The Mega Man classic series is no stranger to soul-crushingly difficult bosses, and the single player campaign in Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch is no exception. Just be glad you won't have to face these monstrosities while playing online...
NOTE: Superbosses (Quint and Ra Moon) are banned from being That One Boss. It's optional and you know it's overpowered, nothing prevents you from not fighting it.
Pre-V5b Chapters 1-6
- The Metool Daddy.
He has tons of HP, is only vulnerable for short periods of time, and can summon lesser Metools to help him. Scared yet? But then, there's his nasty ability to jump and instantly crush the player, and not even God Mode protects you from said crushing attack. He's a 3D hitbox represented by a 2D sprite, and the sprite is in the center of the hitbox, so when he jumps at you, he's closer to you than he appears! While the post-v5B version is more tame, it's a Sequential Boss that comes in the middle of the Cossack Catcher fight, which can wear you down beforehand and is still a problem until you destroy it. - Then there's Gamma, who, while a Final Boss (at least until v3), is incredibly difficult to defeat without the use of cheats. Let us count all the myriad ways this boss is difficult...
- Like with the Metool Daddy above, he can cause tremors which damage your character. But while the Metool Daddy's landing tremors have a bit of a cooldown after landing, he can cause a tremor with every single step he takes.
- Being many times the size of your character of choice, he can crush you underfoot.
- The arena is in a cross shape, with pits of spikes taking up the corners of the arena. This can be a detriment to you if Gamma ends up trapping you and you have nowhere to run around him, which means either getting stomped into jelly or making a dive into spikes. Particularly jarring if you're trying to go for items and ammo around the arena and you find him bearing down on you seconds later.
- Gamma's attacks are also pretty harsh. He doesn't have many of them, but boy, do they hurt. They cover a better part of the battlefield and can knock your health down greatly if they connect. His laser attack in particular is a pain; it fires at odd, unpredictable angles and takes off a huge amount of your HP if it connects.
- Proto Man's vague hints. While it is helpful to know that you need to use your strongest weapons against the Final Boss, you might not exactly be aware of what you can use. Fans of Mega Man 3 will know right off the bat that Gamma's weakness was the Hard Knuckle (in his first form anyway), but a fully charged Atomic Fire shot, Crash Bomber, or the Ballade Cracker isn't nearly as obvious. Once you drain all of his health, Proto Man tells you to use a close range attack to finish him off. Better figure it out! The one you need to use is a well-timed Top Spin (which is another send-up of Mega Man 3; Gamma's second form could be decimated by Top Spin in a single hit), in lieu of using Rush Coil moments prior.
- Gamma's weak point. You should probably know by now that his weak point is his helmet, but that alone is hard to hit.
- Finally, if you fail to successfully pull off the Rush Coil-Top Spin maneuver in time, Gamma will get right back up and have a third of his health bar refill.
Post-V5b Chapters 1-6 and Chapters 7+
- Bass is the replacement boss of the Mega Man 7 chapter, and he's quite the doozy. The first phase is a little tricky since he can tank a lot of shots, moves fairly quickly and hits quite hard with his special attacks (a flip-kick and a fully charged buster shot), but it's manageable. The second phase, on the other hand, gets insane thanks to Bass activating his Super Mode by combining with Treble and causing the roof of the tower to collapse, initiating a Free-Fall Fight as the second and final phase of the boss. Not only does Bass have the ability to fly around wherever he pleases in the fight, his attacks are much more sporadic and cover much more ground. Additionally, thanks to Bass destroying the floor, you're in freefall riding the roof debris to the bottom of the tower, which means you have many different elevations to keep track of as you fight Bass. You'll get the Super Adapter to give you an edge, but you have to keep moving in this fight and flying around or else you're a sitting duck for Bass, and with all the jumping and flying you'll be doing to stay alive and shoot down the boss, you'll inevitably send yourself off into the pit. Screw up once, and you'll have to start from the beginning of the second phase. All of this combines to make a boss even more difficult than even the infamous Wily Capsule from the same game.
- As of version 3, and the intro of the Mega Man 8 campaign, we now have the Evil Robot, IN SPACE. Granted, he's incredibly fun to fight and the battle itself is epic, but holy hell, is he hard.
- Firstly, his attacks. Considering he stole the powers of all the Mega Man 8 Robot Masters, he now has what are basically hyper-charged versions of them similar to Lumine. And they do hurt, though they vary in dodging ease - his Astro Crush and Tornado Hold are usually easy to dodge, but the Flash Bomb spread and Ice Wave are a nightmare to dodge.
- He cannot be damaged most of the time; instead, you have to wait until he starts charging up his fist, and charge up your own Duo fist as well, and then wait for the small opening when you can bitch-smack him. This isn't so hard, but, if one of the longer-lasting attacks are still in effect, especially late into the fight, you could mess up the timing, and he'll hit you for at least half your health.
- Once he's lost a lot of health, he'll start using two attacks at once. To be more specific, after the first attack, he'll fire the second one while the first is still in effect. Generally he'll use attacks that take a while to end, and then follow up with a quicker one to try and catch you off-guard while you're trying to dodge the first one. This can be very hard to juggle. His charge afterwards is also a lot faster.
- The arena is in space, with an invisible boundary indicated by the highlighted corners. You can also fly, which is vital for avoiding his attacks, as you're faster when you're not touching anything. Unfortunately, it's difficult to tell if you're near a wall in the heat of the moment, and if you either fly up into the ceiling or into a wall, there's a good chance you'll be briefly stuck, long enough for an attack to nail you hard.
- While the Genesis Unit aren't too bad individually, they become a complete nightmare at the climax of Chapter 10, when you have to fight them all at once. Buster Rod G snipes you from afar with his staff, Mega Water S keeps shooting harpoons at you, and Hyper Storm H causes quakes with an alarming frequency rivalling that of Gamma above. And that's not even getting into the formation attacks, of which the Delta formation is the hardest to survive due to the Buster Rod clones, Hyper Storm's suction and Mega Water's constant water spouts coming up from underneath you. The sole saving grace in this fight is that all three of them are vulnerable to being shot up until they do their formation attacks, which means they're more or less invincible until it finishes. You're gonna spend most of this fight trying to play chicken with them more than you will shooting them, and it's arguably tougher than any of the other bosses thus far.
- The Mega Mech Shark, the final boss of the Mega Man 9 chapter. It's another fairly epic battle like the Evil Robot, but it's hard because it's the only Unexpected Shmup Level in the game; the entire fight takes place flying on Rush Jet. And as you'd expect from a side-scrolling shoot-'em-up, there's a ton of projectiles (sometimes to the point where it starts becoming Bullet Hell) to be mindful of as you chase the boss down. Plus, there's four whole phases to the fight, making it a true test of endurance to fight. The only saving grace is that each phase has its own checkpoint.
- And right before that is Proto Man. You've only got a small arena to work with, the last attack in his jumping combo is borderline impossible to dodge unless you know the specific trick to avoiding it, the tell for his chase is very brief, and you have to be aware of your distance to his thrown shield in order to know where he's going to aim to try and attack you. His only saving grace is that he's got a fairly low amount of health as far as bosses in this game go.
- The Weapons Archive is a lot harder than in Mega Man 10 proper, by virtue of using attacks from the game's fortress bosses instead of robot masters. The first phase is fairly tame, with the only really bad attack being the Doc Robot mimic, but the second has Duo and King copies, which are a lot tougher. The third phase is a little more predictable, except for its Bass mimic, but chances are you'll be low on health and/or ammo by that point.
- Terra is pretty annoying, always teleport spamming all over the place and moving away from your line of fire when its on him. He also fires two Spark Chasers at you, which can seriously hurt and come at you so fast, that dodging them can be a pain. Not to mention he can also freeze you in place, leaving you open to them as well. At points in the battle, he can also summon an arsenal of them (looking almost like Piccolo's Hellzone Grenade) and, with a snap of his finger, fire them all at you at once, dealing tons of damage.
- Sunstar. The prefight phase is actually quite mild, but when the cutscene ends and his health appears... oh boy. Get too close to him, and he'll grab and toss you into a wall (sometimes a wall that he's closest to, and he can do this while other attacks are still active, meaning you'll take tons of damage while you're in his grasp), fire heat waves that split once they hit a wall, send a damaging wave across the ground that follows you and leaves a trail, all of which can rack up damage quickly, creating jumping sparks you have to quickly run under, and fire a giant laser that, if you mistime a jump, shreds half of your health. This isn't even bringing up his desperation attack that occurs when you deal enough damage to him; sending a plethora of damaging ground waves at you, then creating large bridges of fire on the ground that linger for the rest of the attack, and summoning a pillar wall of flames that circle around, that can separate themselves, going in different speeds, and can shred your health like it's nothing. Even after that attack and he goes back to his usual pattern, he gains one additional move, in which he turns into a meteor and bounces after you, which is insanely fast, leaves little room to dodge at the right time and deals tons of damage too. Did we also forget to mention he has lots of health? Unless you make good use of the Grab Buster (which heals you every time you deal damage) and Plant Barrier (which heals you as long as you have ammo for it), don't be surprised when you die to him rather quickly, and dying at any point in the battle means you have to start all over again.
- If you somehow manage to beat him, it's not over yet; the Evil Robot (or rather, its head on some robotic spider legs) appears and possesses Sunstar, fusing with and turning him into a One-Winged Angel with its head and tentacles on its back and for its right arm. Its attacks are insane, firing a volley of energy balls that split once they hit a surface, making tentacles erupt from the ground in many directions, and rushing towards you to skid you across the ground, dealing tons of damage. And it cannot be damaged. After a while, the battle turns into an Escape Sequence where you have to escape the exploding Wily Star and you have to quickly open several doors and avoid the tentacles that appear. Dying at any point means you have to restart from, thankfully, the beginning of this phase.
