My Favourite Boss Battles Part 5: Blue (Pokémon Red and Blue)

I have already gushed in previous posts about what Pokémon represented to me as a gamer. The first games in the series crafted an emotional coming-of-age tale that hit me at just the right moment to be a significant part of my development as a gamer. The first games in the series are a big hit with nostalgia fans and many would argue that the series has never quite managed to get back to the lofty heights that these two games reached. With that in mind, two of my favourite boss battles in mind came from Red and Blue; the fight against Brock and the final fight against Blue for the Championship of Kanto.

The reason I picked Blue for this list was, because while Brock was a suitable and challenging first gym challenge, that forced players to learn about the advantages of Pokémon elemental typing, Blue was the one fight that held the most significance for the game as a whole.

I spoke in my previous blog post how Red and Blue were emotional coming-of-age tales told in the form of an accessible RPG-lite adventure. With that in mind, the final battle represents the climax of that adventure, the moment you overcame that final obstacle that stood in your way through the whole game. Throughout your journey in Kanto, Blue was always one step ahead of you; whenever you read a gym sign you would see that Blue had beaten the gym before you had even arrived. Whenever you would feel at your least prepared, your rival would come sauntering up to you with a mischievous eye for battle, to push you that bit further and make you feel that bit more vulnerable. Blue was always ahead of you.

Beating him as the final boss was so much more than just finishing the game. It was the culmination of your journey and the moment you finally surpassed your rival. This annoying force that spent the whole game ahead of you was now behind you, leaving you prepared to take on the world once more to complete your Pokédex. You were now the pioneer, not the follower.

It helps that the battle is suitably built up. Before there was a formula behind Pokémon, it was a big surprise that after beating the Elite Four you were told that someone had come before you to be crowned champion. When I found out that my rival was the last challenge standing between me and glory, I felt equal parts annoyed and overwhelmed. I was down to my very last few items, and my Pokémon were almost all out of their most powerful attacks. I felt like there was no chance.

I chose this battle because this boss is the one that I have always remembered. The one that I can still, to this day, describe the exact moment I became champion of Kanto. It was a thrilling fight; left with only his Blastoise, Blue had almost wiped out my whole team. I was on the edge of losing with only a Fearow that I had caught in victory road standing between me and a bitter loss. In resignation for the blast that I knew was coming, that I knew would knock out Fearow in one hit and consign me to defeat, I arbitrarily picked ‘Mirror Move’ as my choice for battle.

Then Blastoise attacked with Ice Beam. It was a devastating attack, but one that left me with HP in single digits. Somehow, through luck, my Fearow scraped through to fight for one more turn. Then it hit back with Mirror Move. Given that it was Ice Beam, and that Blastoise had more than half of his HP I wasn’t holding out for a knock-out hit. But then, Blastoise was frozen solid! I was half-stunned as Blue had used his last Full Restore and was now helpless to the final blow. At the very moment when doom seemed assured, through sheer luck I had won. Fearow knocked out his adversary and I was champion.

What made that boss battle so memorable was the adversity. Knowing that Blue, by this point, was the strongest challenge I could face, with strong typing advantages to boot, I thought that I was well-and-truly defeated but by a sheer stroke of minute luck I had come out the other side. The end result was a thrilling battle fought to the bitter end.

Other people wouldn’t have had the same experience as I did on this boss, and in all fairness, there was nothing that made this single battle stand out other than the meaning that I put to the game, which is a personal interpretation more than it is anything unique. I think that the battle system is one of the weaker aspects of the first Pokémon games, in fact. But for me, the game struck gold with its story being so perfectly timed, with the lucky fact that the final battle happened to take place the way it did, that it bottled lightning and managed to become that one fight with the most personal significance to my introduction into the world of gaming.

Thanks to all of that, Pokémon’s final boss battle is my personal pick for this list. It is that one battle that, despite not being technically masterful on its own, stuck with me because of all of the elements outside of the game that made it so memorable to me as a gamer. I think every gamer will have their own version of this battle, the one that meant the most to them and the one that would be hard to critique in an objective way without telling others what that battle meant to them. I think that is what makes this battle a fitting conclusion to my list of personal favourite boss battles. 

My Favourite Boss Battles Part 4: Ornstein and Smough (Dark Souls)

With a series so famed for the brutal difficulty of its bosses, it was impossible not to include a fight from Dark Souls on this list. There are a lot to choose from, and I am lucky in that I have only played the first game in the series to its fullest and so don’t have to pick out of a much wider pool of excellent monsters.

With that in mind, for this list I was tempted to pick Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, because it required a thorough knowledge of mechanics being used throughout the game. With the difficulty of the fight itself, Gwyn serves as a fitting final boss to conclude the adventure.

However, as I have already gushed about the use of boss mechanics to sum-up and test game mastery from the player in my entry about The End, I have decided to go with Ornstein and Smough. There’s not much else to say about this battle that hasn’t been said in other analyses of the fight, but I will certainly try.

What I enjoyed most about the fight was the flow of the gameplay itself. Constantly dodging attacks from both adversaries proves for a terrifying and exciting experience; Ornstein attacks with his speed and powerful lightning attacks, while Smough assaults you with a slower, but devastating barrage of attacks with a large range. This results in an intense fight that requires mastery of dodge-rolling or a hell of a lot of blocking power. I remember reading about this battle and thinking how screwed I would be when I got to this point in the game, but what I didn’t expect was how much I would enjoy the actual fight itself.

The intensity of the fight never lets up in true Dark Souls style, and this only serves to make one feel a massive sense of reward upon coming out the other side victorious. I remember the immense feeling of catharsis from the first time I beat Ornstein and Smough and it has rarely been topped to this day.

It helps with this boss battle that the gold armour of your adversaries makes for a cooler look that gives one a sense of intimidation when you first encounter them. On top of the grand aesthetic of their massive surroundings in Anor Londo, the sense of scale that you can get from this battle is particularly fitting and worthy of merit.

I wouldn’t recommend Dark Souls to anyone but the most experienced of gamers and those willing to trudge through adversity for great reward, but for those dedicated players, the game that serves up this boss battle is an artful and rewarding experience that most wouldn’t hesitate to say is worth the difficulty. 

My Favourite Boss Battles Part 2: Robotnik (Sonic 1)

What makes this boss battle so purely memorable for me is simply that it is my first boss battle. I had reached the end of Green Hill Zone Act 3 only to be met with this monstrosity swinging a ball at me. I felt that panic of not knowing what to do after I hit him only to find he was still alive; up until this point all of my enemies had died in the one attack. The boss battle music served up dramatic tension while I was destroyed by what was probably one of the easiest boss battles in gaming. What can I say, I was a noob.

However, there are interesting aspects to this boss battle beyond just being my first; the way the ball swung in a predictable manner forced the player to learn how to time Sonic’s jumps, and got us especially familiar with the mechanic; the time that Sonic hovered in the air, the height of the jump itself, the speed at which he fell to the ground. In this boss battle we were forced to confirm that we knew how to do the jump attack at a proficient level enough to move on. As far as teaching players go, the overall result is effective.

Not only that, but this battle taught us about the structure of the game; we had been through three acts, and now we had a boss. Now we knew to expect that the next zone will have three acts and a boss. It taught us a lot about the story; if you didn’t read the manual, you’d be forgiven for wondering why there were robots patrolling around, but this game gave you the smoking gun; there’s a bad guy.

It seems elementary to this day, but in the retro gaming era these lessons were big things, and it is clear that Sonic’s developers took the thinking that a game should be teaching you its mechanics as you play. Sonic 1’s first boss might not be the most memorable to many gamers, but for someone playing his first ever videogame, it is probably one of the most important teaching exercises in a game that I’ve experienced. 

My Favourite Boss Battles Part 1: The End (MGS3)

My Favourite Boss Battles

A good boss battle can be one of the most memorable things about a game. Many gamers recall the first moment when they reached the end of a level, where the music became more ominous and giant monsters or robots would come crashing down on us. The best boss battles are the ones that challenge us to recall and use all of the abilities that a game has taught us. They make an appropriate ‘summing-up’ exercise of everything a player has learned to that point. Others can be memorable for story reasons, spectacle, or for sheer difficulty.

Here I list some of my favourite boss battles in gaming, and why I found them so memorable.

The End - Metal Gear Solid 3

The fight against The End is perhaps one of the finest boss battles of all time. It challenges you in ways that you have been subtly learning about in one way or another through the whole game, and asks you to put your jungle stealth skills to the test.

In this battle, you can leave or return at any time to the area, whether to pick up supplies or because you are finding things too difficult and need a change of pace. Instead of being a straight-up fight, The End challenges you on exactly what you have been doing for the whole game; jungle stealth. It pits you against a powerful sniper enemy who remains cleverly-hidden through most of the fight, and challenges you to out-stealth and out-smart him. This battle takes the tropes and mechanisms that the game has been teaching you and turns it into boss form. It is MGS3 condensed into a single fight.

What makes this boss battle so memorable for me is the sheer variety of options at your disposal. To track down The End, you can equip heat-vision goggles to sniff out his signature, keep an eye on the horizon and spot the reflection of the sun’s rays on his sniper scope, or even let him spot you and quickly dodge, so you can gauge the bullet’s rough direction and get a line of sight. Other ways to beat The End are to circumvent the fight entirely, by either sniping him earlier in the game while he is sleeping and vulnerable, or by waiting a week (or manipulating the system clock) to let him die of old age.

If you are skilled enough, you can even get the drop on The End and hold him at gunpoint for some cool camouflage, one that is required for an achievement on the Xbox 360, if you are that way inclined.

The End is one of the most effective boss battles I have ever faced, and I will always remember how this game had me testing my jungle stealth to its limits to get one over on this excellent boss.