What Makes a Good Platformer Boss? | Boss Battle Breakdown

Designing a platformer boss is tough, so today we’re looking at how to design a good platforming boss based off three bowser Boss battles from New Super Mario Bros Wii, Super Mario 3D Land, and Super Mario 3D World. These boss fights teach a lot about how to make a proper and fitting brawl in the quintessential Mario platforming series, so I’m on a hunt to see what I can learn for other platformers based off these three examples!

Footage used:
- NSMB Wii 100% / packattack04082
- NSMB Series Bowser Final Bosses / YTSunny
- Evolution of Bowser Battles / Nintendo Unity
- Super Mario 3D Land All Bosses with Luigi / packattack04082
- Super Mario 3D World - Meowser? / NinjaSyao
- Sonic the Hedgehog Green Hill Zone / MegamanNG
- Motley Bossblob / Inikkratos
- Super Mario 3D Land Final Boss / YTSunny
- Super Mario 3D World Full Game 2 Player / packattack04082

-OTHER LINKS-

[LunalynDragon]

Funny you should say this, because these are exactly what I don't like in a platformer boss and was significantly disappointed in all 3 fights when I got to them. I guess that's just my opinion though. I get why you like these, but I'd say they're very much not my cup of tea; It never feels like I'm damaging the boss or doing anything more than playing a standard level with a twist. There's nothing rewarding to me about hitting a switch at the end and winning, regardless of how I got there.

[DarylTalksGames]

Congrats on making the Mark Recommends on GMTK! Keep up the great work my man :)

[pyrrhickong]

Hrm... I'm somewhat conflicted on how Mario boss design should be, really. Whilst I agree that Meowser is a great fight and a fantastic capstone to Mario 3D World, I also feel that it suffers greatly insofar as replayability goes. Having the NSMBWii and 3D World encounters essentially be autoscrollers I feel removes a lot of the player's agency. Whilst I don't believe that the Arena approach is an entirely elegant solution either, I do feel that those still serve as challenges of execution and adaptability in most situations where Bowser has more than one hit point.

Still, I feel that the best application of Bowser is in Mario 64. It fully encapsulates what it means to have mastered Mario's controls in 3D, and whilst it isn't collection-based or platforming-based, it does show Mario adapting to his new 3D environment and watching as his options become more limited as Bowser carves away at the arena. The tension feels greater in that fight than any other given Bowser battle for me. I mean, besides the master class of game design that is Mario Party 4's final boss, clearly the height of all boss fights for years to come. By far. Unparalleled.

I mean, this is still really well done and you make a solid point, just not one I entirely agree with. I feel like titles like A Hat In Time really mastered the arena boss fight in a platformer with just hectic introductions of elements reminiscent of the game prior, and hope those do become the standard, but the Bowser fights listed here are damn good and I hold nothing against anyone who loves them.

[nivolord]

The final challenge/boss of odyssey is actually the segment after the fight, where you capture Bowser and do a platforming section.

[vicctretamaj]

Can we get a video on Kirby bosses and what makes them so much fun? They seem to be the most interesting part of Kirby games + True arena is HARD AF

[mariocraft]

It's great for a showdown to capture the essence of a game, and these are excellent moments, but I struggle to call them boss fights. I feel like bosses that can get the most out of Marios abilities without making just a more climactic version of a normal level (which is fine) are certainly possible.
One of my favorite fights is the Bowser Jr. fight of World 5 of SMG2, which has you using the cloud flower to ascend high enough to get to his cockpit and hit it, avoiding obstacles while making your way from cloud to cloud.

[MisterAppleEsq]

I wonder if it would be possible to have a blend of the arena and chase sequence styles of boss battle, so that the game could test the player's prowess without removing their agency.

[nazek]

I think this is something Sonic games do pretty well. They're rarely "final exam bosses" like you seem to appreciate in this video, but rather are designed with the same core idea in mind as the rest of the game: going fast. A skilled player can beat your average Sonic boss in under a minute, in much the same way that you can speed through a level if you know all the shortcuts. On the other hand, a first-time player might wait out long cycles until the obvious time to land a hit. Good examples of this kind of fight are the Egg Golem and Biolizard from Sonic Adventure 2, the Egg Dragoon from Sonic Generations, and the Heavy Rider from Sonic Mania.

[Yarch_]

Have you checked out Celeste? This was the first platforming game I played with boss fights I would consider to be true platforming boss fights. I've always been disappointed with Mario boss fights due to how easy they are and how most utilize the same jump 3 times on the head tactic. They always feel out of place in a platformer game aside from the Galaxy games which are more centered around exploring stationary locations and don't have the character constantly moving forward to progress.

Celeste was the first game where I realized, damn. Now, this is a boss fight for a platforming game. The game wasn't designed with a focus on boss fights so they don't stand out as much as a traditional boss fight. They're more integrated into the game's "episodic" story structure with the boss fight being an additional element added onto the end of a chapter. The final stretch to the end of the level. I think if a game was to take the design philosophies Celeste's boss fights and iterate on it to make more than just a few unique encounters, we could maybe get a platforming game that has multiple worlds with different level designs each with a boss fight that integrates itself into each world's level design and not just be a still screen of jumping on top of a sprite's head.

[Ghzt]

The original Bowser fight in Super Mario was a good test of skill in the context of the game ! Avoiding the moving obstacles was challenging !

[tattersthebat]

Personally, I really enjoyed Super Mario Odyssey's Final Battle. It was a simple, to-the-point Mario vs. Bowser Showdown; Think SMB1, to the extreme. The game throws him at you, with his own punching hat in tow, and says "So, you like capturing stuff? Okay, but can you win _without_ that ability (at least it's fullest potential)?"
The player says YES! to this question, and is rewarded with an epic conclusion focused on the most epic capture in the game.

[zerarch]

The early Sonic bosses are designed for a skilled player to beat extremely fast, maintaining the game's emphasis on speedrunning.

[ThatFanBoyGuy]

I get what you're saying about New Super Mario Bros. Wii. It does shout back to the original Super Mario Bros. It does test the platforming skills of the player, which is pretty much the whole game. But I preferred the boss battle in New Super Mario Bros. U. A big part of a Mario platformer is also dodging some enemies while jumping on others. In New Super Mario Bros. U, the final boss battle allows Mario to do exactly that. He dodges attacks and jumps on Bowser and Bowser Jr. I prefer that to any other Bowser battle

[giant]

Zelda: nah
Mega man: nah
Metroid: get that outa here
Mario: yea
Ignores every boss fight expect Mario

[painfulbroccolicube]

Mark sent me, I'm certainly not disapointed

[ketrub]

Got here from Mark Brown and I'll definitely follow this channel, your vids are really interesting!

[General_Nothing]

I was watching this going, “New Super Mario Bros Wii is the best final boss fight in the series, so that should be number 1, ” and sure enough.

[wootmasterzorsx]

7:46 This comment right here really brings home the point for how I feel on these boss "fights", in that is admits they're not fights at all, but rather chase sequences. Now, look, if these were Scooby Doo games, then I could understand just aimlessly running around just hoping you come across an item that will allow you to stop the big bad monster chasing you, but that's not the case. This is Mario we're talking about here, and Mario's games aren't about running away from something chasing you... Typically, there's the rare exception like the flood of Fuzzies in a few 3D World levels and the occasional lava smoke wall in a volcano level, but I digress.

And when you make the final boss battle a chase sequence, how does it differentiate in a gameplay sense from a basic Goomba? Sure, I COULD stop and fight the Goomba, or I could just run to the goal where, at that point, the Goomba just poofs away into a point total and I clear the stage. But with these final boss "fights", you don't even have the option to fight the boss; rather, you have to run away until you find a switch at the end to just... Make the boss a point total and clear the stage. Granted, that's not the best example because with these final boss fights, there's a lot more spectacle and importance to them than a regular enemy confrontation (or lack thereof) but my point still stands that a boss fight should feel like an actual confrontation, in my opinion, rather than a chase sequence.

Now, that's not to say that these boss fights are bad, far from it. The Meowser fight especially was a great sequence with an amusing concept of Bowser using power ups to combat Mario. But if you ask me, the final boss shouldn't have such a stark contrast to the game's prior bosses, rather, it should feel like the game's biggest and baddest enemy you have to fight, even if it's confined to an arena and doesn't test a player's platforming skills. I personally think the final boss of New Super Mario Bros U is the best of that series primarily because it's an actual confrontation, rather than NSMBWii and 2's "run from a giant Bowser without the player doing anything to affect Bowser and just being lucky Bowser included a collapse floor button in his castle." In retrospect, NSMB itself had a fine final boss, as you had the choice to wait through attacks to find an opening to hit the button OR you could fight Bowser with power-ups and actually defeat him, there was at least an option that allows players to feel like they're actually doing something different than just another level.

And that's where I think I disagree the most, these boss fights shouldn't feel like standard levels that act as final exams for the game just because it, well, as I believe I've made quite clear up to this point, leads to the boss feeling like it has less impact rather than more impact when it's just another platforming challenge in a game where there's typically 80 plus platforming challenges.

However, I feel like there's a much more elegant compromise to this issue that grants both sides of this "cramped arena vs. chase sequence" debate exactly what they want. Rather than having Bowser waiting for the player at the end of a platforming sequence just to make the player go through more platforming, make the chase sequence the regular portion of the level. Then, once the player has finally seemingly lost Bowser... BAM! Final boss fight in an arena that Bowser led the player to as a trap. It makes sense in universe a lot more than Bowser leading the player to what inevitably beats him in one attack (which, as I haven't mentioned yet, makes Bowser feel sort of cheaper as a threat compared to the Koopalings or other bosses if they require three hits and Bowser just needs an instant win button to be dispatched with). After all, why would Bowser honestly have a button that just destroys the bridge or ground under him and not immediately hit it himself to just get rid of Mario, instead allowing him the opportunity to be foiled by his own poor design choices? It would make a lot more sense for Bowser to lead Mario to an arena where Mario has to fight him off with tricks from the other bosses, to make the level a final exam in both senses. You start with the platforming chase sequence where Bowser is constantly chasing you and you need to use your skills gained over the course of the game to escape and then, when Bowser's cornered the player, fight back like you do with the other bosses... Kind of like New Super Mario Bros U's final level, when I think about it. Just with a greater emphasis on Bowser himself with a cooler sequence leading up to the final battle.

But yeah, that's my stance on the matter. You make a good argument for these fights, and again, I do appreciate them for being cool sequences in these levels, but I've always found they really don't feel like fights for being the final boss fight.

[Lugmillord]

Well, the 3D World boss may be better than others but the autoscrolling kills it. In the rest of the game, you usually don't have autoscrolling (and whenever you have, it's awfully slow - that's a thing Nintendo hasn't understood in 3 decades) so it turns more into a waiting game than a challenge. The 3D Land fight does this so much better. But really, why is Bowser always placing these switches after bridges in his castles? That's just such a dumb idea.

[aurcereal]

this is like game makers toolkit and that's really good