That One Boss / Bomberman

Good luck making it out of this in one piece.

NO!! NOT THE HOMING MISSILES!!!

If there's one thing that people tend to remember about the Bomberman series, more often than not it's the bosses. Bosses in this series tend to be controller-throwingly difficult, often due to a rather unfortunate habit of Fake Difficulty. And if you die and use a continue... As such, the series has officially earned its own page.

Note: Unless they are overly difficult for their standards, Wake-Up Call Bosses and Final Bosses aren't allowed.

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Examples (sorted by sub-series or console-type):

Super Bomberman series

Super Bomberman

• The Eight Mecha Bombers from World 5. Each one (save for the last one) is fairly weak offense-wise and will go down in one hit. However, what they lack in offense is made up for by a devious defense that exploits the game's time limit system, as each robot will dodge your bombs easily (unless you exploit their A.I. using Remote Bombs & the Boxing Glove) with the intent to waste your time. There are three problems with this.
  • Firstly, the time limit is clearly meant for regular stages, which can be beaten in a minute or less, not a Boss Rush which will take several minutes to clear.
  • Secondly, there are no soft blocks in the stage. Instead, power-ups spawn in randomly, including the clock item that resets the timer!
  • Lastly, the final robot, Gold Mecha Bomberman, has multiple hit-points and a strong offense. This, combined with the timer issue mentioned above result in a Boss Rush where a deathless run is completely luck based.

Super Bomberman 2

• Skele Guard, the World 5 boss, can be very troublesome, even for experienced Bombers. His first attack is a charge that's really easy to avoid on its own...provided that you know about it, of course. However, his second attack (which is the worse of two evils) has him spawn three Skull Ghosts that can corner you (in a game where you're a One-Hit-Point Wonder, this is a terrifying thing)! The worse part, however, is the fact that he can combine his attacks, meaning you can run away from the ghosts, only to get rammed into by Skele Guard! Also, he takes FOREVER to kill.

Super Bomberman 3

• Bagura/Bagular/Buglar/Buglear/Buggler can be a nuisance if you're not very cautious. His primary tactic is to throw Rubber Bombs all over the place while protecting himself with a barrier. Afterwards, his barrier will briefly disappear, giving you a tiny amount of time to attack. If you do manage to hit him, he'll spawn a bunch of living Bombs. This is where the real "fun" begins, as bombing those will create more explosions, thus likely leading to a quick death. ESPECIALLY when he combines his attacks like Skele Guard above.

Super Bomberman 4

• Centibeetle, the World 4 boss, is notable among Bomberfans for being MUCH harder than the Final Boss itself due to some devious attacks. For starters, this boss loves Collision Damage, as it will constantly try to slam into you! If that doesn't make you groan, then its web spit (which slows you down, making you vulnerable to Collision Damage) WILL, as Centi will do it whenever you get into its line of sight. Oh, and it can make like an Orbinaut and use its segments as a rolling shield, spitting webs at you all the while. Have Fun!

Super Bomberman 5

5 is notable for having some of the cheapest bosses in the series history, with bosses so irritating you can't help but wonder what the developers were thinking. For simplicity's sake, only the worst offenders will be listed.

• Bomber Woof uses landmines that disappear after being planted. The problem with this? Woof can plant a lot of mines, forcing you to memorize their locations, lest you step on one and get hit by a rather big explosion. And that's before mentioning his A.I. which can dodge everything. Also, this is the FIRST BOSS.
• Gary Bomber, one of the two possible bosses of Area 2, is a pretty rough battle with his Tracing Bombs that can easily get you cornered or ambushed if you're reckless.
• Iron Mask Bomber LOVES exploiting his small arena size by infesting it with gear monsters... and two Bomb blast amplifiers that can screw you over on your first attempt.
• The Secret Boss, Honey and Kotetsu, are a handful especially if you battle them alone. Honey will fire at you if you get in her line of sight and Kotetsu will slash you if you so as much get within 1-block of distance of him and he has a pursuing AI. Together, they make for a tough combination the player has to be careful to defeat.

Super Bomberman R

The game that resurrected the series after a long hiatus...and inadvertently brought back frustrating bosses.

Note: The following entries only apply to the Veteran and Expert modes; the Beginner mode intentionally makes the bosses much easier.

• Fort Walker can be a real pest. Not only does it take up roughly 75% of the arena, it also takes a long time to die! Basically, you need to disable the four leg segments that the boss has. Doing this temporarily stalls Fort Walker, allowing you to score a few hits on its head. This doesn't seem too bad… until you realize that this boss NEVER stops shooting fire at you (especially in expert mode)! This means that you'll spend at least 70% of the fight running, thus preventing you from scoring hits on the leg segments, ultimately resulting in a Marathon Boss (which is incredibly rare for a Bomberman game)!
• Most of The Dastardly Bombers can be considered this, but Karaoke Bomber in particular has a nasty habit of running up to you and placing her proximity bomb, which is almost always immediately detonated because you're too close. Which can easily kill you while she quickly escapes. Though alternatively, you can easily set her up to be caught in her own blasts within the first few seconds of the fight if you're quick enough and willing to risk losing a life in the process… but then she gets the Elegant Dream out and things only get worse.
• The Elegant Dream does everything it can to make placing your bombs properly as difficult as possible. You're supposed to land a hit on each of its wings to stun it and deal damage, but there are many things going against you. The battle arena is quite big and a large part of the center and the corners are filled with ice blocks^note meaning you can't stop or place bombs on them, the mech moves fairly quickly and loves to fake you out while you have limited movement in response, only some of its attacks let you damage the wings, and even when it's stunned, you can only barely damage it safely from the opposite side of the arena with max flame (or just take a death and try to damage it faster while you're invincible from respawning). If you get unlucky, you can get stuck in a loop of not being able to hit the wings, then being in the wrong place when it does let you.
• Magnet Bomber's first phase in R, despite being the very first fight in story mode. His incredible speed and slippery AI makes trapping or cornering him very difficult and he leaves chains of bombs across the map, some of which are magnetized to chase the player. By comparison, his second stage where he pilots a crab mech is much easier.

"Baku-style" Bomberman (64, Hero, etc.)

Bomberman 64

The series first 3D game actually manages to avert this, as its bosses are much easier than previous games...with two exceptions.

• Absolute/Cerberus is the most infamous boss in the game due to its "Everything and the Kitchen Sink" mentality.^note Some guides even lampshade this. It has guns, laser beams, a gravity orb, explosions, a (very rare) charge attack, and homing missiles. Dear lord, the homing missiles!! They strike fear into the hearts of Bombermen. There's a reason that they're the page image. They're much faster than you, can cut off your escape route if you even dare to run around them, and when you get hit by one, swarm around Bomberman's burnt body like fruit flies in a flea market. Your only hope is to drop a bomb while running away, praying that they slam into it. And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it can combine its attacks (a staple of any annoying Bomberman boss)! Good luck dodging missiles while being shot and lasered at!
• The boss of White Glacier, Mantis. She'll first start off in her cave, in which the floor is incredibly slick and difficult to maneuver around. Which is taken up to eleven in hard mode. She additionally happily enjoys jabbing you with her enormous mantis-like front legs (and jump up to attack with both), climbing along the walls to spit out baby-spider-like things, and sliding herself into you. However, the battle really goes hay-wire when you've damaged her life meter to halfway, she breaks the floor and drops you down to her web, in which there's a good chance you'll miss it and fall to your doom. Considering she takes up a good portion of the screen, if you don't fall to your doom, you still have the possibility of doing so because you walked off the web, all the while she still tries pick and prod you to death. If you do fall and you haven't collected the 100 gold cards yet, Sirius will come to help you up, but upon collecting all the gold cards, you'll just fall and die. And then there's the process of actually hitting her.

Bomberman Hero

• Baruda, the boss of Primus Star...hoo boy. Camera Screw and weird control don't even begin to describe this fight.
  • For starters, you're using the Bomber Copter, one of the four vehicles. Then, factor in a limited flying height (of course the boss doesn't have to adhere to this). As if that wasn't enough, the way you're supposed to hit the boss is by flying over them, but thanks to the limited flying height, you're FAR more likely going to get caught in your bomb blasts! And it only gets better if you're playing the International version, which increases Baruda's HP while also decreasing the amount of time you have to get five clear points!

Bomberman Generation

• Beauty Bomber can be a pest to many new players due to the fact that she has a projector-thingy that gives her a shield that's really hard to get rid of (equip Andlar, throw a Big Bomb upward & pray that you hit the projector). Other than that though, she isn't a big problem...Unless you attempt to get the Lightning Cards, in which case she becomes an absolute nightmare for even the most hardened Bomber Veterans. In particular, one of the cards require you to interrupt her "Lure of Elegant Flash" move by stunning her with a Big Bomb before she flies upward to execute said move. Now, you would think that since she stands still for a little bit right before the attack, it would be trivial to get the card, right? Wrong! Strangely, you have to stun her a few frames before she flies upwards rather than the brief period when she stands still for the game to give you the card! And she's only the second Crush Bomber!

Bomberman Jetters

It really says something that two bosses from Online made a reappearance here, though at least they're much easier than before. Additionally, the Lightning Cards from Generation return in this game, with one of the boss cards requiring that you beat the boss in under 3 minutes.^note Or 2 minutes and 58 seconds in reality due to the timer starting when the stage loads instead of when you actually gain control.

• Mermaid Bomber lost her insta-win attack but gained a new, annoying bombfish attack in the process that really shouldn't belong to a first boss.
• Thunder Bomber is nowhere near as nightmarish as his Online incarnation, but he spends a good amount of the fight invincible. This makes the time limit Lightning Card a complete Luck-Based Mission to obtain.
• The War Beast was intended to be a fairly challenging Puzzle Boss based on the assumption that you knew that raising the Charabom Youno would give you remote detonation bombs. If you didn't know this, good luck tricking it into swallowing your bombs before they explode. Also, using Level 3 Ceedrun is pretty much the only way to not get hurt by its shockwave attack. The boss also has an attack where it chases after the player at speeds that outrun Bomberman and MAX's top running speed. No matter what, you will take damage in this fight.

Portable Games (GB Trilogy, Max, etc.)

The Bomberman GB Trilogy

• The Final Boss of Bomberman GB/Wario Blast is easily one of the worst final bosses in the series history due to nigh-incomprehensible amounts of Fake Difficulty! Basically, the goal of the first phase of the fight is to hit the mech while it's creating a missile. The problem? Once it fires that missile, it won't create another one until said missile is bombed, and when it does create a missile, it only takes a second to make it (which is far less time than it takes for your bombs to explode. The missiles also don't detonate bombs on contact in this game). On paper, a boss like this would already be pretty annoying, but in practice, the fight is a nightmare since you essentially have to get lucky to actually hit the boss. This is because both the boss and the missile move around the arena, meaning you have to (somehow) anticipate where the missile will be so you can place a bomb in its path, then immediately run over to the boss and place a bomb in front of it. With enough luck and prayer, you should score a hit on the boss. Maybe. Oh, the second phase is a joke by comparison.
• Bomberman GB (2)
  • The world 6 boss can be a complete roadblock for inexperienced players. It hops constantly, meaning that you have to time your bomb blasts (or just rely on luck) to hit the boss, made worse by that fact that it gets faster the more you hit it. It also shoots fire at you, which can make placing bombs more difficult.

Pocket Bomberman

The Bomberman series' brief stint into 2D platforming clearly didn't forget the memo on cheap bosses.

• World 3's boss (the bone dragon that's shown on the western box art) is a dreadful fight with remote bombs and a Luck-Based Mission without them — the boss bounces around the arena, occasionally shooting projectiles. Unlike the previous two bosses, you can't stun lock this boss with remote bombs. The boss also has homing projectiles that are borderline impossible to dodge, forcing the player to speedrun the boss to prevent them from using said projectiles.

Bomberman Quest

As to be expected from an Action RPG/Boss Game hybrid that just so happens to be a Bomberman game too.

• Electro Commander, despite his cutscene portraying him as immature, is one of the hardest bosses in the game. The primary problem is his electro spheres which persistently follow you around and attempt to cut off your escape routes^note so basically, he's a 2D Cerberus. The only way to beat him is use one of two flawed methods and hope for the best:
  • The first strategy involves equipping the Power Glove and a bomb that has a circular explosion (as they explode upon contact with the ground after being thrown) while wearing the Dash Parts. This tactic makes the boss easier to hit, but puts you at risk of getting killed by the spheres.
  • The second strategy involves equipping the Dash Shoes and a regular bomb while wearing the Silver Armor. This is good for players who really struggle with the electro spheres, as it increases their chances of survival...at the cost of making the boss much harder to hit.
  • If all else fails, go to the true and tested: Equip Dash Boots, Landmine, and Silver Armor, wait until he starts chasing you, and align your mines right so he is the only one caught in the blast.

Bomberman 2 (DS)

• Phii, the mid-boss of area F-5, is a chaotic battle from start to finish. For starters, you fight her in a pitch black arena which either forces you to have high Hacking gear equipped, or the Light skill, to even see where you are going, but more importantly, see where Phii is because she has a very dangerous 8-way attack that causes high damage and a random ailment if it hits, which can make the fight easily go FUBAR. Phii is also extremely agile and is very difficult to corner. She will lay bombs with very high attack power if the player gets too close. Lastly, she also comes with two Elite Mooks, dangerous on their own, that can lay bombs and dash, and they can serve as a deadly distraction.

Bomberman Online (Dreamcast)

That's right, a Bomberman game with bosses so bad that they actually got their own folder! The bosses in this game take Fake Difficulty to levels the franchise hasn't seen before^note indeed, they make the bosses in Super Bomberman 5 look as easy as most of the bosses in Kirby's Dream Land! with such blatantly cheap attack patterns that you would be forgiven for thinking that they weren't playtested.

• Thunder Bomber is one heck of a Wake-Up Call Boss! He only takes three hits to defeat, but he can perfectly dodge ALL of your attacks and, most frustratingly of all, has an attack where he makes himself invincible and throws four rubber bombs before jumping to a random spot. This attack alone is the reason that this boss gets a spot on this page as Thunder Bomber will perform it 95% of the time (that's not an exaggeration)! Combine this with a stiff time limit and you have a literal Luck-Based Mission.
• The Bomber Brothers take the role of world 2's boss fight and boy is it tough. The fight uses the target ruleset^note Hidden in the soft blocks are targets, get 3 and stand on the center platform to win. You can bomb someone with a target to make them drop it. only this time there are exactly 3 targets as opposed to the usual 5. This means that if they get their hands on just one target, you have to fight against their Perfect Play A.I. to get it back. Further compounding things is their main attack; the bigger brother will occasionally throw the smaller brother at you so quickly that you may not be able to react to it in time.
• Bomber Mermaid serves as the world 3 boss. Using the submarine ruleset^note The arena is split in half, placed bombs will move over to the other side of the arena with 1 second remaining before they blow up., she demonstrates some truly refined Fake Difficulty by means of That One Attack; she'll occasionally spawn water flows (which function like conveyor belts) with bombs. This is already annoying because it's difficult to judge where you need to stand but that's not the worse part. The worse part of the attack is when she suddenly loads the flows with bombs (which is completely random) which is impossible to dodge 95% of the time she does that! In other words, the developers literally gave her A.I. an Insta-win attack that she can execute at any time (though you can avoid it by defeating her as quickly as possible given that her A.I. is less brutal than the others but still)!
• Bomber Gunrock is the 4th boss. The fight uses the panel ruleset^note color coded bombs paint the floor panels—whoever has the most colored panels when time runs out wins. Also, getting hit makes you lose all of your panels.. However, you have to deal with a boss that can stun you whenever he wants. Hopefully you weren't in the path of a bomb when he does his stun attack.
• And finally, the Final Boss, "Aladdin" Bomber (Hudson mistook the genie for Aladdin). Using the point ruleset^note bomb an opponent to score a point and whoever has the most points at the end wins, with the battles occurring in a small arena, Aladdin's weak point is the small lamp bouncing around the arena. However, you have to deal with a giant genie who can push you and your bombs around and can even summon his own bombs. And as if that wasn't enough, the lamp suffers from Perfect Play A.I. as well meaning it will seamlessly dodge almost everything you throw at it, making the fight (yet again) a Luck-Based Mission.

Other Games (Saturn, Neo, World, etc.)

Bomberman '94/Mega Bomberman

• The world 2 boss is this due to That One Attack; namely, his fists which have surprisingly good lock on (and now you know where Cerberus got his missile attack from) making the fight incredibly hard for an early boss unless you have a green rooi/louie with you. Unlike most examples on this page however, this boss doubles as an Awesome Boss for some people for this exact reason.

Saturn Bomberman

• Rodeon, the world 3 boss is the game's only Puzzle Boss. To hit him, you must fire cannonballs at him with very specific timing. However, the developers focused more on showing off the Saturn's sprite scaling than making the collision detection work. The result is lots of Hit Box Dissonance and Depth Perplexion turning the battle into a Marathon Boss as you desperately try to hit the boss, only to miss because you were apparently just a little bit off. And that's before getting into the fact that sometimes the cannonball will pass through the boss.
• The last fight against Dr.Mechard/Mechando/Mechadoc's Humongous Mecha is the perfect example of everything wrong with Bomberman bosses. Attacks include a fan which can push you and your bombs, bubblegum bubbles that turn the boss into pure and utter Bullet Hell, Bob-Ombs (some even on parachutes), and even Collision Damage. And no annoying Bomberman boss would be complete without the typical bout of Fake Difficulty as winning without burning through your lives (what little you have after the hellish set of levels you just went through) is entirely a Luck-Based Mission due to the aforementioned bubblegum Bullet Hell.

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