and when fighting them in their respective fights, the difficulty is locked to hard, so have fun dealing with that.
• Kaneko has some of these.
  • Goemon in Shogun Warriors. He always spams his fire attack, is faster and stronger. Don't even think about grabbing him, because it near IMPOSSIBLE to do so.
  • The three Jackie Chans from Jackie Chan: The Kung-Fu Master. Some of the boss characters in Fists of Fire qualify as well.
• Final from The Black Heart is a somewhat downplayed example. He has numerous advantages such as super armour for tanking your attacks, eye lasers that are hard to block, grabs that do immense damage (one of which is a super that, once done, will summon clones of your character that you must deal with before resuming your fight with him) and a super laser that's not only hard to react to and even harder to properly block, but is always followed up with a screen-filling attack that takes half your life meter off. Thankfully, he also has some weaknesses; his grabs can be blocked, he can be temporarily stunned with a few hits, and he never even bothers to block your attacks.
• Duels of Fortune is notable for its high amount of SNK Bosses, most of which are fought in Mission Mode. In addition to many of these bosses having their own powerful moves, there’s also a “Boss Mode” that increases the character’s damage by 50%, in addition to giving them a bit more health and allowing them to Reverse Beat as many times as they want in a combo. Some characters also get additional properties. When playing through Arcade Mode on Hard difficulty, in addition to the bosses listed below, the penultimate fight is also against a character in Boss Mode. Going down the list:
  • Making it through Arcade Mode on Normal or higher will make you fight Boss Sylvan. While he spends the first round not using some of his moves (and suffering from occasional bouts of Artificial Stupidity), during the second round he’ll permanently enter Full House Mode, turning him into a Master of All and giving him infinite use of his devastating Deck Slicer move, which normally drains the Full House gauge with each use. In addition, this also makes it so his “All In” super is always at full power, taking half your health off if it hits you.
  • Beating Arcade Mode under certain conditions will unlock an additional battle against the Masked Oni, a Lightning Bruiser with a practically unreactable overhead attack giving him unparalleled mixup potential. What really makes him this trope though is that he has
  • As of Version 0.3.0, going through Arcade Mode on Hard with a Guest Fighter from Schwarzerblitz, you’ll fight that game’s arcade boss Donner instead of Sylvan. While he’s thankfully nowhere near as tough as he is in his home game, he still excels at both rushdown and zoning, and he can spend his whole meter on a One-Hit Kill move.
  • In the mission “Shoot for the Stars”, you must face Shooting Star. While he lacks mobility options, he has a wide variety of zoning tools that he will spam relentlessly. In addition, his super, “Starry Night”, is unblockable and very difficult to dodge, so youor only real chance at avoiding it is by hitting through its armor on startup.
  • ”The Tiny Terror” pits you against Tiny Evil Clyde, whose moves aren’t that bad (other than his rather long ranged command grab), but he makes up for it with his incredible speed. Most of his attacks involve him jumping around at high speeds, and you can’t ring him out, either. He also has a practically unreactable overhead.
  • ”A Rolling Rampage” is one of the few missions to have been nerfed by the devs, and it’s still quite hard. The mission has you facing off against Zorb, who has a variety of long-ranged attacks and several hard-to-avoid unblockables, not to mention the Wrath Beam, a powerful laser that used to be even better before the aforementioned nerf.
  • ”A Tough Pill to Swallow” is the final mission unlocked, and fittingly has you facing quite the hard boss. The Pill has many powerful mid-range moves (and an unreactable overhead), a hard-to-dodge projectile (that’s also an overhead), and can touch-of-death you from halfway across the screen with repeated use of its shotgun. On the plus side, it’s pretty slow.
  • While not fought in a boss mission, “Imposter Showdown” has you face Boss Callowman, whose “Villain Vanquisher” super is a One-Hit Kill when he’s at full meter. The rest of his moveset is relatively unchanged aside from the increased damage, though.
  • Version 0.0.3 added the mission “Face Your Fears”, which allows you to fight The Mask, a small target that can fly and summon minions to pester you. On the second round, minions will be swarming the screen near-constantly, making getting consistent combos on Mask quite hard. In addition, if left alone long enough, it will transform into Golden Mask, increasing the damage it does and giving it a new super where it heals itself. Prior to a nerf, it was also a Damage-Sponge Boss with higher health than Baron.
  • Version 0.2.0 would add the mission “Shady Business”, in which Shade is fought. Similar to Shooting Star, he has a lot of zoning tools and can fill the screen with projectiles, but he’s also smaller and faster, and one of his projectiles inverts your controls. During the second round, he grows giant, throwing volleys upon volleys of projectiles but becoming more predictable.

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