What are some of your favorite bosses from gaming?

1. The 16th Colossi from Shadow of the Colossus
2. The End of MGS3
3. Gohma from Legend of Zelda - the Wind Waker
4. Olga Gurlukovic of Metal Gear Solid 2
5. Meta Ridley of Metroid Prime

These might not be, to you, the best bosses you can think of, but I rank them up so high because to me it takes more than good mechanics and technology for a boss fight - all of those fights had some special mental tang to them:
The 16th Colossi was just simply awe inspiring.
The End brought a chapter of my gaming life to a close.
Ghoma, along with the beautifully simple and exotic graphics of Wind Waker represented one of the purest experiences of gaming joy I'd even felt. Wasn't too hard, wasn't too easy, was visually astonishing and I miss it so much (left my GCN in another country)
Olga's fight was simple and fun, I could fight her again and again and never get tired.
Meta Ridley was the hardest boss I ever fought. I don't know if he was hard to everyone else but something about that fight didn't suit my playing style at all.

what do you think?

I really liked Sigma in Megaman X.

Probably because it took me so long to beat him without dying and he always had that smirk on his face.

Any boss that's hard enough to where you jump up and scream profanities in happiness is automatically a good boss.

Sagat in Street Fighter II Arcade.

I swear...every third continue the guy was designed unbeatable...period. Every counter move in his arsenal could be employed by the computer without taking the time to go through the rolling motions.

MGS3. Sniper Battle. That was "The End" right?

That battle was the F**king bomb. I remember shouting at my screen "THIS IS AWESOME!" I wanted to save state and just play that battle over and over and over again. Oh alas they cannot make a whole game like that. It was like an orgasm through my hands, and yet not sticky.

The final battle with Big Boss (The Joy) was also great and very climactic. AWESOME final bossfight.

TsunamiWombat:
MGS3. Sniper Battle. That was "The End" right?

That battle was the F**king bomb. I remember shouting at my screen "THIS IS AWESOME!" I wanted to save state and just play that battle over and over and over again. Oh alas they cannot make a whole game like that. It was like an orgasm through my hands, and yet not sticky.

The final battle with Big Boss (The Joy) was also great and very climactic. AWESOME final bossfight.

the most hilarious thing about that sniper fight is if you save during the fight, and come back a week later, he will have died of old age.

and Big Boss is who you're playing as in MGS3.

crimson5pheonix:
Any boss that's hard enough to where you jump up and scream profanities in happiness is automatically a good boss.

Like Gears' RAAM on the hardest difficulty setting? Personally, despite the frustration and the utter hatred I felt towards both the boss and the game, the momentary elation I experienced after finally defeating him was just that. Momentary.

Great bosses have to be more interesting IMO.

2 examples of better bosses are:

1. Dagoth Ur - He is THE big bad guy of Morrowind's main quest. But he has an interesting backstory and is willing to chat for a little while before giving you the first shot. What a gentleman!

2. Dark Link - yes, more of a miniboss, but let's not get technical. He/It was more interesting than Ganondorf IMO. Not to mention actually defeating him required a little cunning.

Just my two cents.

This doesn't fall under my last statement, but I really liked fighting Marx at the end of Milky Way Wishes. I especially like him in the last battle of the True Arena in the remake. Mirror power FTW!

TsunamiWombat:
MGS3. Sniper Battle. That was "The End" right?

That battle was the F**king bomb. I remember shouting at my screen "THIS IS AWESOME!" I wanted to save state and just play that battle over and over and over again. Oh alas they cannot make a whole game like that. It was like an orgasm through my hands, and yet not sticky.

The final battle with Big Boss (The Joy) was also great and very climactic. AWESOME final bossfight.

That battle is more fun when you have the old man runnin' around the jungle. Fight on Snake's terms and not on his.

Not Good:

TsunamiWombat:
MGS3. Sniper Battle. That was "The End" right?

That battle was the F**king bomb. I remember shouting at my screen "THIS IS AWESOME!" I wanted to save state and just play that battle over and over and over again. Oh alas they cannot make a whole game like that. It was like an orgasm through my hands, and yet not sticky.

The final battle with Big Boss (The Joy) was also great and very climactic. AWESOME final bossfight.

That battle is more fun when you have the old man runnin' around the jungle. Fight on Snake's terms and not on his.

Does shooting that bird have any effect? I figured early on it might try to help him by revealing my posistion or something, or spotting for him with his wierd captain planet powers. So I shot the damn bird first thing.

Man that was an awesome boss fight though. I remember at one point I was laying in the brush with my rifle out, scanning for him... when THUMP! A grenade lands infront of me. MOTHER F**K-bomb!

Sneaky old bastard.

Letz Shake

I really like the fight with Henry at the end of No More Heroes.

For me, I enjoyed the Great Mighty Poo in Conker's Bad Fur Day. A huge pile of Poo that sings Opera is priceless. Actually, A lot of the Conker bosses are pretty memorable. There's the Boiler with the big balls, (My memory is a bit hazy) the bull, The Alien Fight at the end, The evil tetiz cyborg... Good times.

These are in no particular order
Hitler from Wolfenstein 3D
GLaDOS from Portal
Mizar from Jet Force Gemini

That flying demon-thing in Painkiller was bloody awesome! I was running round like crazy to avoid the bastard...

The alien cruiser in Crysis (Has a really nice epic feel to it)
Skourge from Gears 2 (Seriously, the entire battle is can be summed up with the words "Chainsaw Sword Fight", what isn't awesome about that statement)
Lavos from Chrono Trigger (No explanation necessary)
Dark Link from The Legend of Zelda OOT

I am sure there are more that I am forgetting, but these are the ones that come to mind at 4am on a Tuesday morning.

TsunamiWombat:
MGS3. Sniper Battle. That was "The End" right?

My bad, type-o, I meant to type MGS4... MGS3 rocked too. Of course.

Not Good:
For me, I enjoyed the Great Mighty Poo in Conker's Bad Fur Day. A huge pile of Poo that sings Opera is priceless. Actually, A lot of the Conker bosses are pretty memorable. There's the Boiler with the big balls, (My memory is a bit hazy) the bull, The Alien Fight at the end, The evil tetiz cyborg... Good times.

Ah man! I can't believe I forgot the almighty poo! what was his song again? "I am the almighty poo, I will drop a big shat on you"? I forget! You threw bits of CORN in his mouth till he exploded! AHahahahahahah

The Master.

Twin chainsaw wielding clown in Dead Rising.

The end of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 was one of my favorites, simply because I like fighting off helicopters on foot. Also, Devil May Cry 3 was pretty banging epic.

Shodan from system shock 2 :>

"Look at you hacker pathetic creature of meat and bone.."

Sephiroth in kingdom hearts 2 it took me waaaay too long to beat him and when i finaly did i felt like throwin a party.

I'll add the following:

Desan of Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast I loved that game, such a relatively hidden gem!

I wont' call this one a "boss fight" but I approached it being sure that I would be attacked; That time in Morrowind where you go to the forgotten goddess' chamber in the mountains and she has the ring floating in her hands.

There's no sparkling, there's no cutscene, it's the end of a really long quest chain, but you just see a relatively inconspicuous ring floating between two mossy hands. Then surrounding her are, what, seven ghosts? Failed heroes and heroines of the past, giving you their dearest items. I left most of said items laying on the floor as I had badass gear (the best part was i didn't cheat once, totally earned all that gear.) but it really did what the best games do best: made you think that you really were a big stake of whatever it was that was driving events forward.

Of course, the crap thing is that, even though at the end of Morrowind you're a hero, a demi-god (in all but popular title) and a goddess' chosen one, you go to the expansion and people are like "uh? the chosen one? You're some important person, right? ah well i'm still gonna require that u work your ass off for my respect/cheaper goods."

I think that the final boss in an early EVE mission is pretty cool: There's a soft drink company executive who has run off with a special recipe under the protection of mercenaries. You fight through a few 'rooms' of mercenaries then get to the executive.

He shouts "No! this recipe is evil! (It turns out that the new softdrink recipe was spiked with addictive drugs) It must be taken to the right people!" You then attack him and his remaining mercenary guards (the leader of whom says "protect the recipe, it'll get us hundreds of new recuits!" thus implying that the executive is screwed, either way) and recover the recipe.

Upon returning it to your agent, the agent shrugs and says "sometimes it's better not to know." (or words to that effect) - excellent social commentary.

Best Boss ever would have to be, Morpheel, in the water temple in twilight princess. Very easy to win but very fun being under water and trying to hookshot the bosses eye, then stabbing it. Yea it was a great boss to fight.

I liked the fight versus Slash in Guitar Hero III, the GLaDOS fight from Portal, and the strider sequence in Half-Life 2.

Metal Gear Solid 3 was made of awesome boss battles, I can't recall a single one that wasn't fucking awesome.

Metal Gear Solids 1 and 4 pull in there as well, but overall I found 3's to be both more epic and more fun.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia has some pretty stellar ones, all are really hard but not nearly that hard once you figure out the trick.

The Zombie Dragon thingy from Twilight Princess was IMO one of the most awesome boss battles in gaming.

For RPG's Lost Odyssey has some pretty good specimens as they all operate on a different "gimic" that changes up the normal gameplay model.

The Leviathan in Dead Space is truly brilliant.

Not terribly interesting to fight, but as far as endurance goes the Ruby and Emerald monsters from FF7, and the Omega monster from FF8 took upwards of about 45 minutes each for me (no Knights of the Round in FF7 used). Other bosses of note: Piggsy from Manhunt (ick, dude, ick), Big Smoke and Officer Tenpenny from GTA San Andreas, basically all of Colossi in Shadow of the Colossus, and Paxton Fettel from F.E.A.R. (why shouldn't a character you've pursued the whole game be THAT easy).

I do like those, but I have only one word: Cyberdemon

The original Double Dragon, when the final boss turns out to be your friend you've just finished the game with. Probably the most awesome way ever to end a game.

An old pick: River City Ransom on 2p. You and your buddy stand on either side of the boss and kick him back and forth to each other like a hacky sack for three minutes. Best part of that is the look he gets on his face whenever he gets damaged, his eye roll up into his head and his mouth drops open like halibut with a stroke...priceless. My bro and I could barely get through it, we were laughing so hard.

Many of the bosses from Banjo-Tooie were absolutely hilarious. Mr. Patch, a giant inflatable carnival prize, Lord Woo Fak Fak, a self-important anglerfish who lives in Davy Jones' locker (literally), Weldar, a visually impaired welding torch, and Chilli Billi/Chilly Willy, a pair of fast-food loving fire/ice breathing dragons.

What's not to love about funny and creative bosses who are awesome to fight.

Yeah. its not THE greatest, but before 'Colossus', Painkiller, last level of Act 1, you awaken in a graveyard, start running around grabbing stuff, then you see.. what appears to be a huge leg.

You look up...and up...and up, and somewhere in the sky is a passive face staring down.

Damn that guy was huge!

Bocca:
Shodan from system shock 2 :>

"Look at you hacker pathetic creature of meat and bone.."

SHODAN was a great villain, but a crap boss. First time it was "shoot at the carrot", and she didn't even shoot back (there's a time limit to shoot the carrot, but it's not particularly tight), second time it was "hack four terminals, here's loads of XP in case you didn't take hacking skill".

Recently, I particularly enjoyed the Giant Fish boss in Gears 2. The others were less great, but the giant fish was ace.