5 Best Mario Final Bosses!

So, Mario has appeared in a grand total of 167 different games in his lifetime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mario_games_by_year). It was a little difficult to sift through the games and try and find the best final bosses, but there are some really great ones that definitely stand out for me. I present to you, the 5 best bosses from any Mario game, in no particular order.

1. Giant Bowser - New Super Mario Bros. Wii

 

 

He's like 500x your size

Once you reach Bowser, he's relatively simple to take down. It's awkward because it's so easy, and you have just completed some of the hardest levels in any platforming game. Then he suddenly emerges from the lava as GIANT BOWSER and chases you out of his castle. Not only was this fight completely unexpected, but theres virtually no way to defeat him. Also, when he takes up a good 60% of your 52' Plasma TV, he really does seem overwhelmingly huge.

2. Donkey Kong - Donkey Kong

Angry monkey, throw barrel, steal woman!

The first villain in a Mario game, even before Mario was the main character. He's a great boss for a few reasons. First off, he's always on screen, waiting for you, taunting you and pelting you for minutes with barrels over and over. Second, he hits Mario at his heart, by stealing his beloved woman. Turns out Donkey Kong wasn't all that evil, simply confused and probably drugged up or something.

3. King Boo - Luigi's Mansion

King Boo pops out of Bowser's Head!

After playing through an entire game set in the Mario universe, and a game about a ghost-filled haunted mansion, you see very few of the classic Boos that you've seen in every other Mario game. Turns out the real Boo is hidden inside a fake bowser. Getting to this final boss was a nice treat because you finally saw the classic style Boo that you had grown up with in other Mario games. All the other ghosts in this game looked so weird and out of place.

4. Shadow Queen - Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door

Controlling Princess Peach

This boss was absolutely terrifying. Not only did she have creepy attacks, and creepy sound effects, but she just looks scary as hell. Her attacks consist of, glaring at you for massive damage, summoning hundreds of little hands to grope you with, draining life with her weird vibrating hand, and blasting out waves of dark energy. Definitely difficult, fun and atmospheric.

5. Smithy - Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Get in there with the Lazy Shell!

Reach Bowser's Castle in this game, and you end up in Smithy's Factory, where the bearded hammer-wielding king resides and creates his infinite army. He isnt terribly strong for the first part of the battle. He hits you with a giant sledge every so often, and creates some enemies. But once you enter the 2nd phase, all hell breaks loose. He is far stronger and more resilient and his head changes into a lot of random things like a tank, a wizard and a refrigerator. The background field you fight on is also just a bunch of his heads scatter all around. It's all a very surreal experience.

Zelda Marathon in 24 Hours Results!

So I finally tried it. I tried to complete Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess all in 24 hours! How'd it go? Well...

Link's foreshadowing dream of entering Hyrule Castle

I started Ocarina at 10:30am after a great Tim Hortons run. Most of my play through went quite well, actually. I severely messed up on Ghoma at the beginning, it's not very difficult to kill her in about 30 seconds, but I stumbled. From there on, it went great. The Forest Temple gave me a little bit of trouble and I had lost to Phantom Ganon a few too many times. Morpha also took me a little longer than expected. The Spirit Temple is where I lost the most time, however. As a child I was severely lacking in Deku Stick and Magic drops, so I was frantically warping to the Lost Woods to try and find some Deku sticks and magic, wasting a good extra half hour. Eventually I made my way to Ganon, skipped Ganon's Castle Trials with great ease on the first try. It's an awesome glitch where I can skip through the barrier blocking Ganon's final room by clipping through a wall into the next room, but the graphics are loaded (including the barrier) and I can simply walk into the room. I make it to Ganondorf, and it takes me 3 tries to beat him. It takes me another 2 tries to beat Ganon, and when you die to Ganon, you have to run down the castle again. It total I lost about 15-20 minutes on the final boss battles.

It took me roughly 10 hours to beat Ocarina, which was the absolute most time I had planned on spending on this game. At this point, I had to make nearly perfect runs on Wind Waker and Twilight Princess to make my 24 hour limit.

Link playing the Wind's Requiem on his Wind Waker

I begin Wind Waker at about 8:30pm, and for the most part, I do quite well. I make pretty good time on most of the game. I stumble a little on the first time at Forsaken Fortress by not using the 100% ideal route, and lose about 5 minutes. I complete the next 3 dungeons in very good time, and underneath the sea in Hyrule Castle, I have a little trouble finding and defeating all the enemies after pulling the Master Sword. My second time at the Forsaken Fortress also goes a little wrong, when I miss the ladder on my timesaving skip. I end up walking around trying to find a magic drop so I can use the Deku Leaf and float around the fortress. Eventually, after about 5-10 minutes of wasted time, I get to the Helmaroc King. The run goes extremely smoothly after that, both the Earth Temple and Wind Temple go without too many hitches. A few minor fumbles here and there probably loses me a total of 10 more minutes. Getting the triforce shards went well, I skipped used the Bait Bag skip trick with no problems at all, but I had to spend about 10 minutes too long getting my rupees up to 3,182 to pay for Tingle to decipher all my charts. Ganon's castle went pretty well, the trials were all easy, but I lost to Puppet Ganon once, which costed me about 15 minutes since it's such a long boss battle. I take out Ganondorf at the end in my fastest time to date.

I immidiately switch disks to Twilight Princess after I stab Ganondorf in the head. I finish Wind Waker at about 6:00am, which does not leave me with very much time. I had hoped to beat it in about 8-9 hours, but it's okay.

Link against the Forest Temple mini-boss

I was quite prepared for Twilight Princess to go well and fast. I can skip every cutscene (unlike the other two games) and I had found two glitches to skip almost all of the first dungeon, and another glitch to skip another dungeon and a half later on, which cuts down my playtime by about a total of 2 hours. I begin promptly and am doing very well, until I hit the first dungeon, the Forest Temple. I miss the Wind Bridge skip a few times, costing me about 5 minutes, and It takes me a good 10 minutes more to Long Jump Glitch over the large chasm to the boss room. Eventually I make it and take down the boss very fast. The problem for me here, is that I am starting to feel really, really tired. I had been up for over 20 hours playing Zelda and as I was going to Kakariko Village to collect twilght bugs, I was feeling in that half dream/half awake state, and I was collecting bugs at an atrociously slow pace. My girlfriend Emilie was trying to stay awake with me as well, but it was really difficult. Reading my notes I had written became a huge problem as words started to blend on the page. Apparently drinking 2 cans of Red Bull does not actually keep me awake.

At 8:30am, I have still not collected all the bugs in the Eldin province and I decide to just go to sleep. I am starting to not feel well, and a video game is not as important as my sanity, not my body functioning at all the next day.

With all the glitches I would have used, I was roughly 1/4 through Twilight Princess when I decided to call it quits. I am almost certain, had I been awake and aware for the entire run, I could have probably beaten, or come very close to beating, Twilight Princess before the 24 hours were up. I am very familiar with the quickest route, and I have become good at combat to beat enemies and bosses quickly.

Overall, still an extremely fun marathon! Lots of friends showed up, Nachos and Candy apples and potatoes and sausages were made, Tim Horton breakfast was awesome! I think I will do another Zelda Marathon, however, I don't really want to do the tedious tasks in Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, such as collecting bugs, or collecting triforce shards. I may do A Link to the Past, or Majora's Mask, or some other game!

Top 10 most difficult Zelda Dungeons

If you've been playing Zelda for any period of time, you'd know quite well that there are some dungeons out there that will keep you scratching the old noggin for days, or even weeks, on end. I've been playing a lot of Zelda recently because I'm going to *attempt* to try and beat Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess all in 24 hours.

10. Spirit Temple - Ocarina of Time

First room in the Spirit Temple

This dungeon is one of my favourites in any game. The design and progression was actually quite straightforward and not too difficult to navigate, however puzzles in each individual room were big headscratchers. Not only that, this dungeon contained 3 mini-bosses, and one hit from an Iron Knuckle takes a good 1/3 of your entire health.

9. Arbiter's Grounds - Twilight Princess

Outside the Arbiter's Grounds

Not only does this game have a whopping nine dungeons, most of them are quite difficult to get through. Not necessarily confusing, just difficult rooms or portions. In the Arbiter's Grounds I distinctly remember having a hard time using the Spinner the first time I got it. You have to navigate these tracks really precisely, and there are always spikey things going back and forth. I've fallen off at least 40 times in that room alone. Not to mention, the Boss MUST be beat using the spinner.

8. Mermaid's Cave - Oracle of Ages

First room of Mermaid's Cave

The main theme of this game was going back in time and back to the present, over and over and over. Up until the 6th dungeon, you would never have to travel in time while actually trying to complete a dungeon. I hated this one, because once you had completed one small task in the present, you had to go out of the dungeon, find a warp point and go back in time. Then, you had to revisit the dungeon in the past, do a simple task, leave, find another warp point, go back to the present, into the dungeon, something changed, and you had to repeat the process over and over. I used so many AA Batteries trying to beat this one.

7. Shadow Temple - Ocarina of Time

Main room in the Shadow Temple

This dungeon was legitimately scary. From the mini-boss Dead Hand, which looks like some blood-stained, deformed, overweight, zombie pedophile, to the hallways where Skultulla's just jump out at you and seriously freak you out. It's horror theme made it feel like a tougher dungeon than it probably was, but it was still far from easy. Thank god for the Lens of Truth!

6. Wind Temple - Wind Waker

The main wind tunnel in the Wind Temple

This place was just plain confusing. Doors all over, 5 stories of where-the-hell-do-I-go-next, and you don't even get the hookshot till near the very end. Not to mention, you have to carry that pathetic sapling Makar around everywhere. At least he gets stuck in a jail cell early on and you don't have to worry about him.

5. Palace of Winds - The Minish Cap

Entrance to the Palace of Winds

I never actually beat this game, and this temple, the 2nd last one in the game, had me stopped dead in my tracks. The amount of enemies is absurd, and when you finally manage to get through, you have to complete puzzles that seem to have no solution. The frustration of dying countless times, in combination with unprecedented level design and challenge make this dungeon one of the hardest I've ever played.

4. Ice Palace - A Link to the Past

Somewhere in the Ice Palace

I believe this was one of the first instances in a Zelda game where the ice made you slide.  I don't remember too much of this dungeon from my childhood, except it was quite a nightmare to try and keep my footing. Even pushing blocks became extremely difficult on ice. I'm also sure this is the dungeon that turned me off from Zelda games for a few years.

3. Palace of Twilight - Twilight Princess

The courtyard of the Palace of Twilight

So, if anyone has played this dungeon, they know how frustrating those floating hands are. They are the single most frustrating enemies in any Zelda game I've ever played. The worst part is, they don't even hurt you. They just steal the light source that you need to take back to the main area out front. The enemies are also quite tough, and although this dungeon is extremely straightforward, it is one of the most frustrating, even if you know EXACTLY what to do and how to do it. Luckily, once you bring the two light sources back outside, your Master Sword becomes light infused, souped up beyond belief and One-Hit-K-O's every single enemy in that dungeon.

2. Stone Tower Temple - Majora's Mask

Inverted first room of the Stone Tower Temple

This was an amazing dungeon. You had to solve very difficult puzzles using all four of Link's forms, and you could flip the entire temple upside down! It was insanely fun to play through, very tough to navigate, and the theme of the temple was making fun of the goddesses of Hyrule and even the Triforce. Definitely one of the best dungeons in any Zelda game.

1. Water Temple - Ocarina of Time

Main hub of the Water Temple

For anyone that has played Ocarina, it shouldn't be surprising that this dungeon has made it to #1. It is the most confusing dungeon I've personally ever tackled in a Zelda game. There were so many directions and places to explore right from the beginning, and changing the water levels added about 3 more layers of complexity. Not only that, pausing to put on and taking off the Iron Boots really slowed down the pace from swimming slow to pausing-every-10-seconds slow. You could easily sink a good 15 hours in the place and still feel like you've gotten nowhere. You constantly feel like you are going in circles, and having to come back to the main room so often makes it feel like you have not made any progress. On top of that, in the original N64 version, it was possible to use a key on the *wrong* door, actually locking you out from beating the dungeon. Your only option was to reset and start a new game. And you'd better not lose to the mini-boss, Dark Link. An extremely difficult boss battle, and if you died, you are sent back to the beginning of the temple. Good luck finding out where to go again. What a nightmare.

If there are any dungeons i've missed, or you would like to discuss, feel free to post a comment!