I beat Diablo III the other day. The final boss (spoiler alert) is Diablo. Kicked his ass on the first try.
I love final bosses. They’re so…memorable. Video game designers try things with final bosses that they haven’t done anywhere else in the game.
Probably my all-time favorite final boss, for sheer atmosphere, is Ganondorf in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. You fight your way past one enemy after another, and then you come to a carpeted spiral staircase. As you go up the stairs, the organ music gets louder and louder. You enter the final chamber, and Ganondorf is inside, playing the music. He stops, turns around, faces you.
Epic.
(And then after you beat him, you still have to fight his final form, Ganon. Double epic.)
Music often takes center stage in these encounters. In Mario RPG, for instance, the final battle with Smithy begins with thirteen perfect notes before descending into chaos. The music for Bowser in Mario 64 is deliciously gothic.
I once thought about making a website dedicated solely to final bosses. I think that was before I knew HTML. Scary.
Who’s your favorite F.B.?
Brian D. Buckley 