Ever since Mario first scurried furtively under a leaping King Bowser to grab that axe and send the hapless reptile king plummeting to a fiery doom, boss battles have been an integral, exciting part of playing video games. I mean, what better way is there to make yourself feel more like a badass than by crushing a hulking, clawed, fire-breathing monster several times your size? Maybe being the World Heavyweight Champion in something really manly. But only maybe. Of course, some bosses have been more capable of getting your blood pumping than others; hence this list. In all of my infinite wisdom (and even more infinite gaming experience) I have scoured the video game universe for the ten best bosses that have ever been. My only rules for choosing the lucky ten were that they had to be from games released on a US home console or hand-held system and they had to be something that left me with a sense of awe (i.e. poopy pants). So, without further ado, let's get to the list. Oh, but one last thing. If you haven't yet played some of the games mentioned and you're the type of fellow who gets really miffed when people give away the plot, consider this your spoiler warning. Just letting you know.

Onward!

10) Mother Brain, Super Metroid (SNES)

     While all the bosses that reared their ugly, scaly heads in this game led to some impressive battles, the final showdown with the hideous Mother Brain easily tops them all. It starts out simply enough, with what appears to be an exact rehashing of Samus's fight with the bottled leader of the space pirates from the original Metroid. However, once the bounty hunter has dealt a fairly hefty amount of damage to the pulsating brain in a jar, a series of explosions seal off the room and Mother Brain reveals her true form, that of a giant, salivating cyborg who seems very interested in prying Samus out of her power suit with one of those tiny lobster forks. Though you can put up a good fight for a little while, eventually the hulking beast cuts loose with an unavoidable blast of energy that leaves Samus crippled and looking like she's about to become a $21.99 entr?e. However, right as the final blow falls, in swoops the baby metroid Samus rescued at the end of Metroid II and who Ridley stole at Super Metroid's opening, now grown to titanic proportions (about 1/2 the size of Anna Nicole). The shrieking metroid latches onto Mother Brain's noggin, sapping a great deal of her power, then pops over onto Samus to deposit the pilfered juice. This leaves the resolute bounty hunter ready to dispense some more cold, hard justice, but the poor metroid is rewarded for its good deed by getting blasted to smithereens. With its dying breath it fuses all of Samus's beams into one super beam which Samus then uses to decisively pound Mother Brain into dust. Hard-core!

9) Culex, Super Mario RPG (SNES)

     Worlds collided (and by "worlds" I mean "minivans") when Super Mario RPG debuted; a turn-based RPG (HP and everything!) utilizing the cast of the beloved Super Mario Bros. series. Though the game showed Squaresoft could do Nintendo almost as well as Nintendo could, there was also a very entertaining nod to fans of more traditional Square games for players who were crafty (or lucky) enough to find it. If you manage to locate the item necessary to unlock the sealed door in Monster Village, you are greeted by Culex, a dark warrior from another world who challenges Mario and his crew to a battle. The fight is hands-down the hardest in the entire game and plays out exactly like a Final Fantasy battle, same battle music and everything. Instead of actually attacking your characters like the rest of the game's enemies, Culex and his four crystals (Wind, Earth, Fire, and Water, the same as those in Final Fantasy I through V) simply flash, and damage is dealt, just like enemies in Final Fantasy. After he is beaten, Culex thanks Mario for the honor of battle and departs back to his home (a crate in the back room of a Wisconsin KFC). While the skirmish doesn't affect the plot at all or net you any awesome swag, it's a great Nintendo-Squaresoft crossover that fans of both companies can definitely appreciate. Unless they're jerks.

8) Police Chief Masters, Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel Without a Pulse (Xbox)

     This particular, uh, contest of wills makes it onto the list if for no other reason than because it comes completely from left field. After eating his way through the Punchbowl City police station, Stubbs arrives at the chief's office to find him grinning and prepared for the zombie with a host of riot police. In an instant, Stubbs's own zombie posse shuffle in and the player likely braces for a knock-down, drag-out, cop-on-zombie slug-fest. Instead, the chief suddenly leaps on his desk (revealing that he is unquestionably a midget), a disco ball drops from the ceiling, and an electric-rock version of the '50s pop song, "Mr. Sandman", begins playing in the background as everyone crowds onto what is a now a dance floor for the greatest dance battle the city has ever seen. Stubbs and the chief must go head-to-head, with the zombie mimicking the law man's finest moves with timed button presses in a game that is a mixture of Simon and Dance-Dance Revolution. It's not easy, and it's made all the more difficult by the fact that it's impossible not to crack up watching a midget cop and a half-rotted zombie in a fedora busting out crazy moves while a host of other zombies and police in riot gear leap and dance about in the background. Apparently the Chief was deadly serious when he said he'd dance on Stubbs's grave.

7) Darth Traya, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (Xbox)

     While Sith Lords was generally viewed by gaming journalists as just another sequel that didn't live up to the standards set by its' predecessor, I would have to say I really disagree. Woe be to me to question the judgment of such highly skilled professionals, but I really think they just weren't intelligent enough to understand the game's subdued, yet morally complex, plot which culminated in a duel with the woman who is almost solely responsible for your own salvation. Darth Traya (i.e. former party member Kreia) is the quiet, nearly invisible force behind almost all the terrible things, but also almost all of the really good things, that happen throughout the game. She incessantly forces the player's character into nearly impossible situations, but all for the sake of making him into someone who does not follow either side of the force blindly, but rather questions and lives with a fierceness which defies the Jedi's stark emotionless ness and opposes the Sith's blind wrath. While the mechanics of the actual battle are nothing particularly jaw-dropping, the confrontation with Traya, where the player must defeat her for what she has come to embody because of the very teachings she has instilled in him, is one of the most moving moments in all of video games. After finishing Sith Lord's and hearing Traya's final message I spent a long time pondering my own conceptions of morality and the Good. I don't think any other video game has ever managed to get that response from me.

6) The Alien, Mega Man II (NES)

     No list of great boss battles would be complete without some kind of mention of Mega Man, a series which has built awesome bosses into its very backbone. And no Mega Man game had so many memorable bouts of fisticuffs as Mega Man II, the most memorable of all being the freaky alien at the game's end. With his robots destroyed, his castle in ruins, and his underwear thoroughly soiled, Dr. Wily retreats into the depths of the cavern beneath his fortress, Mega Man hot on his heels. But when the Blue Bomber finally catches up with Wily, the Doctor abruptly transforms into a really bizarre looking alien and swoops in to attack. Suddenly everything about the (albeit young at that point) franchise is thrown into question. Is Dr. Wily really an alien whose plan has always been to conquer the Earth for his fiendish race? Was his partnership with Dr. Light merely a cover to advance his scheme? Was it really his alien technology that led to the development of robots, and thus Mega Man himself? Will somebody get me a soda? Sure, it ends up being just a hologram that the real Wily is controlling via remote, but after two games of assuming Wily is just a crazy old man who likes robots a little too much, it sure throws you for a loop the first time you see it. Also, even though he's a hologram, the alien is no slouch in combat. The only weapon Mega Man has that even puts a dent in his armor is the Bubble Lead, and touching the alien just once is enough to reduce Mega Man to nothing more than a shower of sparks and a pile of parts in the dollar bin of the local junkyard.

5) The Crimson King, Otogi (Xbox)

     It's a shame this series hasn't really caught on, because it just oozes style like some kind of style-oozing pustule... Okay, bad metaphor, but you know what I mean. Probably the most stylish moment in either of the two Otogi games is the battle with the Crimson King in a quiet, snow covered bamboo forest. It's a one-on-one duel between the silent Raikoh and his grim opponent, a pair opposed by creed but united by their shared love of long, billowing hairdos. The level itself is a gorgeous homage to the plethora of bamboo-forest duels from Japanese films, with a slowly running stream, a handful of stone grave markers, and a small, vacant shrine. Of course, most of it has been obliterated by the end of the battle, as every missed strike or thrown combatant decimates chunks of the scenery. This battle calls upon all the skills that the player has developed for Raikoh, too, as the King has very few vulnerabilities and just trying to hack away at him will result in the warrior getting his head knocked off by Crimson's giant stone staff. The fight with the Crimson King does a great job of making the player feel like he or she is taking part in a subdued but climactic scene in an epic samurai movie, and when it's finally over and the Crimson King slumps to the ground, his dying words set the dark tone that pervades the rest of the game.

4) Queklain the Impure King, Final Fantasy Tactics (Playstation)

     Some may say that Final Fantasy Tactics' plot is confusing and poorly translated (and they're probably right), but I still think it's a brilliant work, filled with ever shifting loyalties and more Shakespearian political intrigue then a stack of three Riverside collections of Shakespeare with a scholar of Shakespeare dancing a jig atop them. By far the coolest moment, though, is the final battle of the second chapter. The hero, Ramza, and his group have cornered Cardinal Draclau, the man who is apparently responsible for all the various robberies, kidnappings, pantsings, and murders that have happened so far in the game, and as the cardinal is old and sporting quite the gut, they expect a quick surrender. Much to their and the player's shock, though, the cardinal suddenly transforms into a grotesque, bloated monster, Queklain, the Impure King, and savagely pimp-slaps the party. Until this point (and this is probably a third of the way through the game), Tactics has been a very human game, dealing with themes of loyalty, religion, friendship, diet cola, family, and duty, and could easily have been transplanted to the setting of medieval Europe during, say, England's War of the Roses, with very little alteration. Now, though, everything is thrown into turmoil as the true villains are revealed to be not one of the numerous warring factions, but rather a cabal of fiendish demons who are playing everyone else against each other to spread darkness across the world and advance the Republican party. I suppose that's a bit redundant, isn't it? Queklain is a monster in the metaphorical sense, too, as none of the bosses before him even hold a candle to his nastiness. His spells have huge radii and inflict some of the nastiest status effects in the game, such as condemned (thus setting a time limit on the battle) and, the worst of them all, Jacksonification. *shiver*. The strategies which have worked so well against human opponents work about as well as trying to kill an elephant with a baseball bat and the player must think quickly unless he wants his characters' corpses to be used as rags to wipe up the blood all over the room when the battle is over.

3) The End, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (Playstation 2)

     Metal Gear is another one of those series full of bosses that are practically prequalified to appear on this list. But those rascals at Konami really topped themselves when they came up with The End. Though he's been a wheelchair-bound, nearly comatose old man until this point in the game, when The End sees it's time for battle he pulls out all the stops. Ducking from cover to cover and nearly invisible in his camouflage, The End rains sniper fire on the hapless Snake as the super spy frantically searches for him across four huge, goat-filled areas. While the game sets the conflict up as an epic sniper duel, the great thing about this battle is that you can fight it however you wish. You can try and take him out from a distance with your sniper rifle. Or you can try and sneak up on him a bit, then let him have with a machine gun. Or, if you're really, really good, you can come up behind him and hold him up with your pistol, stealing his stamina-regenerating camouflage. Of course, if you run straight at him with your knife, he'll probably just shoot you in the balls and cackle while your throat-rending shrieks echo across the Russian forests. The player needs to be stealthy (Duh, huh! In a stealth game? No way!) and clever, using all the tools (yes, even that flying-squirrel carcass he's been carrying for twelve miles) at his disposal. Use your ultra-sensitive microphone to track the old man's heavy breathing. Your heat-vision goggles can help you pick him out against the greenery. When his stamina gets low, toss that rotten squirrel out into a clearing, then shoot him when he comes to collect the feast. Shoot his parrot, then eat it, just to show him how much of a soulless bastard you are. Depending on how you play it, this battle can take over an hour, and most of that hour will be remaining near motionless, scanning the tall grass and shrubbery for your foe's bald, liver-spotted noggin. Don't stay still for too long, though, or the crafty codger will creep up behind you and shoot you in the back of the head in a super humiliating cut-scene that heavy-handedly reinforces the fact that you got totally schooled by a tired old man. Once you've defeated him, The End collapses to the ground and delivers probably the most moving, most powerful speech in the game about the life of the warrior. Then his false teeth fly out and explode, consuming him in a massive fireball. Bitchin!!!!

2) Ganondorf, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Gamecube)

     I know there are still some holdouts who feel that this game's cartoony visuals failed to do justice to the Zelda license. Clearly, these people are retarded, especially considering how absolutely amazing the game's final battle with Ganondorf is. His cleverly laid plans foiled at the absolute last second, Ganondorf finds himself trapped atop a tower which will very shortly be covered with several million gallons of water. But if he's going down, he decides he's going to take that little bastard, Link, with him. As water cascades down around you, you must duel the evil king, sword against sword, utilizing all the combat techniques practiced in the game until this point. This is an absolutely amazing fight to witness, and if you know what you're doing, the battle will play out like it was choreographed for a movie. But even with the Master Sword, Link can't defeat Ganondorf alone. Zelda picks up Link's dropped bow and peppers the bearded wizard with Light Arrows from afar. Of course, Ganondorf didn't survive thousands of years just to get nailed with an arrow while standing still like an idiot. The only way you can actually finish him is to have Zelda shoot at Link, and Link deflect the arrow at the last second into Ganondorf. If your timing is off, Link finally gets to feel what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of those bad boys. I imagine it's probably like getting snapped with a wet towel... hooked up to a car battery.

And finally, the baddest boss of all is...

1) Luca Blight, Suikoden II (Playstation)

     It may seem like an unusual choice, but trust me, this guy deserves it. Luca Blight, Prince of the Highlands, is probably the most reprehensible character in video game history. He brutally slaughters hundreds of people (personally!), even members of his own family, and not really for any purpose besides the fact that he likes killing. There's a scene in the game where he forces townsfolk to get down on all fours and act like farm animals if they wish to be spared. They do, obviously, but after mocking them, he cuts them apart anyway. He's such a nasty person that even the country he's fighting for doesn't like him, so they set him up to be ambushed by the player and his army. By this time in the game, the player has really grown to hate the Highlands Prince, too, so the battle is anxiously anticipated. Prince Luca ain't going down without a fight, though. The player must attack Luca with three separate parties, each whittling down his bodyguards and hit points further and further. But in each consecutive skirmish, Luca still pounds away at your soldiers with powerful magic and crushing physical attacks. He could very easily wipe out all three of your six-man groups by himself. Even sporting several protruding arrows he still manages to shout insults and break through your party's lines to escape to a remote hilltop. Here the player must duel him one-on-one to finally polish the bastard off. But though he dies, Luca Blight's legacy of destruction continues for the rest of the game, and the heroes must spend most of their time until the credits roll dealing with the problems that he caused and the lives he ruined. Truly, he was the baddest of them all...

     Well, there they are, the ten greatest bosses in all of video game history. Of course, there are plenty of other great bosses in all of video-game-dom, and these types of lists are always incredibly subjective. Who's to say there aren't some other bosses equally deserving of this honor? If you've got a hankering for an argument, head down to the comments section below and voice your opinion. Shout to the world why you think my choices are stupid and why they make you question my sexual orientation. It wouldn't be the first time I've heard that. *sigh*.