thanks BumblebeeCody

Yoshi's Island: Baby Bowser

Seven Force

Egg Dragon

Feral Chaos

Tri Force

Virgil

General Leang

Omega Weapon

Bandana Waddle Dee

Culex

Saddler

Caius Ballard. That music and arena, wow.

Ganon. 4 different fights with awesome music and a great end

John Romero

Locust Queen

A raid of 30+ on the Lich King is one of the best gaming experiences I've had. Don't Leeroy Jenkins it

Andrew Ryan. Awesome game with a fantastic ending.

Senator Armstrong...NANOMACHINES SON!

Penance. Square-Enix went all out of this boss. This WILL take you roughly 40 to 60 minutes. It's a great boss battle that really pushes you to the limit.

World 5 boss, Raphael, the fat Raven on the rotating moon

Cerberus Alpha

the gym building full of body builders that throws weights at you and starts walking around Flintstone's style

battle with Sin on the airship deck

Gilgamesh mark hunt

first battle with Magus

the shirtless, gatling gun guy that always yells "c'mon boy!"

The Boss

Mother Brain

i can't be greedy, so final Colossus

Ashtar


Ninja Gaiden II was one of the earlier games I rented, and one of the first games I played with an in-depth story via cutscenes. Ashtar is one villain who not only was meant to be feared, but also a clear-cut image of a villainous asshole. He has a complicated, long-running plan, he has an army of evil tribesmen from another dimension, he's a crazy demon samurai, he's immune to bullets, he was seconds away from beheading Ryu, and to top it all off after fulfilling his promise to give Irene back to Ryu in exchange for meeting him, he proceeds to quite literally stab her near-fatally in the back.

Lavos

Magus is cool and all, but one thing I can say about Lavos that I can't say about Magus is that for the entire game after he is first introduced, you are filled with this feeling of dread that sometime somewhere you were going to have to fight this monster that is capable of turning the world into a bleak, barely breathing husk. You get to SEE the giant monster raining death down on a world so much more advanced and no doubt better prepared for something of that magnitude, and you have to live with the fact you need to fight this thing the entire game. You can even give yourself a taste of it by choosing to fight it directly at the End of Time early on in the game. To top all that off, he kills Crono. What an asshole.

Xi Tiger and Seven Force


It was hard for me to choose just one boss from this game, so... I picked two.

In what little story there is within the actual game cartridge, Xi Tiger is definitely one of the two major villains mentioned. He basically murdered a little girl that triggered a change in a boy that became Epsilon Eagle, and then becomes the main target for the first ten levels of the game. He confronts Epsilon on top of a moving train, looking fairly creepy starting out as a humanoid guy with claws, but then undergoes a transformation into a massive clawed alien tiger. What follows is a rather intense battle considering he has only melee attacks. A seasoned player who mastered the teleporting dash wouldn't have much of a problem, but anyone without an understanding of it will be promptly murdered by Xi Tiger's enormous reach.

Seven Force's story in the game isn't very much explained, but speculation is that she is the murdered girl brought back to life as a partially robotic super soldier. Seven Force is a reference to a transforming robot from Gunstar Heroes with the same name. Alien Solider IS linked to Gunstar in a number of ways, almost a spiritual sequel. Seven Force in this version can (unfortunately) only take five forms, but each one is tremendously difficult in its own way. What's worse is that certain forms are immune from certain ammunition, so you need to make sure to have a variety of weapons in your arsenal. A cool tidbit is the fact that each force is named after a mythological woman of some kind (Valkyrie, Medusa, Sylpheed (Is that mythological? It might not be), Artemis and Sirene).

Zoda


Zoda doesn't have AS much of a tremendous presence in his own game as some of the others previously mentioned on this list, but when he DOES show up he DOES deliver. He starts out fairly difficult when fought, and after that you get to chase his TRUE form, who happens to utilize all the same conventions of movement on the battlefield that the player does, almost making it seem like the computer is trying to outdo you at your own play style.

While the second game is divisive between fans of the original and players who prefer the sequel, I personally like the concept of Zoda having clones of himself coming back for revenge. What's cool is that each one has different abilities in the standard horned-helmet form, followed by a different alien form.

Marcus (My god what an annoying a hole he was. He breaks off his leeches and THEY attack you.)

Emilious (This guy is pretty much the jerk of the game, kills gods for power but later you learn more about his motives and stuff like that, also his battle takes like 30 mins.)

Radian (This hidden boss is hilarious at first but man is he strong! Does status effects and hits like a truck.)

King Boo/Bowser? (After catching all 50 boos, or 40-45 I believe is the minimal number to enter the final room, you confront King Boo who turns the portrait of Mario into Bowser. An awesome fight.)

Barthandelus (No not the final boss but still I hated, HATED, HATED, this guy.)

Kessler (aka you in the future)

Eater of Worlds (Not TOO bad as the Eye of Cthulhu but it sure takes you a long time to kill it.)

Mom (The game is awesome and the first end game boss is your mom. She tried to stomp you and squish you with her hands.)

Ultimecia (Nothing really to say, she is evil and you wanna defeat her. Also she has like 3 or 4 forms.)

Mr. X (While I liked Birkin as the main boss, Mr. X was what frightened me the most in the game.)

Elite Four The best of the best, the final challenge. When you get this far, it's all or nothing.

Master of Darkness His final words until he dragged me to the depths of his realm will forever echo in my head: "Are you ready now to face the Heart of Darkness?"

Skullmageddon The song will be in my head. Forever.

The Lord Of Terror, Tyrant Overlord Baal In what other game you get to fight a level 9999 villain that is feared by all the other bosses in the game?

Pyramind Head Silent Hill is an ever changing town. Everything is relative and created from your worst nightmares. But one thing never changes, and that is the Boogeyman of Silent Hill.

Manfred von Karma The case against him was just epic and the feeling I got from beating him was just amazing.

Kefka "Ruahahhahhahhahha!"

Sephiroth He is insane and out to destroy everything. Classic villain with a ridiculously long sword.

Sho Minamimoto I just looooved his design and his mathematical insanity. His Noise form was also pretty cool.

Nemesis Is there really any competition? Also I think the spoiler tags are worthles shere.

Dark Demon

Dark Demon is, without a doubt, one of the hardest bosses I've ever fought. In a game with limited continues he is the LAST thing you want to be seeing staring you down at the end of the game. He has a large array of devastating attacks (picked randomly by his crystal ball), and you get a semi-random selection of head power-ups spinning around that you have to select. If you don't get a power-up that can help you dodge one of his more powerful attacks, you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye. His design is amazing too, I love the statues serving as shoulder pads. The psychedelic background also seems like something you only see in SNES Final Fantasy final battles, as well. It works really well here though.

But you know what the crazy part is? The true consciousness of the boss is the smiley face badge around his neck. The whole game is set in motion because the smiley badge believes that he's the greatest puppet in the world, when in actuality he is a BADGE meant for the greatest puppet in the world, and it was all a misunderstanding on his part.

The Mana Beast
It is INCREDIBLY difficult to choose a favorite boss from a game that's so near and dear to my heart as Secret of Mana, but the Mana Beast stole the show from every other boss the first time I laid eyes on it. I love Flammie's design, and when I found out the final boss was basically a hostile version of Flammie, I nearly shat bricks. Not only that, but its a HARD boss. Considering most of the game bosses can be caught in a loop of spell after spell cast by the player until the player runs out of magic, it was nice to see a boss that really WASN'T effected heavily by magic. Instead, you have to use the sword magic of both the Sprite and the Girl to turn the hero's sword into the Mana Sword. This allowed you to do massive damage to the Mana Beast. However, it was ONLY when he was up close, and ONLY after he performed as many as three screen-covering attacks. The challenge was figuring out ways to avoid his attacks without suffering heavy damage. My initial strategy was to buy as many Barrels as I could. They protected you from one hit, as I recall. I used every single one and almost didn't win.

Saint Germain


A probably unexpected boss from an unexpected game. Sure, the 3D Castlevania games get a lot of flack, mostly with good reason, but from a gameplay standpoint I really find this game enjoyable. From the story perspective I feel very differently, but that's not why we're here. Anyway, why Saint Germain over, say, any other boss in this game? On the conceptual level, the boss is, as I said before, unexpected. The character is a strangely dapper gentleman in a top hat who disappears and reappears throughout the game, and like some Castlevania characters before him he is based on a quazi-historical figure (in the sense based on someone who actually existed, utilizing some of the more outlandish legends about them). What makes him interesting to me is his fighting style. He utilizes a saber and a pistol, but in addition to that he can effect the flow of time, slowing things down, speeding things up or stopping them completely. Speeding up time makes roots grow underneath Hector at an accelerated rate and then die moments later. It was an unusually pleasant boss experience I wasn't expecting to have when I first found out I had to fight the guy.

Ornstein and Smough
There has never been a boss that has caused me so much grief EVER in my life. The first time I ever fought these two (not fully understanding the benefit of maintaining human form and not having the ability to play online at the time anyway) I put HOURS in fighting the two of them, innumerable tries going into the HUNDREDS trying to beat them. I spent the better part of a week, reluctant to grind because I felt like the enemies surrounding the area were too hard.

And yet after all that, I have this IMMENSE amount of respect for this boss fight. I don't think any game ever before has had such a difficult dynamic by having two bosses fight the player at once. I mean, I can't think of too many off the top of my head, but I know duo fights exist in plenty of games. I don't think ANYTHING holds a candle to the deadly mixture of Ornstein's speed and ability to close a gap and Smough's raw power and wide range with his hammer. Not only that, the fact the fight continues after one of them dies with the other revived to full health just adds insult to injury. And I love it.

But the Four Kings are bullshit. I have no love for them.

Alexis is a very great boss. Problem, she won't stay still and her "leeches" attack you constantly while you're trying to shoot.

Xaldin's fight was great in that game.

The Nemesis is one of my favorite monsters and my favorite boss as well.