Top 10 Video Game Bosses None of Us Could Beat As Kids

“Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars” (1996)

He can see your past, he can see your future - and in both time periods, we lost to this hidden boss! Just finding Culex was tough enough, but once we uncovered this 16-bit nightmare hiding away in Monstro Town, we still had trouble taking him down! Surrounded by a group of Crystals all of which attack you independently, Culex and his minions boast some of the most broken attacks in the game and have more HP combined than the final boss! Lots of wipes eventually taught us to take down those Crystals first, starting from right to left (though anything that can hit all of them is helpful). That “Final Fantasy” victory theme that plays upon his defeat is sweet, but was little heard.

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#9: SA-X

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“Metroid Fusion” (2002)

“Metroid” protagonist Samus Aran is often her own worst enemy - literally. And for many of us, we shared her enmity with her alien clone, the SA-X. Immune to most of your weapons, with only the Charge Beam being able to damage it. Plus, this creepy doppelganger can use plenty of your own weapons against you. Even touching it does massive damage! Oh, and it has multiple phases too, so just when we’d defeated one, another popped up to ruin our days! Trial and error does eventually reveal repeated behaviors that make for good exploits, but it was hard to discern when holding onto our Game Boy Advances for dear life back in the day!

“Chrono Trigger” (1995)

This giant tick from outer space haunted our dreams as kids! The apocalyptic creature is central to every time period in this time travel RPG. Lavos can be challenged at several different points in the story, and, depending on when you challenge it, the fights can range from incredibly difficult, to downright impossible! The multiple stages of Lavos are each brutal in their own right. One imitates previous bosses in the game, while another hides its true form in its appendages, which was very confusing as a kid, since the “main” body kept regenerating! But hey, it’s not like losing against Lavos was the end of the world - oh wait!

“Metal Gear Solid” (1998)

One of the most infamous gaming bosses for good reason, Psycho Mantis messed with our heads growing up! The masked psychic dodged every attack we threw at him and even somehow knew our play history by reading our memory card! The way to defeat Psycho Mantis is so outside the box that almost no one figured it out on their own! What kid unplugs their controller, and plugs it into the player 2 input? It was so obtuse and bizarre that it’s no wonder none of us could beat him unassisted!

“Donkey Kong 64” (1999)

DK’s nemesis is always tough, but the Kremling king’s N64 bout is one we never managed a knockout punch on. To defeat King Krusha K. Rool, you must face him in a boxing ring with all 5 playable characters in 5 rounds. Normal attacks and special weapons don’t work for the most part, and it was all down to us to figure out each round’s unique gimmick for hurting the boss. Oh, and if we didn’t complete each in 3 minutes, we had to start a round over. And starting over too much meant redoing the whole thing! Figuring this all out on the fly required so many do-overs, that many of us just took the 10 count and gave up!

“Mortal Kombat II” (1993)

In the annals of cheap final bosses in fighting games, none of them induced quite as many rage quits as Shao Kahn! The evil overlord would hand us our butts as soon as he descended from his throne! Each of his attacks does a third of your health bar, while your own attacks feel heavily nerfed against him! In addition to testing our might, Shao Kahn tested our patience and mental fortitude! He just wouldn’t go down and he keeps taunting you! There are a few reliable ways to cheese Shao Kahn, but figuring them out, particularly on the arcade version, took more endurance (and quarters) than many of us had as kids!

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#4: Death Egg Robot

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“Sonic the Hedgehog 2” (1992)

Dr. Eggman/Robotnik has created plenty of malevolent machines to terrorize Sonic and the youngsters controlling him. But the Death Egg Robot is one that gave us all a hard time. What makes it so difficult is that there are no rings to collect beforehand, which means that if you take a hit, you’re going to die! And die we did! A lot! The Death Egg Robot swings its spiked arms around and tries to crush you beneath its feet. Hitting this thing 12 times without getting hit yourself gave you major bragging rights on the playground!

“Diddy Kong Racing” (1997)

In both of Wizpig’s races, the magical, porcine jerk outspeeds you by a mile most of the time. His thundering footsteps will forever torment us! In most races, boosts are more of a suggestion than a requirement, but against Wizpig, not only are they essential, but you basically need to perform a maneuver with them that the game never explains to you to stay ahead! Figuring out that we needed to let go of the accelerator as we hit them to go faster was impossible when we were kids, unless it was by accident! Still, even if we never beat him, Wizpig’s theme is quite the beat!

“Mega Man” (1987)

This boss may have been made by Dr. Wily, but we’re pretty sure an actual demon had a hand in its creation too! A late and extremely difficult boss, the Yellow Devil disassembles and reassembles itself on different sides of the screen, forcing you to dodge its small body blobs as they shoot towards you. Getting hit even once will knock you back and make it more likely that the others hit you too. Without perfect timing, most of us found it impossible to overcome. A select few found a way though - mostly by exploiting a glitch that happens when you pause while using the Thunder Beam. It may have bested us in the past, but not today, Devil!

Before we unveil our top pick, here’s an honorable mention.

3 Difficult Phases That Require Using Every Item & Mask Just Right - No…Problem

“Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!” (1987)

Experimentation usually led us to success against most of these bosses. But against Kid Dynamite, there was nothing we could do but fail over and over again! For the first part of the fight, all he throws are one-hit knockout uppercuts, which means you basically have to memorize his patterns by trying over and over to beat him! Even blocking isn’t practical, since it still does a ton of damage to you. As kids, many of us felt like we stood a better chance challenging the real Mike Tyson than overcoming his 8-bit counterpart!

Is there a boss fight that traumatized you as a kid that was so tough we blocked it from our memories? Share your favorites in the comments - but try to go easier on us than they did!