Sequential Boss / Platform Game

• Banjo-Kazooie: In each game except (ironically, considering the name) Grunty's Revenge, Gruntilda challenges the bear and bird in a multi-phase showdown. In Banjo-Tooie, Lord Woo Fak Fak and Weldar have two phases each as well (the former opens his eyes during the second phase, and the latter electrifies the floor after the end of his first). Other apparent examples, like Targitzan, Old King Coal and Mingy Jongo, actually invoke Didn't Need Those Anyway! instead; their tactics remain the same otherwise.
• Bagular in Bomberman Hero has three forms with no breaks in between (besides a cutscene after beating the first form and another after the second). Also, your score will keep ticking down throughout each of the forms.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day:
  • Haybot is fought in two phases: When he's covered in a pile of haystack, and when his robotic body is exposed.
  • In the rematch against the wasp army, Conker has to shoot the incoming wasps during the first phase, and then escape with the stolen beehive while dodging the last three wasps' stings in the second.
  • The Experiment is fought in three phases: He and the Little Girl shoot a downpour of bullets in the first, fire a continuous energy laser in the second, and shoot missiles in the third.
• Donkey Kong Country
  • Donkey Kong Country: The final boss of the game is King K. Rool. After you defeat him, fake credits roll by. After the credits, the boss gets up for a second go.
  • Donkey Kong 64:
    • The rematch against Dogadon, who is then challenged by Chunky, has two phases: The first is just a harder version of its first boss fight (against Diddy), while the second has Dogadon stomp the floor to make it gradually sink into the lava and force Chunky to grow big with his enlarge ability and hit the boss directly.
    • The final battle is a five-round boxing match with K. Rool, with each round featuring a different playable character.
  • Donkey Kong Country Returns: Mugly and Thugly have three phases each, an in turn each phase the bosses get angrier and attack more aggressively (especially Thugly). Colonel Pluck and the Final Boss Tiki Tong have two each: Pluck, upon seeing that the legs of its Mini-Mecha were destroyed, will attack rapidly while it's hovering in the air; Tiki Tong, after losing his hands, fires multiple projectiles from his head.
  • Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze: Every boss in the game, from the first to the last, has three phases. Some bosses simply attack faster, but others add new attacks and two of them have to be attacked differently depending on the phase (whether stomping them or throwing an enemy at them).
• Kevin and ACE, both of the bosses in Gamer 2, have to be defeated twice during their respective fights.
• I Wanna Be the Guy:
  • The Guy has two forms with six increasingly overpowered methods of attack. The game actually tries to trick you into thinking you've won halfway through, right before it gets insane.
  • The Koopa Clown Car fight earlier in the game pits you against Bowser, Wart, and Wily in sequence.
• The Jungle Book has the Witch Doctor, a boss that consists of 3 monkeys standing on top of each other, and carrying a large wooden shield. First, you have to fight him while they are working together, walking from left to right and throwing projectiles at you. When that is done, they split up (with each monkey taking a part of the shield with him) and Mowgli has to defeat them each separately.
• Kero Blaster:
  • When you come to the end of the final level, first you have to fight the possessed, horribly deformed company president. Then, after defeating her, she reverts to a less-freakish, less-swelled up form, but gets a new health bar and continues the fight with a completely different attack pattern. When you win this fight, she completely returns to normal which would make you think that it's over. However, she then shortly afterward is eaten by a glitch monster, which is the true final boss. However, as a mercy, if you run out of lives and have to start the level over during the third phase, when you get back to the end of the level you don't have to re-fight the first two.
  • The final boss of Zangyou mode, the Work Producing Machine salesman, is a three-phase fight with each phase taking place in a different arena in the sky. Unlike in normal mode, you must beat all three phases in one life.
• Kirby games will have anything from two-to-four boss battles in a row for the Final Confrontation.
  • Kirby Super Star:
    • The Arena (mini-)game is a Boss Rush with limited healing.
    • Super Star Ultra introduced Helper to Hero, which is basically the Arena, but using the Helpers for each copy power instead of Kirby.
    • And then there's the True Arena, a Nintendo Hard ten-round Boss Rush with all of the upgraded "Revenge" bosses from Revenge of the King as well as Masked Dedede, Wham-Bam Jewel, Galacta Knight, and the brand-new Marx Soul with even less healing than the first Arena.
  • Kirby's Dream Land 3:
    • The fourth boss, Ado, summons the Ice Dragon, Sweet Stuff, Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright, and Kracko, right before Ado charges. Ado only takes a slide or exhale to beat, but some of the Kirby's Dream Land 2 bosses are rather tough.
    • The last boss, DeDeDe, is identical to the last boss of the previous game, except he doesn't Turn Red, but after you put his life to zero, he starts flying and has really scary attacks. If you had all the Heart-Stars when you beat him, you unlock the True Final Boss. Once you enter, you fight Dark Matter, the last boss of the previous game. After you finally defeat him, the screen flashes and the True True Final Boss appears out of nowhere. He splits parts of himself open to shoot blood at you, and he could do it from the background, causing the blood to hit the screen. After you take all his HP down, his Iris rips out in incredibly gory manner and you have to fight him again, and this time he's bleeding and chases you. And this is a KIRBY game.
  • The final battles of Kirby & the Amazing Mirror. There are four different forms (including the fight with Dark Meta Knight), but the second of those must be defeated four times over.
  • The Final Boss of Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, Miracle Matter, plays with this. Like the final bosses of Kirby & the Amazing Mirror, it has seven forms. Instead of going one after one, it alternates between each form. Defeating each form destroys Miracle Matter. So far, however, the final battles of Amazing Mirror and Miracle Matter are tied for the most forms in the series, despite being done differently.
  • The final boss of Kirby's Return to Dream Land has three parts to it. First a Shmup battle with the Lor Starcutter, who uses techniques Kabula, Dark Matter, and Zero used with its own moves. Then, Magolor is fought, who takes his lead mainly from Marx. After that, he goes into a second form that looks like Dark Mind and can use Super Abilities at will. In Extra Mode, the Metal General becomes one of these, summoning HR-D3 after it's defeated and piloting it. HR-D3 itself has two forms.
  • In Kirby: Triple Deluxe, the final battles consist of a two-part battle with a mind-controlled King Dedede, Queen Sectonia, then after a brief interlude, a two-part battle with the queen's One-Winged Angel form. The game's equivalent to extra mode, Dededetour!, skips Masked Dedede for fairly obvious reasons, but instead has Queen Sectonia DX followed by Shadow Dedede and then Dark Meta Knight. The True Arena gives Sectonia's final form, now dubbed Soul of Sectonia, an additional phase.
  • Kirby: Planet Robobot:
    • The second boss, Holo Defense API, is a clear callback to Ado and like her recreates four previous bosses: Kracko, a pair of Doomers, the Ice Dragon (again) and Coily Rattler.
    • The game ends with fights against Mecha Knight+, President Haltmann, then three forms of Star Dream. In Meta Knightmare Returns, there's President Haltmann 2.0, Dark Matter Clone, Sectonia Clone, and finally Galacta Knight. In the True Arena the Dark Matter and Sectonia clones are fought back-to-back with no rest in between and Star Dream Soul OS, like Soul of Sectonia, now has a fourth form.
  • Kirby Star Allies:
    • King Dedede's boss fight will have him start off normally, but once roughly half of his health is gone, he will become incredibly muscular and changes his entire strategy. Kracko also starts off normally, before dividing himself in two, larger Krackos known as Twin Kracko.
    • The endgame has a rematch against Zan Partizanne, a two-phase fight with Hyness, and a four-phase fight with Void Termina. Unlike Queen Sectonia and Star Dream, Void Termina has four forms even in the normal game (and there is no rest between any of them), and while he does not have an extra form in the Ultimate Choice, its highest difficulty, Soul Melter, has an overall more difficult variation of his fight, as he has more attacks, stronger versions of preexisting attacks, and an even harder version of his final form, which is renamed Void Soul. And then when the 4.0 update introduced Soul Melter EX difficulty, he becomes even stronger in the preceding three forms, with the final form replaced with a being simply called Void.
    • The sub-game "Guest Star ????" has the same bosses as the story's endgame, but replaces Void Termina with Morpho Knight. And the Version 4.0 update brings us "Heroes in Another Dimension", which changes up the fight against Kracko; the first phase is against the Twin Krackos, then the second is against a single, merged, enormous Big Kracko. In addition, the endgame consists of a two-phased fight against Corrupt Hyness, then immediately followed by fighting all Three Mage Sisters at once.
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land
    • The endgame consists of a two-phased battle with Forgo Dedede, followed immediately by a fight against Leongar, then Fecto Forgo, and finally Fecto Elfilis.
    • The final stage of the Isolated Isles of Forgo Dreams consists of a two-phased fight against Forgo Leon, where he's Brainwashed and Crazy in the first phase and straight up possessed by Forgo in the second. Immediately following that is a battle against Morpho Knight, with no room to rest in-between. Finally, within the Colosseum is The Ultimate Cup Z and its True Final Boss, Chaos Elfilis, which gains an additional phase akin to the series' traditional Soul battles.
• La-Mulana raises the roof with a five-stage Final Boss battle, with no saves or health recharges.
• Present in all of the LittleBigPlanet games:
  • LittleBigPlanet 1 ^{The Boss}The battle is against the Collector's mechs. The first mech moves back and forth above the area before slamming down and trying to kill Sackboy with the spikes it has on the bottom. There is a Creature Brain on each side that the player has to hit when the boss slams down. After hitting both of the brains, the boss creates two more, and begins shooting electricity when it's above the battlefield. After destroying those brains, the first mech is killed. The platform Sackboy is on goes up to a second mech. This one tries to squish Sackboy with his fists and spawns enemies that sweep an electric bar above them. After killing those enemies, he will resume punching. There are two Creature Brains on both sides of both fists. After hitting those brains, the fists open to reveal two more Brains. Sackboy must hit those when the fists slam down. After doing that, the fists break apart and the mech loses them. He now moves back and forth and shoots electricity to the sides. After doing this for a moment, he jumps up and slams down, causing electric blocks to fall down from the ceiling. He has 7 Brains. 2 can be hit when the mech is moving back and forth, two can be hit when the mech compresses and stays still, and 3 require a block that falls down after the boss slams down. After hitting all of the brains, the second mech is defeated and the battle is over.
  • LittleBigPlanet 2 ^{The Boss}This battle is against the Negativitron. At first, you are using the Hamstertron 2000 in a half-pipe area, avoiding the Negativitron's lasers and hitting the brains that spawn on top of his head. After hitting 5 brains, the Negativitron retreats through the ceiling and a path opens to the next segment. Upon entering the path, your Hamstertron self-destructs and you fall onto a platform with Bounce Pads and a Grappling Hook. The Negativitron bursts in from the left wall and begins sucking platforms from the right side of the screen into his mouth. The platforms have sponge on the bottom and Bounce Pads on the top, and you have to survive until Higginbotham shoots a missile into the Negativitron's mouth, at which point it closes and a brain on top of his head can be hit. After hitting four brains, the Negativitron retreats through the wall he burst in through, and two paths on the ground (leading to the same area) open. Upon entering the path, your Grappling Hook is replaced with a set of Grabinators, and the Negativitron bursts through the ceiling. He fires lasers in a pattern that increases in speed each time you hit him, before eventually trying to crush you with his face. While he does, either Da Vinci or Victoria will give you a cake to throw at his brain, and after hitting four more brains, you're warped to a place with a single brain on a piece of jelly floating in the air. Upon popping this brain, the Negativitron is defeated.
• The second Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest features several:
  • Haunt Man starts his battle by possessing a knight statue. Once that's destroyed, he then goes into a wizard statue... and once that's destroyed, all that's left is Haunt Man himself, a Zero-Effort Boss whose sole attack is easily avoided.
  • Seven Force (yes, like the Gunstar Heroes mech) has seven forms and as many health bars, though they each take slightly more damage than the average boss.
  • Wily Machine SWORD has two health bars. The first health bar is like a regular Wily fight, but the second is effectively four forms, each taking a quarter of the health bar, as it recycles the gimmick from "Identity Crisis" and forces Mega Man to transform each time a quarter of its health is taken off.
  • Absolute Zero has four forms with one health bar each. The first two are difficult and flashy, as befits the True Final Boss. The third form turns out to be a Clipped-Wing Angel that can only do 1 point of damage with its attacks, and the final form can't do anything to hurt you.
• Essentially every Mega Man game has had this type of final boss.
  • Dr. Wily (switched ships)
  • Sigma (switched bodies)
  • Copy-X, Elpizo, Omega, and Dr. Weil (activated their One-Winged Angel; while Omega takes it one step further by emerging from the wrecked remains of his transformed Powered Armor for Round 3).
  • Mega Man ZX takes the cake in that Serpent has two forms, but his second form has three phases where he loses old attacks, gains new ones, and switches up where his weak spot is with each one of his three life bars knocked off.
  • There's also Morph Moth from Mega Man X2, who starts out as a chrysalis, then becomes a moth after half his health is gone.
  • Mega Man V's final boss. First you fight the four forms of the Wily Machine (each of the arms individually, the Wily Machine proper, and then the Wily Capsule), and then you fight Sunstar. He only has one health bar, but he has three forms to whittle down (and no weaknesses, either). That's two bosses with seven phases between them.
• All three Ninja Gaiden games for the NES had multi-form bosses in the final battle, usually consisting of three separate phases.
• The final boss of Rainbow Islands is a giant bubble dragon that turns into a skeleton after defeat. The skeleton's bones crumble and the remaining skull is a giant Skel-Monsta which you have to defeat.
• The final bosses in the first three Rayman games were sequential.
  • Rayman: Mr. Dark assaults you for a bit, then disappears and sics three mash-ups of the previous bosses on you.
  • Rayman 2: The Great Escape: You fight Golgroth on the Crow's Nest, then both of you fall into a lava-filled chamber for Round 2.
  • Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc: The battle against Reflux gets a bit ridiculous. First, you fight his normal form, then he transforms into a giant, warty monster. After that, he grows some wings and you have to work your way up to his level and shoot missiles at him. Then, you have a dogfight with him and, finally, use the same plane to kill a ton of Hoodlums before they regenerate his health.
• Rockman 4 Minus ∞:
  • After you knock Pharaoh Man down to a low amount of HP in his stage, he goes berserk, destroying his arena in the process. He then receives power from the pyramid to heal himself, activates the pyramid's curse, and fights you again.
  • After beating Joe Ni-Nin Va All, he blows up and turns into 2 Sniper Joes.
  • After beating Snatchman, he steals 4 of your weapons to become a more complete Mirror Boss.
• Shovel Knight. Tinker Knight at first appears to just be a poor coward who runs around and throws wrenches. His second phase? A GIANT TANK THAT SHOOTS BOMBS AND MISSILES!
• Several times in the Sonic the Hedgehog series.
  • Sonic 2 ended with a fight against Silver Sonic, and then Robotnik's Humongous Mecha. With no rings for either fight.
  • In Sonic 3, Launch Base Zone ends with three fights against Robotnik, in three different vehicles, with nothing but a cutscene between them.
    Oddly, when the this level is played as part of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, you only fight two of these bosses. Sonic and Tails skip the third, while Knuckles skips the first.
  • In Sonic and Knuckles, Death Egg Zone ends with a fight against a Puzzle Boss, then a two-stage fight against the Great Eggman Robo, and finally a chase sequence where you have to destroy Robotnik's escape pod. (Sonic can also fight a True Final Boss immediately after this if he gathers the Chaos Emeralds over the course of the game, but it's counted as a separate level.) Meanwhile, Knuckles' game ends in Sky Sanctuary Zone, fighting Mecha Sonic and then Super Mecha Sonic.
  • In Sonic Triple Trouble, the game's final level, Atomic Destroyer Zone Act 3, has five separate boss phases: first Metal Sonic, then after a short platforming segment and a checkpoint, four machines piloted by Eggman — a spring pod machine, a flamethrower machine, an electric machine, and then a laser trap room with the boss pod circling through pipes on both sides of the room.
  • Sonic Adventure does it weird: once you've depleted the final boss's life meter... it comes back with another life meter. It's a bit tougher, but otherwise nothing's changed except the music.
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, the player must fight the Biolizard directly before the FinalHazard. However, the two battles are not particularly connected other than being sequential, and how well you do on the Biolizard has no bearing on the difficulty of the FinalHazard. Similarly, you face the Egg Golem with Sonic immediately after battling King Boom Boo with Knuckles.
  • Sonic Heroes plays it straight with Metal Madness/Metal Overlord, a four-stage boss.
  • Sonic Unleashed does it again with the Egg Dragoon and Dark Gaia (the latter being a three-stage fight).
• Spinmaster: The Final Boss, Dr. DePlayne, needs to be defeated five times. Initially a headless Greek statue, Dr. DePlayne animates it by piloting a robotic head and attaching himself to the neck, firstly an animated vase, then a dragon's head, then a Cyclops, a Medusa, and finally Dr. DePlayne himself in a hovering ship.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario World: The final battle against Bowser is divided into three phases. In the first, Bowser simply throws Mechakoopas at Mario; in the second, he starts dropping enormous lead balls before throwing the Mechakoopas; in the third, Bowser gets furious and continuously tries to squash Mario or Luigi with the Clown Car, only occasionally throwing Mechakoopas. In all cases, Mario or Luigi has to throw back the Mechakoopas.
  • Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins: Wario is the final boss of the game, and challenges Mario in three phases: He uses his brute force in the first, uses the Bunny powerup to hover and try to squash Mario from the top in the second, and uses the Fire Flower powerup to throw fireballs at him in the third.
  • Super Mario Galaxy: The final boss battle against Bowser at the end of the game, which starts off with Bowser turning into a rock (which later inspired the rock power-up from the sequel) and charging at you, and Mario/Luigi actually had to spin his face to defeat him, then Bowser curls up into his shell and starts charging at you again, but this time, because of the spikes on his shell, Mario/Luigi actually had to slap rubber plants onto Bowser to knock him out, and finally Bowser starts chasing you, and as a result you have to lure him into a puddle of lava to make his tail catch fire, then spin him to take him down completely!
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2: The final battle has two parts, with the first being a harder version of the first two Bowser duels.
  • Super Mario 3D Land: The final Bowser battle, where Mario and Bowser start chasing each other through the hallways of the castle. During the fight, Bowser mostly resorts to shooting fire out of his mouth, and then for some reason he starts throwing barrels at Mario. The remainder of the battle has Bowser shooting plasma jets at Mario, before finally being thrown into a pit of lava and being hit on the head by a boulder mid-air.
  • Super Mario 3D World: In the first phase of the final battle, Meowser attacks Mario and his friends as they attempt to climb the skyscraper. After hitting him with a POW block halfway through the climb, Meowser uses a Double Cherry to create clones of himself and the second phase begins.
  • Super Mario Bros. Wonder: Bowser has four phases in his battle, though the strategy is the same in the first three: Mario and his friends have to time their jumps according to the beats of the stage's ongoing musical performance so they can hit the boss's weak point; each time they land two hits, Bowser retaliates by sending fiery Chomps that must be avoided and then the next phase (which adds one floating hand for Bowser and divides the floor so each part requires timing the jumps at a different time) changes. In the final phase, the heroes must hit the top of Bowser's head instead.
  • Wario Land: Shake It!: The Final Boss (The Shake King) has multiple stages in the battle, with two or three stages in the first battle, each adding a few more attacks, then straight after the real final battle with the deadly energy beam and lightning attacks found normally against One-Winged Angel type final bosses.
• Wacky Races (1991): Every boss has two phases; they enter their second phase after they're down to exactly half HP, from there they use new, more aggressive attack patterns.

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