Boss battles

Video game concept

Includes one or more battles with enemies who are significantly more powerful than anything else thrown at the player prior, usually found at the end of a level.

2446
games
98
platforms

Alternate names: Boss fights, Raid bosses, End level bosses

Related:
* Elite NPCs
Obviously being literally a boss does not alone qualify for this. These may also exist even if no other battles are fought, though such cases are likely quite rare.

Battles against literal boss characters or other major antagonists that do not differ from other battles fought significantly (equally weak and such) this tag no longer conveys anything useful for them and should not be used for them (you might want to add a note about them why you think they do not deserve this, though).

Raid boss is an MMO variant of the end level boss (raid being a combination of multiple player groups/parties, usually established for the sole purpose of fighting the raid bosses).

Popular tags

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Child groups

Bonus bosses, Mini-bosses, Puzzle bosses, Boss meter, Boss arenas, Joke boss, Multi-stage bosses

Games by year

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The first Boss battles video game was released in 1980.

Sega, Konami and Capcom published most of these games.

Platforms

Windows 425
Linux 343
NES 228
Arcade 132
PC Engine 76
Mac OS X 74
Mega Drive 65
X360 64
Amiga 62
MS-DOS 62
PS3 55
C64 52
Atari ST 52
PS2 42
ZX Spectrum 41
Master System 39
Famicom Disk System 39
Amstrad CPC 39
GB 35
MSX 32
PS4 29
X68000 26
Apple II E 20
SNES 18
PS 18
MSX2 17
Wii 15
PC Engine CD 15
Xbox 15
Xbox One 14