Has this ever happened to you?

[LunarWingCloud]

So you're fighting the hardest boss in the game. Last turn, or last few seconds of fighting, you're so close. You're gonna win! Right?

Just a moment ago I was playing a Touhou fangame called Riverbed Soul Saver. If you don't know, Touhou is a series of shoot-em-ups made by one man known as ZUN (real named Jun'ya Ota, he used to work for Taito), in a subcategory of shmup called bullet hell. The fangame in question has the same gameplay as the main series. I was fighting the game's Extra Stage boss, Yamata no Yato (who's based on Yamata no Orochi). Extra Bosses and their stages are unlocked by clearing the main game without using any continues, usually on Normal difficulty or higher. Which I did already with this game, and it was quite easy compared to a lot of Touhou games, but very fun. That's beside the point though.

Okay so I'm fighting this Extra Boss, and EX bosses in Touhou has 10 health bars, typically, each accompanied by a very intricate, thematic attacked called a "spellcard". I'm on her last spellcard, which is actually 3 health bars long on top of the previous 9 health bars of fighting I just slugged through. I get to the very last part of her final attack (which is split into 3 parts), and JUST as I kill her, and the "Bonus Failed" HUD goes up to tell me how I had to bomb and didn't get any bonus points for the attack because of it, I GOT HIT BY A BULLET AND DIED AS I WON. Because I wasn't alive for the final dialogue, it counted as a loss, and I have to fight her all over again. To explain further, in Touhou games, and most fangames because of it, the bullets don't immediately disappear when you finish the attack, instead they fade and spread a bit before vanishing. I was in a VERY tight spot and was unable to dodge, and thought I won but got hit just before I could've been safe for the win.

Has something like this happened to you? Have you been so close to beating the hardest boss of a game before having victory ripped from you at the last second?

 

[Chinaux]

i landed a kobe on someone at 40% and i thought they'd die so i didn't recover and put my controller down, then they won by just jumping

 

[Minato]

Not exactly the same thing, but this reminds me of what happened to Bum (the Smasher and Marvel player) in Dark Souls 2. On stream, he ended up finally beating this one boss, gets up to start celebrating, and this happens:

http://i.minus.com/ib16QrJPDLNotm.gif

 

[Facading]

Ugh that brings back awful memories or trying to beat boss battles in Brawl on intense..... Whenever I managed to get to Tabuu it would all be undone by a mistimed roll trying to dodge his off waves. It didn't matter if you were at 0%!

 

[LIQUID12A]

Not really, to be honest. The only final boss I've legitimately had problems with at some point was Master Core on 9.0, and even it's a joke now that I know it's entire game plan.

I've always had the feeling that the previous bosses were always harder than the final boss in most games. Nitrous Oxide from Crash Team Racing is pathetically easy compared to Pinstripe, who still gives me minor issues because he's so damn fast. Oxide cheats, mind you, getting a head start at the beginning of his race, being immune to after effects from damage and having every weapon spammed by the bosses except missiles. But get ahead of him, lay hazards in the center constantly and he goes down like its nothing.

Mega Man 8 had it's own Wily Castle, which I never beat in my youth because of that freaking first level and it's penguin-thing for a boss. Sure, I'm able to beat it nowadays, but when I look at the previous levels compared to the Wily Machine...I sincerely think the previous levels are harder.

Of course, this is all my personal experience talking.

 

[WolfieXVII ❂]

In this tourney I was in, we both had one stock, and I had made the mistake of using all my jumps as Kirby, but I managed to swallow my opponent. When I Kirby-cide I always have this habit of spitting people out at the last second, so I spit him out and both of our up-bs sent us falling to our death. I swear he died first but it was whatever, totally over it ;-;

 

[finalark]

The reminds me of the Egg Viper fight and the end of Sonic's story in Sonic Adventure. After you've beaten the boss he will hit a platform at random before he finally goes down for good.

"Watch out, he's up to something," indeed.

 

[Mindles]

The reminds me of the Egg Viper fight and the end of Sonic's story in Sonic Adventure. After you've beaten the boss he will hit a platform at random before he finally goes down for good.

"Watch out, he's up to something," indeed.

OH MY GOD YES

 

[Flareon]

I was fighting Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts and I only one hit away from beating him when he used a combo move reducing my HP to one and I accidentally cast Aeroga instead of Curaga and was killed right after that.