Awesome / Cuphead

As a Moment of Awesome page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!

KNOCKOUT!

Cuphead is a throwback to Nintendo Hard games like Contra, all with a 1930s rubber-hose animation style, so it makes sense that the game delivers on awesome moments that is both awe-inspiring and rewarding.

---

The Main Game:

• Cuphead pulling up his trousers in preparation for nearly every fight, showing he isn't afraid of even the toughest opponents. Similarly, Mugman is just as brave in the face of danger, even though the intro shows him to be even more aware of threats. Only the final bosses scare them.
• Ribby and Croaks fuse and become a slot machine that has to open to take any damage, providing a true challenge early on for Cuphead and Mugman.
• Many of the bosses define the word Determinator:
  • Wally Warbles' tenacity to keep fighting even when featherless and being carted on a stretcher. What a trooper.
    • This happens right after the player has defeated his son, making Willy cry desperately.
  • Cala Maria keeps fighting even when she's been reduced to a floating head.
  • Goopy Le Grande, whose gravestone continues to fight and try to crush the boys.
• Werner Werman for that Bait-and-Switch. Seriously, who saw that coming?
  • Double points for being one of only two bosses not to undergo any Voluntary Shapeshifting and instead rely solely on mechanical prowess. Werner is definitely Inkwell Isle's resident Badass Normal.
    • The other is Sally Stageplay, whose "Third Act" is a cardboard cutout. You can see strings attached to the hands and legs of the cutout, making her and Werner both bosses who fight on their merits for the most part — but only Sally fights without any massive upgrades to herself like Werner's Tank, Cap Buzzsaws, or Katzenwagen, albeit receiving a bit more outside assistance than he does.
• Doctor Kahl. It's his robot that owes his soul, and the scientist could build a new one in theory. But no. He joins the fight to protect his creation by using gems, and is very merciless about it.
• At the end of the Phantom Express level, after the Blind Specter, Conductor, and Lollipop Ghouls have been defeated, the Head of the Train has had enough. So what does it do? It pulls itself away from the rest of the train, transforms its wheels into legs, and starts galloping after the boys. During the fight, it starts shooting fireballs from the literal burning heart in its engine, as well as rings of flaming bones. And it never loses that colossal Slasher Smile even once. Creepy Awesome at its finest.
• Credit where credit is due, you got to give the boys props for managing to get the contracts within a day before their midnight deadline and likewise beating the Devil too and saving the residents of Inkwell Isle.
  • Not only did they beat the Devil, they actually beat him so badly that he's left crying for the whole final phase.
  • Equal credit must be given to the residents too. They all owe their souls to the Devil, so they know either he or someone else would eventually come around to collect them. And not a single one is going down without a fight.

The Delicious Last Course:

• The specials for Ms. Chalice do not disappoint! First is a vertical spiral of astral energy. The second is summoning a heart familiar that gives her an extra hitpoint and yes, it stacks. Last but definitely not least is Ms. Chalice becoming the hero she was in days of old and calling forth a stampede of the ghosts of her fallen comrades!
• Glumstone the Giant pulls a particularly shocking but no-less memorable move during their fight. Make it to the final phase of his battle and the mad mountain giant gets fed up and actually swallows the Cups with no issue! But does that discourage the Cups? Heck no! The fight continues from the inside against Glumstone's stomach as the Cups give him more than just a bit of indigestion.
• The stage "Bootlegger Boogie" has the heroes take on an entire insect smuggling ring, while at the same time a police force of ants attempts to intercept them, leading to the three forces attempting to defeat the other two. Just as the Moonshine Mob are on the ropes, they bust out their trump card: a giant anteater, which quite literally eats the police force for breakfast, leaving only the Cups and the Mob to fight it out.
  • And even after the anteater is dealt with, the mob boss (a snail) has one last trick up his sleeve: mimicking the announcer declaring a knockout, and attempting to surprise you with sound waves from his megaphone, potentially killing the player if they celebrate too soon. Though the snail himself goes down in literal seconds (he in fact has the lowest HP out of all the bosses), it's still an impressive show from such a small animal.
  Mob Boss Snail: Surprise! Forgetting about da boss ain't wise.
• Taking on the Howling Aces. Instead of using their own planes in a typical dogfight, the cups hitch a ride on Canteen’s plane while they try to shoot down the enemy aircraft. During the final phase, the Saluki's dachshund-shaped airship pulls a particularly shocking move by grabbing the game's camera and turning it 90 degrees counter-clockwise each attack phase. It has to be seen to be believed!
• Esther Winchester honestly puts the likes of Wally, Goopy, and Cala Maria to shame when it comes to being a Determinator. How so? Why, during her fight, her vacuum cannon malfunctions, sucks her in, and processes her into sausage links! And she just keeps going. Then, when you defeat her, she gets put into a can of sausages, and she's still going! It's only once you finally manage to beat that phase that she fully and truly kicks the can.
• Two bosses continue the proud tradition of being terrifying Determinator opponents:
  • The final boss, Chef Saltbaker, keeps going even after the Cups shatter his body, leaving him as just a heart and mound of salt.
  • But the game's most triumphant example belongs to Esther Winchester, who keeps fighting after being rendered down into sausages by her own malfunctioning equipment — and then keeps fighting after that body gets canned in turn! She must really want to keep her saloon's limes safe...
• The sheer spectacle that is the final boss of the Delicious Last Course.
  • All throughout the DLC, the Cups and Ms. Chalice have been gathering ingredients for the Wondertart, in what they thought was a plan to resurrect her for good. Returning to the bakery, they discover that not only has Saltbaker been planning to take the power for himself, he never told them the secret ingredient: a living soul. One of the Cups’ living souls. The presentation cutscene of Saltbaker as a villain is accompanied by an unnerving theme, some magnificent visuals, and stellar animation courtesy of Joseph Coleman.
  • Right after begins a final battle worthy of capping off the new adventure, involving the "good" chef sending the very ingredients the player gathered after them, eventually using a mushroom to grow giant-size and hold the player in his palm, wrecking his bakery as the battle drags on.
  • When Ms. Chalice and friends finally best him — with his own pepper shaker minions, at that! — he shatters, collapsing, and the players falls onto the final battlefield, which can only be described as a bonafide hellscape made up of Saltbaker's broken body, the collapsing bakery, and a veritable desert's worth of salt, which comes alive and attacks you.
  • For the finale, as two streams of salt storm down with Saltbaker's various faces forming in them, the Cups are forced to stand on falling pieces of Saltbaker's original glass body while his still-beating heart tries to kill them. They pull it off, free whomever's spirit he had trapped (depending on whether you picked Cuphead or Mugman and if you did the fight as Chalice), and escape the bakery before it comes crashing down.
• A moment for Ms. Chalice — she rejects the Wondertart as a method of resurrection. The price is too high. Ms. Chalice's reputation as a hero isn't undeserved at all — given how much she wants to live again, it's a sign of her Heroic Willpower that she's able to resist such incredible temptation.
  • Also a moment of awesome for her not giving up — it would be easy to be crushed after such a betrayal, since the quest for the Wondertart proved to be All for Nothing, but Ms. Chalice remains determined to find a way to live again! Considering that the epilogue shows her with a physical body, she very likely managed to do so.
• The Nightmare is a very disturbing boss. It doesn't help that whether the player wins or loses, Cuphead/Mugman/Ms. Chalice falls victim to some horrible curse. However, after beating the boss once, you can choose to replay it by holding the shoulder buttons on your controller when you're near the center gravestone. The rematch becomes awesome if you imagine it as part of the story: Even after going through so much trouble and horror, Cuphead/Mugman/Ms. Chalice is still willing to fight the Nightmare again, just because they can.
• Beating up to eight bosses with the Cursed Relic, which sets your HP to 1 and randomly swaps between all of your weapons and charms each fight, upgrades it into the Divine Relic, which grants you simultaneous access to all of your weapons (albeit still randomized) and the combined effects of the Whetstone, Coffee, Smoke Bomb, and Heart Ring, letting you unload your full arsenal on every single boss in the game, no matter the difficulty. Have fun breaking everything — with how challenging the upgrade process is, you've certainly earned it.
  • A small detail but when the cursed relic is equipped, the overworld music changes to something ominous, otherworldly, but once you beat enough bosses with it and unlock the "Paladin" achievement, the music changes to something far more triumphant. The kind of music that plays in a knighting ceremony. As if the game itself is recognizing you as a hero!
• The fact that Cuphead and Mugman did all this for the ingredients of a tart that gives you control over the astral plane.
• An example of both funny and awesome: The physical limited collector edition for Cuphead in Japan ships with artwork from Yoshitaka Amano. Yes, that Yoshitaka Amano.

---