The 7 Cheapest Tricks Pulled By Fighting Game Bosses 

I think all of the bosses in KOF are still broken if they're unlockable, the only exceptions are regular Rugal in '98(just a mini boss here tho) and Rugal in 15. They're all banned in tournaments for a reason

Street Fighter III 3rd Strike did thensame with Gil. Want a really easy time? Play as the guy who can go down and recover his HP.

That's why, in Mexico, where kids always gathered around the arcade machines in the local grocery stores, you'll be considered THAT KID if you picked Rugal.

@@blastmole299 Geese in Neowave wasn’t broken anymore either. I can absolutely tell his move set in that game was designed towards his boss buffs because he is bottom tier trash without it.

@@Shadoboy lmao same in Mozambique, there's always that one kid that spams rugals supers

Sometimes happens when the player's character is evil too, like Juri meeting Seth.

@@WhiteFangofWar I'm talking "face" characters, the good guy basically saying "I like your style you meglomaniac" is so strange.

That's an example of bad writing. Fighting games back then didn't care about storylines until KOF changed that

@@CraigSmithII Oh I remember all the bad translations, but I still can't think of any other way to take it. Especially since we know how bad Geese is, and that makes it even weirder, because it also goes against Ryo's character. I could see Robert Garcia saying that MAYBE.

I don’t know if this counts since Super Smash Bros is not your typical fighting game but in Ultimate Dracula can teleport around a fighters attacks and not only that, in his first phase ONLY you have to go for the head otherwise your attacks does NOTHING

@@lugismansion2400 Dracula's from an action platformer and directly takes his mechanics from his source genre so he's entirely fair. His attacks are telegraphed and slow, and he doesn't take hitstun but he doesn't do fighting game combos either. If he was instead just a Ridley copy that ignored rules of the game he'd be one of these.

@@user-jw2it4qf2r yea, everyone except for Galeem, Darkhan, Master and Crazy hand, that boss from Brawl and Giga Bowser take their entire move pools from their respective games, I say Dracula is one of the more unfair to fight against because he has 2 phases when none of the other bosses even HAS 2 phases, for some of the fighters he’s nearly impossible to take down on their own sine Dracula is a tall character who whom you can only damage via the head in the first phase, becomes invincible when he transforms into bats, I can go on forever but I’ve ranted long enough(no I am not a Little Mac main)

I think maybe Frieza from the DBZ games had this issue. His side-step was an instant transmission, instead of a proper side-step, allowing him to vanish a step back during combos. Frieza wasn't exactly a boss, not in the sense of a final boss of the game, but still.

​@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley Frieza, not a final boss? Pff

THIS is what makes Gill "cheap" in Third Strike - having access to not one, but two OP supers in a game where characters are limited to one (except Akuma).

Orochi was the first boss to use a screen filling hyper, with many subsequent KoF bosses also getting their own as well (both Zeros, Mukai, Magaki and Saiki).

@@TheBlackSeraph _Three_ supers. He can even drop Meteor Strike on you at times. If he hits with that, you're taking a massive chunk of damage. At least this is his 'bad' Super, so you can block and eat little chip if he does it.

​@@MagmaMKII Yeah SNK turned that into a kind of trend with their bosses funnily. Capcom only did it once.

​@@budgetcoinhunter some peopla actually say that this is his best super for competitive play, sadly this isnt gonna happen anytime soon

Honestly I personally found him to be the worst of the lot when it came to SNKs rock hard bosses. Gave me more trouble than Geese, Rugal, ect. Still. Aint no boss like an SNK boss. Samurai Showdown had some strong ones as well

At least, i tried. On KOF UM 2002 i am more balanced. XD

I had KOF 99 when I was a kid... Krizalid was not fair at all in that game. Not the worst but he's up there when it comes to cheap

@@Krizalid3YE OLD NAVY!

I love how most attempts to get in close usually end with you getting knocked back full screen by his Typhoon Rage, turning that fight into a frustrating game of Red Light Green Light

Isn't there a trade-off with Shin Akuma and Shin Bison where they have either less health or less defense?

@@emwbjr I forget whether it was specifically the case in SFA3, but typically they do have less health as a trade off. I remember Shin Akuma in Capcom vs SNK 2 being the worst case of it; he was awesome offensively, but once you got hit, it HURT. Certain super moves can outright kill him. And of course it's only when you use him haha.

There was a version of Bison/Vega in Zero 3 with the full screen Crusher, they had three modes of how to use your super bar. You get the full animation. The damage, not so much. I have Z3 for the Saturn and the World Tour mode where you take on two fighters at once is so hype. Except for Juni and Juli, who are much harder than they were in the regular ladder.

You can use that version of super in SFA3 on the Sega Dreamcast when you play 2 v 1 mode.

@@Yggxiii and Street Fighter Alpha anthology and the PSP version of alpha 3

Hyper armor is pretty goofy

Well, she can be stunlocked to death with Parasoul, so I think it’s more that she has her own rules rather than not suffering hitstun at all.

I wanna add Mortal Kombat as an example, more specifically MKX and MK11 (as it's the most recent titles I have played), where ultimate Shinnok and Kronika are not even playable at all (except in MKX on pc you could mess with the game files to play as Rain and ultimate Shinnok)

Don't forget Shin King Lion (NGBC). He's unplayable unless you somehow mess with the game files

Tekken 7 was not that hard I beat him

Yeah Goddess Athena should have been a better example of infinite meter boss to mention, even though Igniz is also hard. But that is balanced by the large amount of KOF mechanics, not to mention it being a team game with assists. You don't have all that stuff in SVC.

That is more of permanent super armour than ignoring super moves; making some supermoves pointless is just a side benefit.

@@sinteleon Yeah, that’s what I meant

Heh, I was just thinking that these are some bull**** moves. At least in souls games, they make bosses tough but largely fair. There are a few nonsense fights but for the most part you can learn the bosses and dodge / counter everything. The day FromSoft resort to reading your input is the day I stop playing them!

​@@Zoso14892 well, you should have stopped playing in 2016 (?) then lol, cause champion gundyr in ds3 reacts to you trying to heal. There are a lot more examples of this in elden ring as well

@naiiin6949 Reacting to what you are doing isn't really the same as the nonsense shown here, though. I never completed 3 but did beat him. While he was tough, he never felt unfair in any way. I've also completed Elden Ring and beating that spinny cow just after they nerfed the companion so badly that they were useless as a caster was the closest I got to quitting. I enjoyed every other boss in the game. Except for the final thing. That was a waste.

​​@@naiiin6949 It's been proven that the bosses aren't reading your inputs when heal punishing but instead a raycast system lets them react to animations when they see them activate. While it may look like input reading, it isn't, and the key difference is that bosses that input read can activate an attack before your animation plays as well as punish you for any button press at any time. Gundyr's heal punish only works if he's facing the player when the heal occurs, and he's not in the middle of an attack. Also the Fume Knight in Darksouls 2 did it first. If you want more info: Search Zullie The Witch Input reading

@@ghostderazgriz Yup, depending on the tolerances of that system it can be just as bullshit as genuine input reading, but I don't think it's that bad in From Software games. Hell, it's a decent tactic to abuse the attack that Sekiro's final boss does when you heal.

yeah a lot of these cheap tricks... only exist because the AI can't actually win if it really fights fair. :/ It just can't work the same way as a real player. MvC2 bosses tried to fight fair... sort of. They're cheap only in that they have a different concept of fighting than playable characters, and would probably be completely impossible to control properly. Stage 1: some big robot thing. It hits hard... if it can land a single hit, since it's telegraphed all the way to Eastern Mongolia. Stage 2: green goo, now we get into what makes these guys weird.... their character models don't work like players. the green goo can melt into the floor. But... it's never completely untouchable, but figuring out how to affect it is.... difficult. A lot of the time it's not where a normal attack will even hit it, and only pops up to attack, then drops out of sight after attacking. Which is... about the worst it can do in the cheese department. like the golem it's attacks are all telegraphed. But with a somewhat shorter window. This one takes longest to kill because of the hiding, and... only then. Stage 3: Lava dog. this guy is when you first fight him seemingly the worst. He's seemingly all the way off screen most of the fight, and hits you with attacks you can't see coming as he's not even on screen doing them. Thing is... he has a MASSIVE weak point. The orb thingy that was the middle part of the golem is now floating above the stage... just high enough you need to jump to see it. It's part of the boss's hit box. you can just beat the ---- out of the orb instead of touching the actual boss. The tell for the random flame jets is.... he's not on screen, if you can't see him, he's prepping the flame jets. Worst though is.... the player can utterly destroy this boss by nailing it with a 3-man team hyper combo as soon as the match starts. Certain very carefully put together teams can actually own him in less than 1 second.

The thing with Galactus is, depending on where in the screen you are, you'll simply have no way of avoiding the attack, because he will hit you from three different angles.

@@MagmaMKII Well, that game also has the annoyance of getting double-teamed by his heralds, and that can also put you in a situation where blocking is impossible. :/

Though Galactus does have a favourable mention of actually being playable as the op being himself.

That's exactly what input reading is...

The MK2 arcade game was designed to cheat.

@@HisVirusness that's insane to think about

So was the console version so though the SNES/Genesis MK 2 had a EASY mode the AI still cheats in game and the last 3 battles of Arcade mode automatically had the game bump it from easy mode to HARD mode automatically.

Input reading was the standard because there was literally no other way back then

Wasn't there a character in a (blegh) JoJo's fighting game who was a bird, and had a screwy hitbox because of that? I feel like they mentioned that in a previous video.

@@nicholasfarrell5981 not a boss and straight up banned from online play

Mortal Kombat 11 had some really bad disjointed hitboxes which is essentially what you were saying, also in dragonball fighterz up until late into season 2 (iirc) a sizeable number of attacks wouldn't connect with the small characters due to their low profile, GT Goku & Gotenks were the main offenders I think. So yeah, it still happens today lol.

@@Houldey nonono, not disjointed hitboxes. Straight up small characters with small hurtboxes that weren't implemented in a balanced way. Disjointed hitboxes are just hitboxes that are disjointed from the main body. Edit: read that again and figured out you just mean that MK11 has horrible hitboxes on characters lmao. MK has that one issue in any game period.

Shin Bison in Alpha 3 and Goddess Athena and Red Arremer in SvC Chaos are also infamous for that.

Bison from SFA3 is a much more famous example and from much earlier too

Really? I kicked both of their asses first try.

@@unevennoble9363 I never meant they was hard I was implying that them making minions that explode after a certain point is cheap

Boss M Bison is also unlockable in console ports. Once you beat the game, you hold a bunch of buttons before selecting M Bison. He gets something that looks like Xism but has a skull instead of the X on the meter

Unknown's actually kinda bad with this, due to the fact that her snapback move is nowhere near as powerful if you're playing as her.

If your character had anything less than full health, her double snap was an instant kill.

This! Lol Seth was an absolute nightmare on the 2nd round

Yup. The original Street Fighter IV was my first proper SF game. Before that I'd only played SFII with a friend on his Genesis back in the day and that was it. My fighting game experience otherwise was Tekken, Soul Calibur and MvC games. I had a hard enough adjusting to the heavier and more precise mechanics of SF IV as it was but I couldn't actually beat Seth that first time I got to him despite several tries. It made me so angry that I actually traded it in the day after I bought it. I came back to the series a year or two later with Ultra Street Fighter IV and spent a lot more time practicing before jumping into Arcade and the online modes. Helped a lot and now SF is one of my favorite franchises.

Games from that generation aren't hard as the 90s games

@@carlosaugusto9821 neat.

Hated this guy with a passion.

The thing is, Vega/Balrog/Claw has an easy exploit, if you back him into a corner and jump kick towards him, he'll do his backflip dodge, leaving him vulnerable to a throw when he lands every time. Also with the move you mentioned, if he does his diving claw, with timing it can be countered with a Sho-Ryu-Ken or Tiger Uppercut, but yeah it's a pain to master.

@@EnforcerX71 Being counterable doesn't make it any less of a dick move though.

Not many games used that kind of gimmick. Their cheapness is more straightforward.

Jinpachi sounds like a real asshole, lol.

This happened to me more than once. In fact he often beat me three times in a row with this strategy. Two perfects then one post continue victory, he also has a move that regains his health while taking yours too so thats fun.

Let's not forget he also uses a life siphoning unblockable that he also tends to use when said stun happens

If it helps, I recently found out you can actually block Jinpachi's stomp if you crouch... though you do need to be able to predict it first.

You can "block" it with forward. Which is even more evil since holding forward will make you eat any followup attack if you didn't realize you dodged it.

Oh God, I-no. I have nightmares about her. One mistake and she just straight demolishes you.

I'd beat him by keeping distance and ducking under his hammer with Liu Kang

Death required a decapitation for the 2nd win, true, but at least he auto-stunned if you depleted his health so you could get the blow in (usually a character can only be stunned once per round). However, Death's main bullshit is in the fact he automatically teleports to the other side of you if he's in the corner. This isn't even a command. If you use cheats to control Death, just walking to the corner will do it. Eternal (and later, Dark) Champion though, dear god. No, there is no time limit. On the Genesis, you have to beat _5_ different forms in a row, on one health bar (you do get a small amount of health back after each form). You can lose two rounds, and only have to beat him like this once, but you do _not_ get a second try. Lose to the Eternal, and you get a bad ending. On the Sega CD, you fight the Eternal in an even longer match, with _9_ forms to defeat. After the first 5 forms, the match pauses, the old windows blow out, and four _new_ ones spawn in. On a high enough, difficulty, once you land the final hit, the game pauses again, and the introduction to a cinekill plays, but now you're fighting as the Eternal against the Dark Champion in _a second 9-form fight_ with no time limit.

@@budgetcoinhunter It was so long ago. I probably never won Eternal Champions. I do remember getting good at Time Killers & eventually decapitating Death with every character.

Better than Arcana Heart 3 Parace L'sia. Not only is she insanely difficult, but she actually takes pity on you by permanently lowering her hp bar each time you rematch her. Meaning you have *one* chance to beat her at full strength.

I beat The General but yeah I had to use a exploiting glitch that kept him in a permanent state of Stun-Lock just to win after 20 to 28 losses to him

He should have been included

1 is kinda in the same vein as what Andy said about unblockable attacks. 2: the grabs are another dumb one. especially when it's an attack that does MASSIVE damage.

Chronomon DM Comes To Mind!If He Wants To,He Can Just Fire The Corona To Burn Your Whole Party Alive 3 Turns In A Row,With No Recharge Turn,Unlike Pokemon's Hyper Beam!

Kronika is worse for having permanent super armour, meaning practically no combos work.