What Makes A Good Boss Rush? 

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The ONE single thing that’s disappointing about King Dice to me is that his last phase only has one attack. It’s definitely a fun one, but I wish they gave him at least two different things to do

I'm glad you brought up the boss rush from Pizza Tower. Even from a story-telling perspective, it's rather genius and debatably kinda meta, given the trope's general reputation. After everything Peppino's been through, he's now forced to partake in an endgame boss rush, and that ends up being his mental breaking point. Shortening each of the repeat bosses really adds to that feeling that Peppino is _done_ and just wants these guys out of the way so he can finally finish off Pizzahead. I'm also quite fond of the boss rushes in Cuphead, DMC3 and DMC5, for the reasons you listed in the video. They're quite creative spins on the trope!

When done correctly, boss rushes are a good challenge for hard-core fans, testing skill and perseverance. When done incorrectly, they are annoying, tedious, and lacking in creativity.

Boss rushes in kirby games are kinda where the game gets actually challenging, in Star Allies I remember spending days trying to beat soul melter, and later soul melter EX, same for the arenas in forgotten land, that's why I loved the games

Live A Live really deserves a shout out. The boss rush at the end is the classic "you're now way more powerful and can absolutely cream these guys that once caused you problems" style and with the revelations you learned in the final chapter adds a little more catharsis to the battles... but it ALSO has a rare *reverse* boss rush where you can play as those bosses and use all their most powerful abilities and earn the worst ending. And yet again, considering what you learned in the final chapter... even this feels a little cathartic.

Kinda surprised you didn't mention probably the most famous boss rush in gaming, Pokemon's Elite Four + Champion. The original featured 4 brand new bosses, plus an upgraded team from your rival who you've fought all game long. Defeating the Elite 4 and becoming champion was always the end goal, but the twist that you also had to beat your rival who did the same first, was epic.

I always loved Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story boss rush. You fight a selection of old bosses in their new and unique EX mode. You have to fight all of them separately before unlocking the final challenge: Beating all EX Bosses + a new secret final boss without breaks, with limited turns and limited items. The only bad point of this boss rush is that the old bosses are not scaled up much. The bosses you fought in the early game gets destroyed even in their EX form after you are high level, making the final boss against the 7 bosses feel like only 2 boss as you delete the 5 others.

When you showed footage of Hollow Knight, I thought you were going to mention it in the video. It's linked to the story (you get the best ending if you beat it while fulfilling other conditions) while being fully optional, have at least some plot reason to exist (sure, very cryptic, but so is the rest of the lore) and has many twists. You're fighting previous bosses, but not all in a row, they are separated in different pantheons, and atop of each pantheon you have a new boss, which is a character that appears in the story, but you had never fought, or fought once they're past their best shape. Not all bosses have a twist, but sometimes a simple change in the arena is enough to change your strategy - changing the Gruz Mother from an enclosed box to three small platforms makes you think twice before making any move, to be sure you can land on a platform. And then there's the final pantheon, with all bosses, but some of them have new forms (I remember specifically Nosk and the Mantis Lords), it all culminating on a harder version of the final boss, which is sooo neat. At least it is on the playthroughs I watched, I never reached it myself and I don't hate myself enough to put me through it until I reach the peak. There are a couple resting areas, but they're usually one per pantheon. And you can handicap yourself by reducing strength, life, soul or badges. Damn, this game is brutal!

Bringing up the Arenas and True Arenas of Kirby, something that's always stood out to me when I first heard it is how every Kirby boss is designed to be beatable without power-ups. The games never explicitly force you to, but because the option is always there, people like to make extra challenging "No Ability" runs, which really changes up how people approach Kirby bosses when you have to wait for an attack that gives you an opening rather than being able to attack whenever you want.

I’d say the final phase against Asriel in Undertale technically counts as a boss rush, since it’s just a series of mini boss fights who all use attacks from previous boss fights. On paper it’s really simple, but the context of returning your friends’ memories to them makes this final phase SO GOOD.

Unexpetancy phase 3 (pizza face boss fight) from pizza tower isn’t a true boss rush but what it dose do is allow you to pummel the bosses you had face up to that point in rapid succession which is a really cool idea…

The Pizza Tower boss rush has gotta be one of my favorite gaming moments as of late.

I'm kind of surprised that Monster Hunter wasn't mentioned. The boss rush as a game format, but with 100+ different bosses, and 3 or 4 or even more different forms for each boss with new moves and abilities, not to mention 14+ different types of weapons, each with completely different playstyles and abilities akin to a complex fighting game character, and different sets of equipment for every form of every monster. The perfect formula to keep you playing one game for 500 hours, or perhaps thousands, while still seeing new stuff all the time as you go

I'm glad you included Devil May Cry 3 mission 18. One other thing that makes it good design is they purposefully made the smaller rings generally comprised of tougher fights so there's an element of strategy to pick the route that plays to your strengths/experiencen (after you deduce the objective).

X Challenge from the Megaman X Legacy Collection is a really neat take on the boss rush mode. You fight 2 previous bosses from different games at once in a series of 3 battles for a total of 6 bosses. You begin the mode with a list of 9 special weapons, from which you can pick 3 to take into battle, so no matter what, you can't rock-paper-scissors your way through each boss. It forces you to prioritize which weapons will be the most useful and which threats need to be dealt with immediately.

Not sure if it counts as a boss rush, but I love when a (usually final) boss can briefly summon or mimic the bosses you've faced up to that point.

One of my favorite examples is Chrono trigger. The first phase of the final boss mimics the fight of other bosses (same stats, attacks, etc), and since you can fight him at almost any point in the story (like Ganon in BOTW), you can have a pretty tough part at the start or absolutely destroy the "bosses" at the end of the game. But you get the option of skip that phace later so you don't have to do it if you really don't want to. In top of that, this make sense in the context of the story because the game is about time travel and the final boss have te power to create time portals to bring characters from other eras.

I like how both TWEWY games handled their boss rushes, with it being a separate mode in the post-game and explicitly noted to be a time attack so that you can try and get the fastest time possible for those high rankings. They’re also great for racking up tons of PP (experience) for your pins as well as getting high drop rates but on the flip side, they become progressively stronger as the rounds go on due for the game’s chain encounter system, with the boss placements even reflecting this with lower tier bosses being placed in the beginning and more challenging bosses being more placed towards the end. NEO also deserves points for allowing you to change your equipment and pins in-between each fight so that you can better prepare for them.

One that I like is the style The Binding of Isaac has. If you defeat Mom within 20 minutes of starting the run, then you can enter a room where there are 4 options of an extra item to pick up. If you do decide that you want an item, then 4 random bosses appear in the room at once and you have to defeat all 4. The Chest floor is another example. It's the last floor of the game the player can get to and each room is a boss fight. The difference here is that you're so overpowered that if you come across the first boss you fought on the run you can more than likely one-shot them.

Is not really a boss rush, but i really liked when they implemented the Battle Rush in Sonic Frontiers, fighting again all the types of enemies, guardians and of course the titans was really interesting. The fact that you have to use a save file for your stats makes it even better, you can use your Max Level save file to get some really fast times or use your Lvl 1 Stats save file to prove yourself and how fast you could do the enemies without any upgrade.

So happy Kirby was brought up because in my opinion it’s one of the FACES of the boss rush challenge, it’s so damn good and fulfilling! Especially since Kirby usually has a ton of bosses!

Enter the Gungeon has a pretty solid boss rush Mode. It makes sense thematically, It's fun and it's a way of fighting all the bosses (except the secret ones) in the same run which is impossible otherwise. There's also Wizard of Legend, another Roguelike dungeon crawler with a solid boss rush.

I’m surprised you didn’t talk about Monster Hunter. The entire series’ concept essentially boils down to one long, infinite boss rush, but that’s exactly what you come for.

As soon as I saw the title I knew Pizza Tower was gonna get talked about.

Gravity Circuit had a pretty good implementation of a boss rush. The boss rush was another boss that had the other bosses moves and then took you to fight the respective boss when you did enough damage to the main boss

Would the Elite 4 in Pokemon be considered a boss rush? 4 strong trainers, back to back, sometimes you get to pick the order you fight in and have a rest in-between each of them? I know XY is knocked for being way too easy, which it is in some regards, but as a kid I did like the ability to approach the Elite 4 in whatever order I wanted! It felt intuitive at the time and stopped me to make me think about what order I should prioritize and why.

You showed the boss rush from Octopath Traveler 1. THAT is the reason I never beat OT 1. Get defeated by the Final Boss and you have to redo the entire rush again. All 8 bosses. Traveler 2 did not have this (thankfully) and I got all the way through the game, loving every minute.

The boss rushes in ultrakill is an interesting take. In ultrakill, boss enemies eventually become regular enemies. At the very start of the game the Swordsmachine and the Cerberus have a whole level basically dedicated to each of them but once you defeat them, they start regularly reappearing in the later levels. It's a really fun experience because at the start of your playthrough you'll struggle to fight them alone but later once you've mastered their attack patterns you'll be demolishing multiple of them along with a whole gauntlet of enemies with ease. So later, about midway through the campaign, you're about to have a rematch with Gabriel, the final boss, you fight him 3 times total, and the final encounter isn't out yet, but just before the second one, all these boss enemies turned regular enemies spawn in a room all at once, and it along with the music makes this such a great moment as you easily tear through a bunch of bosses that gave you so much trouble before. And if you were looking for a challenging boss rush, look no further than the second Prime Sanctum, a secret level where you face an absurdly difficult boss, but to even get to him, you have to get through a hellish gauntlet of just everything spammed at you at once. It's so fun, and I'm so excited for the third Prime Sanctum and boss rush.

The realization fights from Library of Ruina hits a lot of marks for a well-done boss rush. As a game with deck-building, returning to an old fight already has a big difference in both strategy and power levels to make the experience different. The battle design themselves are also slightly different. Even if the gimmicks play out the same, because you’re fighting a character using the powers of the bosses you’ve faced up til then, there’s one different unit every fight that uses new moves. Having a banger soundtrack also adds a whole ton on top of the big character development tied to each of these long fights.

Personally, I love how Octopath Traveler does its boss rush; to access the final boss dungeon you have to complete all 8 stories for the main characters and do a specific sidequest chain to unlock it. Before the entrance you have a savepoint and once you enter, there's no going back. Inside, there are 8 altars, each of which leads you to a shadow version of a boss from a given character's story (often not even their final boss) with a larger health bar and updated moveset. It's a nice challenge (though I can see how for some it may seem like a lot since the entire gauntlet before the already lengthy final boss is a substantial time commitment) but my favorite part is that after each fight you get access to some crucial lore bits (diaries of important characters, internal thoughts of some antagonists) that fill in the blanks of the overarching story of the game at which the individual stories hinted at and it is immensly satisfying. Not to mention the absolutely stellar atmosphere the entire area has, from its visuals to the music.

I’m a bit surprised you didn’t talk about the boss rush from Final Fantasy VIII. Specifically, I’m talking about going through Ultimecia’s castle. It’s a unique boss rush that doesn’t require you to do it all in rapid succession, locks your abilities, and gradually gives them back, and uses all new bosses instead of using old ones. In my opinion, it Hass to be one of if not the most unique boss rush in gaming history.

I definitely appreciate a well thought out boss rush, especially if it fits within the narrative of the game. I am someone who can be a bit critical of games when it's blatant that they're dragging things out with little to no new content, so it's imperative to me that a boss rush feels right!

I like how you weaved in small explanations of what every game was - it helped me figure out the games I didn't know, and didn't feel tedious when you covered games that I'd played or seen before.

The pinnacle example of Dice Game in the middle of a boss rush is absolutely Gunstar Heroes! Weird there’s 3 examples minimum of this lmao

I’ve seen in Mario Odyssey’s Dark Side that there’s a rush of all four Broodal bosses, followed by a powered up Mecha-Broodal. That’s pretty cool, but Skelux’s Superstar mod for the game shoves all four Broodals in one arena, and then an even more amped up Mecha.

Wish you'd gone a bit more into Furi, specifically, but this is one of your strongest videos thus far. I recommend you put sections in your videos, as you already organize your thoughts in "sections" as it were and it'd make great videos like this even better.

I don't play much games with boss rushes (only 2) but I like how Pikmin 2's boss rushes aren't just filled with bosses but just normal challenging enemies as well also every few sub levels you get some time to re-group getting duplicate candy pop buds to increase your army and some times Bulbmin and then at the end your introduced to a new never seen before enemy! also its good how the final final boss uses all hazards make sure that you use all of your Pikmin (or just spam yellows).

I'd like to suggest the name "Bossathon" for when a game's overall design is basically just a boss rush like Shadow of the Colossus or even Monster Hunter. That would make easier to distinguish between a game with a short segment or separate game mode and a game which is entirely designed as a series of boss fights with not much gameplay in between.

A kinda boss rush i love is the battle against Delirium on The Binding of Isaac, while you don't fight previous bosses, he transforms on some of the bosses you have encountered In contrast, the Mega Satan battle brings back the horsemen of Apocalypse and the Seven Deadly Sins, who were previous bosses-mini bosses you may have fought

I like terraria calamity’s boss rush mode, since its post/endgame content that also makes you fight buffed versions of the bosses and is only accessable with the deepest treasure of the abyss, a very mysterious area

Lobotomy Corp's day 47/48/49 are neat boss rushes because they separate out the "bosses" of the game into three groups which you fight all at once. Where the earlier ones have more bosses at the same time while the last day just has two. The groups also make each day a more focused challenge overall, day 47 messes with your control and UI while lowering the stats of your units and preventing healing, day 48 multiplies a damage type you take while a single strong enemy shows up, and day 49 locks the game speed and kills units if you pause while making you fight another strong single enemy but this one is more focused on disrupting the management side of the game.

punch out is probably my favorite boss rush, mostly because the mechanics are super straight forward and instead the game relies purely on reaction time and observational skills. ive only played the nes one but i like how in that game previous bosses come back with new moves or different weaknesses, it keeps you on your toes.

One form of boss rush I think is interesting is... Unusual, to say the least. Just Shapes and Beats is "a variation of SHMUP genre where you dodge the shapes and move to the kick-ass beats". After beating the story mode, you have two options: go through online Challenge runs to unlock all of the bonus tracks for a different mode, and the different mode, and one that's closer to a boss rush, the Playlist. The Playlist allows you to set up any sequence of the game's many tracks. It's not a traditional boss rush, and there's only nine true bosses, but it's really cool, and allows you to practice certain tracks. It's a fully custom boss rush. And the addition of Hardcore mode in Update 1.2 makes that even more apparent. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

My personal favorite boss rush are the Data Organization XIII fights in Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts 3 ReMind. For me those fights are the prime examples of how to do a boss rush right. You fight against the same opponents but this time they are far harder and more aggressive and have completely different attack patterns to the point where it practically feels like a new boss as well as continuing the story and lore. Alongside the secret bosses the Data Organization XIII are a true test of skill of everything you learned through out the game.

Not sure if this is too unrelated, but I ADORE when a video game has bosses do different things and behave differently when the player ups the difficulty.

I really liked the Boss Rush in Gravity Circuit. A new boss would randomly mimic a previous boss' behavior, and then put you in that boss fight with the boss at half health. However when you beat one of the old bosses they would be removed from the random pool of bosses, even if you die. Would be cool if there was an option to fight it all in one go, however.

i love boss medley. they’re the best of both worlds. They let you experience the whole thing again at full power, but also are brief

There was one boss rush that I initially detested but later learned to appreciate after I beat it. I think it was one of the later dweebie/edgier Crash Bandicoot games. It was definitely a mascot platformer. This was back in the 2000s when those titles were 10 a penny and struggling to remain relevant. The boss rush began normally before the boss arena began to introduce challenges that weren't present in the initial battle, such as flying lazers, spike pits, and other hazards complicating the fight and limiting the safe floor space. I swear the bosses also got faster towards the end. I wish I could recall the name of the game.

(sorry for my bad english)A type of boss rush that was never touch again was the "continuous boss rush" introduced by alien soldier(1995) where the game is played thought it's entirely without any interruption (menus, stages selects and cutscenes) literally the same life bar that you started at the game will be with you in the end(if you don t die of course) no refill after level,(you can parry enemy bullets for heath), this styles mix soo well with a boss rush, like tearing boss after boss(oh look a boss(walk a little bit) oh look another boss) and the best part is that the game don't have the problem of becoming stale or the "main bosses" don't fell impactful thanks of the different treatment they have(the "main bosses" have their onw theme or a intro to them make them special above the other normal bosses) highly recomendation it's a underrated masterpiece

I feel like it takes a lot of work but I like when two bosses you fought before are fought together. Though I think more thought can be put into how to make those bosses mesh better

Optional Boss Rushes are my most favorite. Feels like a nice reward for all that work or a little something to do if you're bored.

The fights against the Lost SOULs in Undertale might not be your typical idea of a boss rush, but there are many ways it qualifies. You fight every single major boss of the game (except Mettaton who is replaced by Alphys), in the "edited/sampled" style of boss fight. They bring back the different SOUL mechanics from the previous fights, as well as the attack patterns of the boss you faced. The bosses in this game are long fights, so the rush uses significantly shortened and simplified versions so they can function well as one phase of a larger final boss fight. This is because Undertale's FIGHTs are very puzzle-oriented, consisting of performing specific actions until a monster no longer wants to fight you, dodging their attacks in the meantime. These are not the exact same bosses you fight though. Instead, there are all new ACTs that represent what you did *outside* of FIGHTs that led you to befriending the bosses, both before and after their respective fights. This is woven into the story _behind_ the boss rush: The final boss has reset everyone's memories, so that they all revert back to the way the player met each of them in the story. Helping them regain their memories not only recaps the player's journey, but also how they've been able to impact the lives of these bosses, and the character development they all underwent over the course of the game. It also furthers the game's themes of growing from the past and how showing a little bit of kindness and understanding can change the world.

I know it was shown twice but shovel knight deserves the roses in terms of the boss rush, not only is it a complete surprise on your first playthrough, but also it puts your skills on the edge!

Link’s Awakening had a bit of a boss rush during the final boss, mostly taking cues from bosses from other Zelda games. Loved the way they did it there. No one form took too long to take down, and it was all positioned as really just different phases of the same fight.

I think the most interesting boss rush I did recently was the one in KH3s Re:Mind DLC agianist the data organization. In the main game as well as the first part of the DLC you face off agianist Organization XIII in groups with the only solo fights being agianist Xehanort and Terr Xehanort (don't ask) The Data Scape is where you get to face off against them individually, and there are more or less brand new fights. It also counts as the only Super Boss Rush that I know of as there the games greatest challenge with an even more powerful 14th boss waiting at the very end after you defeat them.

I am currently designing a game and am including a boss rush to get to the final weapon, this is a very useful video.

Racing games can have a boss rush too, in Need For Speed Carbon, the last races have you facing all 3 previous bosses before moving onto Darius, the game's final boss. Even though its 4 races and 4 bosses, just 2 races have the old bosses and once you beat them, Darius is all yours. It maybe a stretch to call it a boss rush, but all 4 bosses are technically all there. Think of it as you will, but make sure you bring a maxed out Corvette for it because its tough

I love the boss rush from Terraria Calamity, as its optional at the very end of the game. It brings back all the bosses with scaled difficulty, but also modified AI that makes the bosses much easier than they were originally without being free. It serves kinda like a cutscene, blasting thru all the bosses, like a throwback to the first time you beat each of them.

While it uses the same style as the Kirby games, the All-Star Mode (not including the one in SSBU) is a fun take on the boss rush idea. Like Kirby, between each round, you have the rest spot with healing items. What makes the one in Smash for WiiU/3DS (and Ultimate's All-Star Mode too) interesting is the fact that they're kind of customizable, though take actual money to do so. As DLC characters were added, the "boss rush" would update and extend based on which characters you added.

One game that jumps to mind for a boss rush that's wildly different than the previous encounters is Desktop Dungeons. It's fundamentally a game about minmaxing and resource management, but the latter is taken to 11 in one of the endgame dungeons, Naga City. The first half is focused on enemies who inflict permanent debuffs while you try to level up, and the second half is an arena in which you face ten bosses (9 returning ones and one new one) in a row. It forces you to desperately stretch out a very finite supply of healing resources and deal with many different boss gimmicks, while coping with the debuffs from earlier. I found it the most memorable of the endgame dungeons.

Redeemed the Skillshare offer but WOW, payment info required straight away and sets up a plan to charge £90GBP after the 30 days - and cancelling early immediately ends the free trial? Yikes

The cuphead King dice boss fight and the mechanics with the dice remind me of gunstar heroes last stage! Where you literally throw a dice and move round a board with each square representing a previously fought boss! Im not sure if it would be considered a boss rush but thats the game that sprung to mind to me! I loved gunstar heroes!

Imagine if Persona 5 had a Boss Rush mode. All the Palace Leaders in a row, for one long ultimate battle, from Kamoshida to Maruki. Of course the earlier bosses would have to be scaled up a bit to not make them too easy. But even still, it would’ve been one hell of a Challenge

I've never actually realized it until now but when you listen to this intro them in headphones it actually goes from one ear to another and back

Hollow Knights boss rush really is so so good. Team Cherry put a lot of thought and work into how they implemented the hall of gods. From a gameplay perspective, the way they split up is really clean, but my favorite thing is the above-and-beyond work they did with the whole easthetic of it. A whole new large area just for this side content with tons of new music and artwork. Every boss in the game has an arena that mirrors where you originally fight them, but with all new artwork making their placement in the hall of gods cohesive. They also have remixed music to fit with the hall of gods. Also Hollow Knight is the only game I can think of where the best boss in the game is hidden in the midst of an >hour long boss rush. The Sisters of Battle fight justifies everything you have to do to get to that point imo.

18:28 Funnily enough, Kirby's Boss Rushes date all the way back to the first Kirby's Dreamland game, where Castle Dedede consisted only of a Boss Rush. The series still throws one in the main story from time to time, such as the mid boss tower usually featured in every game as well as proper boss rushes like in Triple Deluxe's final world. Pair that with the Arena and the TRUE Arena and you can see that Kirby absolutely loves its Boss Rushes. 19:14 Not entirely. The Arena usually features the bosses with less health than they had in the main game, making for a bit of a quicker playthrough.

My gripe with boss rushes is accessibility. If it's kept as optional content, I don't care do what you want, it's not for me, but when it's something required in the main story, ESPECIALLY if I can't save in-between that becomes a problem. About the only game I've seen do this well that I can remember off the top of my head is Shovel Knight. A bad example of this is Death's Gambit: Afterlife. A fantastic souls-like/metroidvania hybrid, but in order to get on the route for the true ending (and it's one of my favourite true endings EVER) you have to do 5 refights of previous bosses. They don't all happen in the same space and you do get to save in-between, but it's not like you have anything else to do so it's basically a boss rush. These refights are souped-up versions of the originals and can be quite inaccessible. There are people who have not been able to beat 5. For me, I did, but it took a long time and it would have sucked had I not been able to do 5.

I like the boss rush mode component integrated into the story as the case with Tales of Arise. It shows so much growth to challenge the bosses you fought before to represent how much you have grown throughout the journey and creates a benchmark. Tackling multiple challenges continuously is quite a feat.

Arcade Ghouls n' Ghosts has my favorite boss rush ever. Its final stage starts out against a gauntlet of tough enemies, before repurposing previous bosses in weaker forms as enemies, including the final boss of Ghost n' Goblins! The Cyclops boss carried around his head on his arm, but now copies of his arm and head are stuck in the wall with no body. Smaller versions of the cloud boss jump you in a pack, and 2 Astaroths from the first game pin you against eachoher. All this is the climb to the top of Lucifers tower, where the chaotic boss Beelzebub awaits you at the top.

Here’s a type of boss rush, one that you choose to do by making your own pattern of boss refights. An example of this is the Batlesphere in Freedom Planet 2. After you defeat the final boss on your save, you can refight them in any order. You first unlock the refights after you beat the champion, Captain Kalaw. You get these cards that have stars on them at the end of every level. If you beat a level’s boss, you can go to the Batlesphere and refight the boss.

I would add Chrono Trigger to this. Lavos have a "boss rush" phase that serves both to showcase strategy and how you became more powerful and resourceful, but also have a lore reason, since Lavos is the responsible for everything that happened after his arrival and so, it is more like the bosses were copying IT instead of the inverse.

A Boss Rush is always fun, in fact theyre probably my favprite part of the vast majority of games. Hell, my favorite game of all time, Furi, is just a boss rush with some simple bullet hell/melee gameplay. I think we need more boss rush's, and boss rush games, they make everything better imo.

I like the mild one in Sky Sanctuary Zone in S&K, where Mecha Sonic pilots a boss from Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 before you fight him directly. It's more for nostalgia over the trilogy than anything else, but I appreciated it :)

Perfect timing, as I was just playing through pikmin 4 recently and enjoyed the boss rush that game had to offer. I think in general boss rushes can be a neat gimmick if done correctly

FFXIV's ultimate raids are a fantastic boss rush. They're portrayed as retellings of parts of the story with dramatic exaggeration from the wandering minstrel, meaning while the bosses are largely ones you've fought before, they play out much differently and it ends up being a 15-20 minute gauntlet with you and 7 other people.

For another Boss Rush format, there's Rogue Galaxy's "Several-phase boss battle where your character also changes per phase" The final boss starts off as a typical two-phase boss fight...but then the party gets separated and you have to fight a new boss with each of your party members one on one. Narratively, it tackles the question of "why are only 3 out of the 10 party members helping with this fight" while also giving a neat gameplay challenge. In practice, I think this is the most exhausting boss rush format, especially given if you aren't as familiar with certain characters (or underleveled some of them) then you're going to have a hard time (especially when losing one fight means you have to start over from the beginning).

The only “boss rush” I enjoyed was in CHRONOTRIGGER.That was a good look back into how well I grew through out the game.

A cool one that Kirby games do is a small miniboss (or boss) rush during the main levels were you fight them all with the broken game gimmick (super ability, robobot armor, etc) that is usually reserved for regular levels, the point here just be a fun way to essentially one-shot these big enemies as you're near the end of the story.

I want a kirby game that focuses purely on kirby's copy abilities and their combat potential but NOT as a PvP fighting game style game. I want all the past bosses to be brought back and see how long you last fighting all of them (a pipe dream i know)

One very unique take within rhythm games is found in Rhythm Heaven Megamix. Once you are far enough in the game, you unlock access to a train station called Challenge Land that has a bunch of optional "gauntlets" not unlike the DDR ones mentioned in the video. However, there is a massive twist. Each gauntlet is not only themed song wise (like having 3 sports related songs in a row), but also have one of three challenges to test your rhythm mettle with "get a high enough score", "you get X misses" or the Monster Mouth modifier where every second you aren't hitting notes with perfect timing (there is a slightly off "hit" that still gives points in normal play but is NOT good enough here), your screen gets closer & closer to a mouth that will eat the song's screen causing an instant loss. And the higher difficulty ones will even UP THE SONG TEMPO. Arguably the most brutal of these is the one known as Lockstep Lockdown.. or as it's known as in Japan, Lockstep HELL where the game takes the most brutal of the "keep the beat songs" Lockstep where you have to tap A to the beat while also switching to tapping on the BACKBEAT at times (for those not as musically inclined, think going from tapping on ONE and TWO and... to tapping on one AND two AND), & has you play it four times in a row on the "don't mess up 3 times" challenge... WITH THE TEMPO INCREASING EACH TIME.

I had not yet played Pizza Rush, and now I wish I had before watching this video- that "boss rush" seems like an absolutely FANTASTIC idea I'd have loved to see happen unspoiled, just for the sheer impact of that realization that I wasn't locked up in here with them, they were locked up with ME. Oh well, you snooze, you lose.

In Breath of The Wild, if you're feeling cocky and try to take on Calamity Ganon before completing all four Divine Beasts, you're forced to take on every Blight Ganon you didn't defeat, at full power, one after the next. THEN, you have to deal with the big guy without the Divine Beasts blasting half of his healthbar away.

I feel like a good mention are the Ultimate Raids in the FFXIV. They're some of the hardest content in the game, with the most prestigious awards, and they're always a huge spectacle of both lore and mechanics when they come out. They're some of my favourite things to do in the game, so I'm very fond of them as boss rushes :D

A related idea I like is when a game reuses old bosses from early on that wouldn't be hard anymore but pairs them up into deadly combinations. You can even do this during a boss rush to make sure those bosses don't bore people on the way to the harder bosses.

I’m surprised to see that Kingdom Hearts hasn’t been mentioned with its Data Organization fights in KH2 and KH3. While kind of contrived in terms of explanation, both are great boss rushes in how they push already difficult fights to their limits and require the player to re-learn fights and execute at a higher level than the base game. KH3’s Data Org is especially amazing in how it redesigns basically every fight, giving them unique features that require the player to adapt to each fight and battle in a different way.

Mario Party DS was my favorite boss rush ever. I played it hundreds of times to get my time as low as possible. (for those who aren’t familiar, it’s based around speedrunning and tracks your best times)

I'd love another Boss Battle Design Video. I think there are still some great bosses to talk about.

My most memorable boss rush is to the rushing to type FIRST!!! in the comment section

Something I noted about Kirby Boss Rushes (at least in Forgotten Land) All of the bosses save for the final ones have their health decreased. I tend to notice it with the Forgo Bosses, were they go down faster in the Arena then when you face off against them in their dedicated stages.

While I wouldn't call it a boss rush per se, the Purple Gem Cup from Crash Team Racing definitely feels like one. The five Gem Cups are unlocked after winning four CTR Tokens of the same colour, and have you racing on all of the tracks those tokens came from consecutively, with higher positions awarding more points. The Purple Gem Cup is a little different though, as the Purple CTR Tokens are earned from Battle Arena challenges. So instead, the cup has you race against all of the bosses (except Oxide) simultaneously, on each of their respective boss tracks. They don't have any of their attacks from their Boss Races, but it's still an awesome moment. Also winning the cup unlocks Fake Crash, but everyone thought it would unlock Oxide going in, which is just hilarious.

The olympus and underworld cups in Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 work as boss rushes that spread out the boss fights by having you fight hordes of weaker enemies. This breaks the pace, but also can increase the endurance factor needed as a cure stray hits from the hordes of enemies can put you in a more challenging position for the bosses. And then there is the time trial mode where you have to beat everything in a limited amount of time. Additionally, Riku's Story in Re:Chain of Memories is basically just a boss rush as they take out the story from sora's adventures through the worlds, but keep the boss fights. This works well as you get to plow through the game and get to the main story beats while still having the worlds to level up and get better at the mechanics in.

I don't know if this would count persay, but something I've always loved about games are the Final Boss rushes at the end. Whether it's just the same enemy in 2-4 phases or different enemies coming to show up at the finale, I love being able to go through a long climactic battle against an enemy/enemies that are built up throughout the game

I have not consumed any media of Breathe Of The Wild but the Gimmick of battling bosses all over the world to weaken the finale or facing them alongside the final boss is such a cool concept, ditto with Shadow Of The Colossus and it's Bosses...

My favourite boss rush is from the anime Katanagatari. Sure, it's not a game, but it's definitely got one of the best boss rushes I've seen. Other than that, I really do like the Mega Man ones for the reasons you mentioned. You fight them with all weapons, and they're relatively quick fights. That also gives you a unique opportunity to defeat Metal Man with the Metal Blade. Copy bosses can also be fun, since they're often a bit more limited in length compared to the original bosses. Those are ones like Lavos from Chrono Trigger and Zant from Twilight Princess. They can also switch up the patterns or mechanics to suit the actual boss you're fighting. These also usually fit better, since they're part of the final (usually) boss rather than bringing back old ones, which means the boss feels stronger and more epic.

I'm so glad you included the Pizza Tower final boss fight, that game has one of the coolest final boss fights I've seen in awhile, it's not particularly hard but man is it awesome it also shows off how you should do a mandatory final boss rush, make it easier but on top of them making it easier they made it thematic with the game, the reason the boss rush is easier is because Peppino is at his breaking point, he's had enough, he wants to stop his pizza place from being destroyed and now nothing is gonna stop him, and that's why the fight is so awesome, you get to kick the previous bosses ass! And it's AWESOME!

Some fun things are when a game series that you know has boss rushes as a staple (Mega Man), do something slightly different. In Mega Man Zero 1, you fight a red electric beetle (and is later also re-fought in it's boss rush). In Zero 2, you fight his brother, a blue electric beetle, ready for revenge. But once you enter his rematch room in the final level, you don't just get the blue one, but BOTH red and blue, with a new moveset.

I've yet to play a game where the boss rush is just every boss at the same time, and they interact with eachother. That sounds awesome.

An unusual example comes from Gunstar Heroes, a game already choc-full of boss fights, which has at least 3 different kinds of boss rushes. There's Black's Dice Palace that features numerous minibosses, platforming challenges, and item rooms (which Cuphead's King Dice Game is no doubt based off of). There's Green's Seven Force Tunnel that has 7 unique bosses back-to-back (I think less bosses show up on easier difficulties). And even a revisit of all your foes right before the finale, but they all have new moves and arenas. In fact, not a single one of these boss rushes is a reuse of previous content, which is actually VERY impressive for its time. Not even the GBA remake, Gunstar Super Heroes, reuses the same boss fights from the original rushes. Everything's got a new twist for the hardware, and its just so rad. This IP was just full of original ideas.

When you said it is a segment of a game where you fight repeat bosses again. My first thought was "nah homie, don't forget about dedicated boss rush games like Furi" and in glad you even made that joke. Furi is such a good god damn game.