Don't let the cheery atmosphere fool you: Super Mario Bros. has plenty of Wake Up Call Bosses to ruin your day.
- Wendy O. Koopa from Super Mario Bros. 3. Unlike her younger brothers Larry and Morton, Wendy's projectiles actually bounce off walls instead of disappearing, making her extremely hard to defeat. And she jumps over your fireballs, making her harder to hit.
- Roy Koopa's World 2 Castle fight from New Super Mario Bros. Wii can be a massive challenge. Roy can still stun you, but the fact that the pipes in the arena are at such a smaller distance from the floor gives you less time to react and jump. Oh, and immediately if you end up under Roy, he'll come down, giving you less of a time to react as you try to get away and jump at the same time!
- Super Mario RPG
- Croco serves as a wake up call to players that haven't used all available options in battle properly. Mallow is too physically weak to damage the boss, and spamming Thunderbolt will quickly drain your FP and leave none for Mario to use his special attacks, since the party shares FP instead of having it individually. Croco also introduces attacks that CAN'T be blocked with button timing and uses an item to heal himself. Unless the player uses the defend command for Mallow and learns how to ration FP and items, they will be in for a very rough fight.
- The rematch against Croco is a wake-up call to use HP Rain instead of relying on items like Mushrooms and Pick Me Ups, as he steals them halfway through the fight.
- Mack has an infinite supply of respawning Mooks, which makes the player have to use Mallow's Thunderbolt to off them as he will have 5 attacks to your two if they are left unchecked. Also each of them use Drain, which is a common attack by later game enemies.
- Bowyer also serves as a wake up call gimmick boss. After depleting some of his HP. Bowyer will randomly lock out your battle commands (Attack, items, and abilities), and he will utterly destroy you if you don't quickly adapt to having an option taken from you.
- Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has Queen Bean - up until that point, the game went fairly easy on you, but Queen Bean ups the ante by really really forcing you to learn how to dodge, counter, and how to cope with multiple targets.
- Prior to the Koopa Bros. in Paper Mario, the only real boss encounters have been with Bowser, Jr. Troopa, and King Goomba and/or his minions. The first chapter's bosses, by contrast, present a serious challenge. First, their fight has two phases, making their battle more of a Sequential Boss, and the first phase has 1 defense, preventing you from using Power Bounce to defeat it right away. Its attack also has a tricky timing to guard, meaning you'll likely take some damage while whittling its health down. Once you defeat the first phase, the Koopa Bros. immediately begin the second phase with another tough-to-guard attack that hits you for 4 damage, which is quite high this early in the game. If you use up all your FP and items to defeat their first phase early, they can easily wipe you out. The Koopa Bros. fight makes sure you know how to manage your inventory and conserve your health and FP throughout a prolonged fight, which is critical for every subsequent chapter boss and a few later minibosses.
- Hooktail from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door can be one of the hardest bosses in the game... even if you have that badge on. On the other hand, that badge is easy to find and the game heavily hints that you should wear it, but it does hammer home the fact that the badges you have on can make or break a battle.
- The Tower Power Pokey of Paper Mario: Sticker Star is this even for those who could beat the Megasparkle Goomba without realising the game's bosses are actually all Puzzle Boss battles. Disregarding the facts of his massive attack potential and ability to crumple Mario (leaving him unable to heal, or block - death is virtually guaranteed in this case), he has 300 HP. Trying to use normal tactics, you will simply run out of usable attacks while he still has 150 HP left to burn. Then you can't miss the alert that the game wants you to puzzle him to death instead. And if you do manage to beat it the hard way, the characters talk about how there was probably an easier way to do it.
- Finding Mario & Luigi Dream Team easy so far? Well there are three bosses in this game that act as a nice wake up call to show you how more difficult things will soon get.
- The first one is the Bowser/Antasma team fight in Dream's Deep. Not only do they get two turns in a row to attack, but they also have a ton of hard hitting, difficult to avoid attacks. With Mario having paper thin defenses by comparison. Additionally, even IF you had fought every enemy you came across up to this point, it wouldn't change the fact that Bowser's attacks deal really large damage and he's likely to mop the floor with you if you don't start reacting to split second attacks. This boss also is one of the first bosses that requires you to have to turn around during countering to hit back, but you'll likely find that out only after Bowser punches you. Better have those healing items ready!
- The Elite Trio boss of Corporal Paraplonk, Private Goomp, and Sargent Guy in Dreamy Driftwood Shore. Hope you've been practicing your Luiginary attacks, because this boss is a nightmare without them. The trio will revive each other whenever you leave at least one alive, and with only Mario attacking it's near impossible to KO all three of them in one turn. The only way to finish this battle the hard way is to whittle the trio's health down, then counter-attack an attack that is difficult to counter, does lots of damage if it hits, and is easier if you avoid it. And just avoiding said attack will not work. You have to counterattack or else Private Goomp will survive and revive the other two, forcing you to wait until said attack is used again. Or you could do the smart thing and use your Luiginary attacks.
- In the giant battles, you've got Mount Pajamaja, the living volcano boss. Prior to now, giant bosses (or at least, the first one you fought) were kind of simple, almost more like an interactive cut scene than a strategic battle. Not here. Nope, not only do you need to actually use strategy to weaken the boss' sky high defences, but you have to counter much harder to dodge attacks, use the right moves in his second phase to avoid him healing and generally wear him down over time. It's a nice hint that the giant battles are not a walk in the park this time round.
- The game world of Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam is essentially traversed twice, with each area being visited once at the beginning of the game and once much later, after the player is far higher-leveled. The first area, Sunbeam Plains, is where you fight the Warm-Up Boss, Petey Piranha. When you revisit the area, there waiting for you is, well, Paper Petey Piranha. If you think the fight is going to be the same, though, think again: at the very beginning of the fight, he inhales Paper Mario's Copy Block, sextupling his HP unless you can pin down the original, which is no mean feat given that you can only attack whatever copy his attack patterns shuffle into the front. Even without his copies, Paper Petey hits unreasonably hard given his nature and his attack patterns are difficult to dodge.
- Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Edition
- Boom Boom in the World 1 Tower. He is the first enemy you face that can not be beaten by using one or two combos a turn and healing every so often. He has too much HP and his attacks hit hard. He's here to tell you getting up some good combos and using skills is mandatory to beat this game.
- Morton in the World 3 Castle. Just getting to him requires going through several Thwomps who are strong enough to cause a One-Hit Kill unless your team has a lot of HP, essentially giving a 4 turn time limit until they kill you and with a lot of defence and HP, a lot of good combos will be needed. Morton is essentially a Thwomp on steroids, having even more HP and while he probably won't be able to kill you in one turn, he will still leave you near death. And when he gets low on health he will use Charge to increase his attack which does let him kill you three turns later.
- Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
- The midboss of the Ancient Gardens, Pirabbid Plant. Up to that point, most enemies use normal attacks that can be avoided by staying behind cover. The Pirabbid Plant, however, has a huge movement range (10 cells) and a rocket launcher capable of firing even further and also outranges almost all of your available attacks, forcing you to get close to hit it. Said weapon hits harder than any other enemy's attack, is capable of destroying almost all available cover in one shot and inflicting the Burn status, arguably the most dangerous status in the game. Past battles could be won with little strategy; this one needs much more knowledge of what you can do.
- The World 2 (Sherbet Desert) midbosses, Blizzy and Sandy. Not only do you have to contend with the regular Mooks littering the battlefield, but you also have two powerful enemies. Blizzy is the first enemy you'll encounter to have "Villain Sight", allowing it to attack any character that enters its line of sight when it isn't its turn. Said attack has a 50% chance of giving a freeze status, preventing the use of passive abilities. Meanwhile, Sandy can activate shields and has an attack that will inflict burn on whatever character it hits and send them running randomly across the field. And both enemies have larger attack ranges than any enemy you've encountered so far, meaning that there's a good chance of being hit by one — if not both — of them if you aren't using cover wisely. If you haven't been honing your tactical skills already, this battle forces you to finally play smart by planning for their different attacks, keeping in mind where they are so they can't easily hurt your party members, while also dealing with their flunkies. Oh, and if you have Luigi on your team so you can keep your distance using his main and secondary weapons? They'll focus their attacks on him.
