10 Most Disturbing 8-Bit Video Game Bosses
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 พ.ย. 2024
- While many video games of the 8-bit era had a famously happy-go-lucky vibe, there were some developers who used what little processing power that the third console generation had to bring unspeakable horrors to your screen. Despite not having as much power to work with, they still managed to create some true monstrosities that live on in the nightmares of players to this day. Here are the 10 Most Disturbing 8-Bit Video Game Bosses!
VO: Peter Austin (@ThatPeterAustin)
Script: Simon Pike (@Sim198k)
#NinjaGaiden #PhantasyStar #Abadox
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You gotta appreciate the creativity needed to make a creepy monster with 2KB of system RAM and less than 100 colors. Edit: Typo
you mean 2kb
Yet Nintendo had an expansion port on the bottom of the nes..
100 colors on one screen? You wish.
I always edit my comments for typos, grammatical errors, or additional thoughts. 🤪
Woww I just know that they only have 2kb RAM lol crazy
Abadox is a mostly unheard of gem. I loved that game as a kid and have played through it many times over the years. It also has great music.
Yeah me and my cousin Tim lived on that game an entire Christmas Vacation. Good times.
I remember seeing it in a commercial and being blown away that they'd make such grotesque monsters in a Nintendo game, I couldn't wait to play it.
As if basing an NES game on an R rated horror/slasher movie wasn't ballsey enough. Admittedly, I was blown away the first time I played Abadox...with that unusually dark tone for NES...and that low, droning music...and those disturbing visuals. I was, and still am, really impressed that someone was willing to go that route for such a game and, on top of that, Abadox is also really good. Hard as f#%k, but really good.
One of the first few Nes games I had in my collection, it was quite unique and difficult, but the theme was never heard of before this game, internal gorey battle with insane looking creatures, still one of my all time faves.
Still one of my favorites, too.
Kinda surprised you didn’t include Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse. The second phase of the final boss has Dracula’s severed head morph into a giant five-faced head with exposed brain up top, that attacks be vomiting on you. As you defeat each face, the skin peels off leaving a skull face.
And every time you knock out one of the faces, it screams.
I can’t imagine what it would look like on better hardware
It's listed in his newer video of this.. you're right. creepy
Some of the bosses of Blaster Master were pretty creepy. Also, Mother Brain from Metroid
I can only assume Mother Brain didn’t make it because she’s even creepier in Super Metroid.
My thoughts exactly.
The giant alien heart from Contra.
Mother Brain isn't creepy at all
Stage 8 of Blaster Master was legitimately nuts! It looked like you were on the inside of some alien cosmic horror entity.
For me, it was Mother Brain, the heart of the alien in Contra, and that boss at the end of NARC (Mr. Bigg, maybe). I think Kid Icarus had some disturbing ones as well.
When I saw disturbing 8-bit bosses in the title, my mind immediately jumped to Abadox. That was absolute nightmare fuel for child me. Also insanely difficult.
Call him what you will, but entry number 5 will forever be 'Naked Zombie Sean Connery' to me thanks to the Spoony Experiment review from *checks video upload date* 15 years ago. Geez, I'm old. lol
Oh man, I haven’t thought about Monster Party in years. I loved that game when I was about 8 or 9, I never owned it but a local video store had a copy and I rented it at least a dozen times.
It's so amusing how much of that game got past the censors. Pool of blood with rotting corpses on the title screen, THAT ONE PART in the first stage where everything morphs to literally bloodied corpses.
BTW the "cat" is supposed to be a Gremlin (as in the movie), it was changed due to copyright IIRC. Same with a few other things as I recall.
They were so original back then!!! Love the list.
NAKED ZOMBIE SEAN CONNERY!
I pray someone gets this reference
A bit late to the party, but while I really enjoyed this list and agreed with most of the entries (amazing how they used their very limited resources in such creative and memorable ways back in the day), I think there´s a glaring omission: Shadow Beast Kimkoh from the NES port of Super Contra (or Super C). A VERY Giger-esque mixture of a frog and an insect with a VERY unsettling female, unblinking face in its mid-section. That boss really creeped me out when I finally beat the game.
2 buttons was extravagant, one button on a joystick in my day sonny jim
Glad to see Abadox on this list! It's one of my favourite games I've never played. XD the environment animation is really impressive.
Spellcaster is my favorite 8-bit game of all time! Such a hidden gem!
Nice to see Dark Falz/Force make the list. He fits perfectly with theme of a spiritual evil being behind the civilational collapse and rise of tyranny in the game. I prefer the dark blue hue used in this game to the gray used on him in some of his forms in later games.
OMG, I played the FUCK out of Abadox as a kid. I was a glutton for punishment.
After years, the only way I could beat it was with cheat codes.
Monster Party had some legal issues due to IP abuse; the cat throwing kittens was literally originally Stripe the boss gremlin from Gremlins movie. That and a few other bosses had to be changed at the last minute.
Zombie Nation got me nostalgic for The Spoony One.
Thank you for acknowledging Ninja Gaiden 2.
Faxanadu also has some bizzarre looking bosses and enemies. "Borabohra" looks like a sperm cell with a xenomorph head, Zoradohna is a torso and head of pulsating brainlike flesh, and the final boss "Evil one" is a giant walking skull. also getsu fuuma den and holy diver, two famicom games that have been released in the us in repro carts, have some real disturbing bosses and levels.
I’m honestly surprised there’s no Metroid or Contra on this list. Also, Baron von Blubba from Bubble Bobble. There are no entrails or extra eyeballs, but it’s a creepy skull-like ghost whale in an otherwise cutesy game who pursues you relentlessly until you’re dead. It gave me more nightmares as a kid than anything on this list.
Red Falcon was creepy af.
I didn't find contra bosses unsettling until Hard Corps
Intensive list of things we never see!!! Rad vid.
My dad once picked out a game rental for me when I was in middle school. He picked Abadox.
my dad once told me he loved me. then i never saw him again
I remember when in Yoshis island you had to kill the frog from within. Cool to know it happened in an earlier game
I like listening to Peter's voice
That's about it, all I wanted to say here
It's a pretty nice voice
OK I'ma be THAT GUY: Jaquio is pronounced "ja-ki-o" (from Japanese 邪鬼王 jakiou, meaning something like "Demon King").
For more eyeball horror, I would also submit Giga from Life Force and Eyeball Growth and Grimgrin from The Guardian Legend.
That crab from blaster master nes version scarred me for some reason
“‘Lieutenant’ if you wanna get American about this.” That was funny XD Cheers!
Great list! But definitely feels like we need a Super Contra villain in here
I swear I saw a guy with his neck bent looking at his phone at the same angle as the #1 entry.
my take-away from this, is that Peter is scared of eyeballs.
Bovines, Chiropterians, Cetaceans, Lepitodterians...listening to your vids past month, I get the idea I wasn't the only one who took comparative biology or other taxonomy classes in college.
These definitely aged well and so does the nightmares 😮
I heard that the "cat" in Monster Party was actually a Mogwai, you know, like Gizmo from the "Gremlins" movie. So it actually WAS a reference to 80's horror movies.
I remember that first boss from Phantasy Star 1 game had over 1 million hit points life bar... Talk about WTH moments.
The old man looks like the inspiration for Thor in Kung Fury.
NES games are among the first games I have ever played. It was shocking to learn that there were monstrosities in the era too. 😳
Monster Party is one of my all time favorite games, they made it look So Creepy in parts. The only problem is that the game is So Friggin Hard to beat, even with Game Genie it was a long playthrough (for the time) and the game froze right towards the end so i Still haven't seen the entire last part of the game.
Playing it still makes me hungry for Tempura Shrimp and Onion Rings in the beginning.
😄👍
Yeah, I rented it a bunch of times as a kid (never had a chance to buy it) and never managed to beat it. I think I only even made it to the last level maybe twice.
There's a nasty trick on the second last level, the one after the maze, I think. Every level you've needed to defeat 3 monsters but on level 7 you only do 2. You have to skip a door or the game will soft lock. Keep that in mind if you want to try to finish the game on one life!
Love Monster Party!
@@danbauer3669 oh yeah, it's been a really long time since i last tried but i remember getting to an area that seemed indoors with chairs or tables flying at you and i remember being lost in something of a maze type level like that Mario castle or something and then yeah just not being able to proceed and turning it off eventually. Now i know what to look out for atleast.
😄👍
@@deathsnitemaresinfullust2269 use a walk through for the maze. The level I'm talking about is all climbing up from screen to screen. I wanna say don't enter the second door, maybe? Last time I played I only got to the third or fourth level.
@@danbauer3669 yeah a walkthrough is certainly something i'll be using next time, TH-cam wasn't even a thing the last time i played Monster Party. Game FAQs was like the only thing we knew about at the time for internet gaming stuff, back when Joe Cartoon was still pretty new.... Wholly Crap i just remembered the Joe Cartoon website 😅.
Kinda wondering if it even exists anymore, guess i know what i'm gonna doing for the next few minutes
😄👍
How to creep TripleJump: Eyeballs. Lots and lots of eyeballs.
16-bit gen consoles: Hideous looking bosses to scare the crap out of us.
8-bit gen consoles: "Let's give the bosses some eyeballs!"
Ahhh...a Christmas-themed video, just in time for Christmas!
Ninja Gaiden 2's Ashtar with his blood teared mask takes the cake for me. My 6-7 year old self wasn't digging it back then at all...
Also, I’d like to throw in Street Fighter 2010: the final fight as a mention…that game’s story, awesome creepy music, and villains had me kinda messed up as a kid and even all now lol
Very surprised not to see bosses from XEXYZ or The Guardian Legend not on this list. 🤔
Abadox but no Life Force? Now I'll need to check the other list to see if the creepy alien baby in Super R Type made it!
2:18 . I'm reminded of that disturbing scene when Cain got his eyes n brain taken out in robocop 2
A bit disappointed to notice that neither Shadowgate or Uninvited are on this list. Playing them back when I was a kid they gave me goosebumps. Especially scary trying to play them at night, alone, with the lights out. The box art for Uninvited is great
What's the background music? It's so peaceful ✌️
An honorable mention should go to Gyruss for the NES. The second to last boss was a giant brain in a glass dome. After you crack the dome open the brain starts pulsing in pain and shoots lightning bolts at you while screeching in agony.
0:27 LOL! A demon that shoots ping pong balls at you from it's lady parts.
lol I remember spending hours grinding ninja gaiden as a kid, 100% they would ramp up the horror towards the end of the game, and coupled with the difficulty, lol the game was a masterpiece, I was 10 years old and I remember just being absolutely overwhelmed by the time the I made it to the end boss. Lol the stakes were awfully high, back then, how about those effing demon dogs near the end of the first ninja gaiden. Lol even the opening cut scenes were almost legit anime to men then.
I believe all the bosses in New Zealand Story were balloons. Also to feel the creepiness you needed to play the music. Especially the Amiga version as its the best one.
I remember when abandoned first came out it was advertised as a gross out game of sorts
Naked zombie Sean Connery!
Thanks, Spoony.
I love when the fleshly boss starts shooting its eyeballs.
13:40 "handsome fellow" LOL
13:57 "why not turning to world sexiest man....I don't need too" LMAO
when more eyeballs show up, I can't stop laughing how much he disgusted lol
I get the "I must have missed that movie" line is an intentional joke, but Im pretty sure the Cat Boss in Monster Party is based on the japanese Movie House (1977)
I remember some of the bosses from totally rad and Astyanax being kind of creepy looking when I was a kid.
I love how most of these clips can also be used to explain " and here's why Nintendo didn't want this game on the NES".
Which is a strange coincidence, since the video about 16 bit bosses is almost entirely made up of Genesis titles for some probably unrelated reason. 🤔
Konami Wai Wai World's space flight boss, from a lady head to a hideous monstrosity.
Life-force bosses, even the game BGM sound even scarier.
Back In TheDay...
I Made it to "Jaquio" *ONE* Time in All My Years of Playing "NinjaGaiden" on NES!😬
hahaahha "looks like some disturbed child glued some shrimp to a half melted action figure." Ok that wins sentence of the year and the year has only begun.
That one boss in Isolated Warrior on NES in stage 3: it creeps me out when I was a kid. The floating bio-mechanical head boss to be precise.
By the way, I've never heard of Abadox until I watched your video; definitely creepy and gross looking bosses all over in that game.
You think the American version of Abadox is "disturbing"? Try the original Japanese.
In that version, Earth was the planet that was eaten by Parasitis, and it turns out there is a whole race of them. The title name "Abadox" was a reference to Abaddon, implying that Parasitis is the living embodiment of Hell itself. Furthermore, in that version, Maria (the Princess who has to be rescued) is not a Princess, but the protagonist''s lover.
Good thing I never heard of these......
15:32: "I'm watching you, Wazowski. Always watching. Allllllways..."
Any of the eyeball-intensive bosses from Guardian Legend.
Dracula from the original Castlevania.
Horsehead in the second Zelda game.
Some of the old nes games are timeless classics and infinitely repayable and enjoyable even though they are hard as balls
More 8 bit, Maybe a full video about the Contra series!
I forgot the game but was on nes a specific final boss in an action medieval style action platformer a demon in the end which you should hit a mirror i think to beat him.And the music accompanied with this demonic entity was bring some chills to my spine!
There a lot of Monster Party happening in just the intro, I'm about it
*SORRY, I'M DEAD*
I thought castlevania and lifeforce was gonna make the list
so much cooler looking than others
Friday the 13th. Jason and his mom's head were scary bosses as a kid. Also Shadowgate and the Uninvited. Nightmare on elmstreet too.
Maybe not a boss as such, but the sphinx from Shadowgate always creeped me out 😬
9:48 That's not at all how you pronounce "cetacean", otherwise a fun list. :P
My list of the 10 most disturbing 8-bit NES video game bosses:
1. Mother Spider (Dragon Spirit: The New Legend)
2. Gohma (The Legend Of Zelda)
3. Giant Spiders (Monster Party)
4. Baron Spider (Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword Of Chaos)
5. Jaquio (NInja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword Of Chaos)
6. Big Biker Boss (Terminator 2: Judgment Day)
7. The Head Of Jason's Mother (Friday The 13th)
8. Giant Spider (Rambo)
9. Vampira The Crying Is For Wimps Mask With Tears That Burst Into Flames (Castlevania II: Simon's Quest)
10. All-Seer (Abadox (Is Irresistible))
Honorable Mentions:
Animal---The Stage 4 Boss (From Bad Dudes)
Death Breath, Spike, Horned (Horny) Witch, Green Grub, Mad Monk, and Stone Wizard (all from Kid Niki)
12:35 - Or perhaps an unlicensed use of the cover image from Shadowrun back, in the day.
Darkfalz/Darkforce in Phantasy Star III is the sickest.
Good list. I like sugest to you: Conquest of the Crystal Palace, Vice project doom, gradius and salamander have some horrible bosses too. Check the japanese version uncensored.
When it comes to wierd bosses like that, terraria has plenty: From the eye of cthulhu early game to the brain of cthulhu and eater of worlds, then comes the wall of flesh...
Ayy upp, another one! Good vid lads n lasses n otherz
I love when Peter do these he is hilarious and brilliant at it 😂😂😂❤❤❤
00:32: I believe you mean: "UNSPEAKABLE EVILS!" AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
When you reach the boss in an impossible game like Ninja Gaiden, you aren't phased by its looks, you just want to beat the shit out of it! 😅
“Sit back relax and prepare not to relax” XD
Had no clue phantasy Star went back that far I had that game for Dreamcast I think it was phantasy Star online
I feel like Abadox was the inspiration for Junji Ito’s Hellstar Remina!
Are we not gonna talk about that it was also inspired from The Fly (1986)?
Master of Darkness is an amazing gem for the Master System. Its for sure a Castlevania rip off, but theres also something unique about the graphics and atmosphere.
I dunno, dont see it mentioned too often so im happy whenever it stumbles onto one of these lists. Love the SMS, and besides Wonder Boy 3, Vampire Master of Darkness might be my favorite title on the console.
Even Unicron would be afraid of Parasitis.
There’s a boss is super c, one of the top down levels. Definitely could’ve made this list 😅
Kinda surprised there's nothing from Contra/Super C here.
Or you could go with disturbing in another sense and try Parodius.
Please do a 10 Most Disturbing 16 Bit Video Game Bosses 😉
They've done two videos already. Check 'em out!
I live in Japan and played Ninja Gaiden 2 (Ninja ryukenden), Jaquio has a hexagram instead (Star of David)
I played Abadox as a kid! Damn, how did my parents let me..? Lol
Without Sinistar this video is not complete.
Splatter house should be here the arcade was 8bit
I was gonna post about Splatter House! 😎❤️🔥🥹 gosh, I loved that game!!! It had a lot of creepy stuff there. The walking severed hands…the poltergeist chairs…the girl with her belly spewing out spiders…would love to play it again if I could 🥹🤩🙌🏻
I'm surprised Xexyz didn't make the cut...
The only disturbing boss I ever stumbled upon was Grandia 2's Aira, aka the Eye of Valmar. What didn't helped: it is a blind little girl infected by something, that gives her the ability to see. You need to take that away from her! It't not 8-bit, so maybe for another list.
PinBot was terrifying.