'Boss rush' games?

Does anyone know any games that put a major focus on fighting bosses, or have a seperate mode (not a level) for fighting the game's bosses? Bosses can be my favorite parts of games, sometimes, so I'm hoping there's a lot of these.

Games with lots of bosses:
Alien Soldier
Contra: Hard Corps
Contra: Shattered Soldier
Rubicon (crappy run'n'gun for Amiga)
Warning Forever (freeware SHMUP)
The Mega Man arcade games
Shadow of the Colossus

Games with Boss Rush mode:
Kirby Super Star
Super Smash Brothers Brawl
Robotnik's Revenge (Sonic 2 hack)

I misread that as "Bob Ross" games.

I am severely disappointed.

also dynamite headdy

Bobinator said:

Shadow of the Colossus

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It DOES focus on bosses since the only other enemies are the gekko/lizards you eat and those fruit trees.

Bigboi said:

also dynamite headdy

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yes yes yes


And don't forget Rocket Knight Adventures.

Touhou emphasizes the boss battles to such an extent that its hard to talk about any specific stage without talking about the boss. This is even more significant in such levels as PCB's third level and just about every last level in the series you spend almost the entire level fighting one boss.

Touhou 8: Imperishable Night also had spell practice... which was basically taking one boss's attack and asking you to survive without bombing or taking a hit.

Touhou 9.5: Shoot the Bullet is built entirely around a system which takes each spell and asks you to get close enough to take a good picture of the bullet patterns. Each selection of levels is focused around a boss.

Also, I know for a fact that Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia has a boss rush mode, though the early bosses are a joke after you've levelled up to a certain point, Castlevania's bosses still stand out as being fairly unforgiving later in the game no matter how powerful you are, especially if you've equipped the death ring.

Can't think of any others for the moment. I guess Sonic Rush Adventure could count, but they were specific challenges for emeralds/etc more than focusing around the boss.

Sonic Rush had one... I think?

Megaman games - Anniversary Collection (Arcade games)
Metal Gear Solid games

Sonic Adventure 2 has one (or perhaps more) boss rush mode, and its completion is required to receive emblems (you must race against the clock).

I don't know if this qualifies as a boss rush mode, but Sonic Advance 2's XX Zone has you battle watered-down versions of all the previous bosses.

I've never really been a huge fan of bosses, to be honest. I've always been more interested in the levels themselves. The issue is that most boss fights take place in boring, static arenas, and are very shallow in that you either shoot the boss until it's dead, or attack some really obvious weak point (after which you rinse and repeat three or eight times or whatever). Plus, most of the time the bosses only have one way to defeat them, and if for some reason you can't figure out how to attack the boss, or its own attacks are really unfair, you end up stuck in the game. To me, there's nothing more frustrating than getting to the very end of the game and being forced to put it down when I can't defeat the final boss. The game proceeds to collect dust and I could have seen the conclusion!

Give me a ring if you know of any games with fun bosses that deviate from this horribly broken formula.

Yeah, Touhou. While the bosses are hard, it's not really super frustrating, despite that memorization plays a significant factor. For one, if you die, you do NOT have to start from the beginning of the boss. The boss will continue with her same hit points, erase whatever bullets are on the screen, and continue from where you left off. You also have the ability to play a spell card when you get into a situation that either feels too hard or you erroneously put yourself in one that literally has no escape. Also, when you use a continue, your lives reset, your score resets, but the boss STILL keeps going from where you last died.

Another thing about Touhou bosses are the fact that there IS more than one way. There are the hard ways and there is the easy way.

How did I know Touhou was gonna get on this?

And I guess all the Mega Man games that aren't spinoffs (cough X: Command Mission cough) could count as boss rush games in their own right.