There’s nothing in gaming that gets your heart pumping more than a boss fight. Standing between you and the end of the stage, bosses push your skill, strategy, and reflexes to the absolute limit.
In most games, the most difficult fight in the game is against the final boss. Some games, however, feature incredibly difficult secret boss fights that most players will miss on their first playthrough. These boss fights are often game-breakingly difficult, and beating one of them is a rite of passage to calling yourself a master of that game. Here are a few of the best of these mysterious but brutal encounters.
Top 5 secret video game boss fights
5. Reptile (Mortal Kombat)
Mortal Kombat is known for its secrets more than any other fighting game. Creator Ed Boon loved messing with his players by including false hints and teases to characters that didn’t exist. This caused many kids to spend hours at the arcade trying to find hidden fighters, wasting quarter after quarter. One secret character that did actually exist, however, was Reptile.
Occasionally, the green ninja would pop in before a fight and say something cryptic like “Look to La Luna” (fight in the stage with the moon) or “TIP EHT FO MOTTOB” (“bottom of the pit” spelled backward). If the player successfully deciphered his messages and followed his instructions you will actually get the opportunity to fight him.
To fight Reptile, you must get a double flawless victory without blocking in single player on the pit stage, and uppercut your opponent into the spikes.
Using moves from both Sub-Zero and Scorpion, Reptile is no slouch. Though you won’t unlock the ability to play as him, beating Reptile gave you the ultimate arcade bragging rights.
VIDEO IS NSFW
4. Morgan Freeman (South Park: The Fractured But Whole)
Every boss fight in South Park: The Fractured But Whole is bizarre, but even then the game’s secret boss fight against Morgan Freeman stands out as strange.
Morgan Freeman has retired from his storied Hollywood career to run a humble taco shack in South Park. Throughout the game, he serves as a friendly NPC, and the player can purchase various items from him.
However, if you walk behind the counter and hit him three times you’ll immediately start the hardest boss fight in the entire game. It’s recommended that you challenge him after you beat the game, as you’ll need every powerful summon and ability you can get for this fight. The man with the golden voice doesn’t play around.
VIDEO IS NSFW… obviously
3. Red (Pokémon Gold and Silver)
Kids back in 1999 were shocked to discover that beating Pokémon Gold and Silver unlocked the ability to travel to the Kanto region, which is the area featured in Pokémon Red and Blue.
The player can explore the entire region to obtain eight additional gym badges and loads of new Pokémon. Collecting all 16 gym badges unlocks access to a new area called Mt. Silver, an incredibly difficult dungeon complete with brutal wild Pokémon. Fighting your way through this long and grueling dungeon reveals a summit with a lone familiar figure. Without saying a word, Red from the original games challenges you to a battle.
Red is the protagonist of Pokémon Red and Blue. Armed with a full party that includes Charizard, Blastoise, Venusaur, and an insanely over-leveled Pikachu, Red presents arguably the toughest boss fight in the entire series. Finding the character you journeyed with through Red and Blue was shocking at the time, and taking him down was an accomplishment that few trainers could achieve.
2. Giga Bowser (Super Smash Bros. Melee)
The Smash Bros. series is no stranger to bosses. Whether it be the mysterious Master Hand or the all-powerful Tabuu, the series has a treasure trove of original boss characters.
If you beat the Adventure Mode in Melee in under 18 minutes with no continues, you’re treated to a terrifying cutscene of Bowser transforming into Giga Bowser. You also have to play on a difficulty higher than normal.
Giga Bowser is more than twice as big as Bowser, and features more powerful attacks. Unlike Master Hand, Giga Bowser has a percentage meter instead of an HP meter, meaning that he must be knocked off stage to be defeated. This makes for a much more difficult fight.
Series creator Masahiro Sakurai based Giga Bowser’s design off of what he imagined when he first saw Bowser’s sprite in the original Super Mario Bros.
1. Culex – Super Mario RPG
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was the first ever RPG set in the Mushroom Kingdom. Developed by Square, known for the Final Fantasy series, the game saw players exploring Mario’s wacky world and battling foes in turn-based battles.
Players mostly battled colorful characters straight out of past Mario games like Goombas, Koopas, and Piranha Plants. However, if the player gets a Shiny Stone and opens the locked door in Monstro Town they can fight a very, VERY un-Mario character.
Enter Culex: a purple demon with the power to control matter and time. Take another look at the character and keep in mind that you fight him in a Mario game.
Culex is a reference to Square’s own Final Fantasy series. Though he does not appear in the Final Fantasy series himself, the character’s grand design and tiny overworld sprite is a reference to the franchise.
The battle music from Final Fantasy IV even plays as you fight him, and the famous Final Fantasy victory music plays after you defeat him. Culex has two characterizations depending on if you played the English or Japanese version of Super Mario RPG. Culex is the hardest enemy in the game by far and has more health than the final boss’s two forms combined.
No matter which version you play, Culex is one of the hardest boss fights in any Mario game.
Wrapping up
For all of these titles, the core game is more than enough. The bonus hidden boss was just a cherry on top of the sundae. We are glad that they are there, and we hope we might find more in the future.
What’s your favorite secret boss battle ever? Let us know!
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